Reading Complex Text and Exemplary Text

1
Reading Complex Text and Exemplary Text

• Common Core State Standards
• Carrie Wozniak

2
Reading

• One of the key requirements of the Common Core
  State Standards for Reading is that all students
  must be able to comprehend texts of steadily
  increasing complexity as they progress through
  school.
• By the time they complete the core, students
  must be able to read and comprehend independently
  and proficiently the kinds of complex texts
  commonly found in college and careers.

3

• The first part of this section makes a
  research-based case for why the complexity of
  what students read matters. In brief, while
  reading demands in college, workforce training
  programs, and life in general have held steady or
  increased over the last half century, K12 texts
  have actually declined in sophistication, and
  relatively little attention has been paid to
  students ability to read complex texts
  independently.
• These conditions have left a serious gap between
  many high school seniors reading ability and the
  reading requirements they will face after
  graduation.

4
Does this scene look familiar?

• http//cooperativelearning.learnhub.com/lesson/959
  2-seinfeld-teaches-history

5
Are these students ready for the ACT?Can they
read complex text?

• Probably not . . .
• fact focused and repositories of information

6

• What chiefly distinguished the performance of
  those students who had earned the benchmark score
  or better from those who had not was not their
  relative ability in making inferences while
  reading or answering questions related to
  particular cognitive processes, such as
  determining main ideas or determining the meaning
  of words and phrases in context.

7

• Instead, the clearest differentiator was
  students ability to answer questions associated
  with complex texts.
• Students scoring below benchmark performed no
  better than chance (25 percent correct) on
  four-option multiple-choice questions pertaining
  to passages rated as complex on a three-point
  qualitative rubric described in the report.

8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11

• Performance on complex texts is the clearest
  differentiator in reading between students who
  are likely to be ready for college and those who
  are not.
• And this is true for both genders, all
  racial/ethnic groups, and all annual family
  income levels.
• - ACT Reading Between the Lines

12

• The second part of this section addresses how
  text complexity can be measured and made a
  regular part of instruction.
• It introduces a three-part model that blends
  qualitative and quantitative measures of text
  complexity with reader and task considerations.

13
What is complex text?
Page 4
14
Turn and Talk

• Identify the four qualitative factors for
  measuring complex text.
• Think about a text you are currently teaching and
  apply the four factors to that text. Where does
  it fall?

15
Quantitative Factors

• OKAPI! is a web-based application that allows you
  to enter a text sample and to format that sample
  as a set of Examiner and Student Curriculum-Based
  Assessment (CBA) reading probes. The application
  also computes a readability index for the sample.
  OKAPI! can save you hours of work in creating
  correctly formatted CBA reading probes that
  include estimates of reading level.OKAPI! gives
  you a range of options. You can for example
  change the font-type and letter-size for the CBA
  probes. Additionally, you can specify that either
  the Spache or Dale-Chall Readability Formula be
  used to compute a passage's readability index.

16

• http//www.lefthandlogic.com/htmdocs/tools/okapi/o
  kapi.php
• Easier to just google OKAPI!

17
Grades 4-5

• Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting
  by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing
  to do once or twice she had peeped into the book
  her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
  conversations in it, 'and what is the useof a
  book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or
  conversation?'

18
Readers and Tasks

• Students ability to read complex text does not
  always develop in a linear fashion. Although the
  progression of Reading Standard 10 defines
  required grade-by-grade growth in students
  ability to read complex text, the development of
  this ability in individual students is unlikely
  to occur at an unbroken pace.
• Students need opportunities to stretch their
  reading abilities but also to experience the
  satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading
  within them, both of which the Standards allow
  for.

19

• Such factors as students motivation, knowledge,
  and experiences must also come into play in text
  selection. Students deeply interested in a given
  topic, for example, may engage with texts on that
  subject across a range of complexity.
• Particular tasks may also require students to
  read harder texts than they would normally be
  required to.
• Conversely, teachers who have had success using
  particular texts that are easier than those
  required for a given grade band should feel free
  to continue to use them so long as the general
  movement during a given school year is toward
  texts of higher levels of complexity.

20
Think about Your students.
21
Pages 11-16

• The section concludes with three annotated
  examples showing how the model can be used to
  assess the complexity of various kinds of texts
  appropriate for different grade levels.

22
(No Transcript)
23
Appendix B
24
Lets take a look . . .

• Find your grade band.
• With a partner, select a text exemplar to read
  and review.
• Reflect on the big three
• Quantitative Analysis
• Qualitative Analysis
• Reader and Task
• Where do your students fit?

25
Think about . . .

• How will the Common Core Reading Standards Impact
  your decisions on text?