#5 - Comparing Apples and Oranges

Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, edited by Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas

Chapter 6: Text Complexity and Deliberate Practice, Munger & Murray

Standards & Testing as a Measuring Stick

[This is kind of a mash-up of things Munger and Murray

mention in the chapter and my own thoughts on the matter]

Students’ education cannot be measured like their bodies. Growth is often sporadic and unpredictable, and teachers sometimes have to back-track and re-teach material. Because of this, a variety of measuring tools need to be used in tandem. No single method will be completely foolproof for measuring how appropriate a particular text is for a particular audience of readers. The authors particularly point out 3 main components for judging texts.

3 Components for Measuring Text Complexity 

Quantitative Measures: The complexity of texts should increase in a stair-step fashion, based on the criteria of word repetition, word and sentence length, vocabulary, and syntax. [I do appreciate their mentioning the fact that quantitative measures in this field are rarely exact. All other factors aside, we are working with humans, who are possibly the most notoriously variant of all species on earth.] Overall, it seems that Quantitative measures alone can only measure so much. If we rely too heavily on the numbers, then many factors that cannot be measured - such as the maturity level of the content, rather than the difficulty level of the syntax and word choice, can easily be overlooked or misjudged. Despite the fact that quantitative judging of texts is possibly the easiest method of judgment, it is not the only one that should be relied upon.

Taken from p.105 of Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction

 Qualitative Measures: These measures of text complexity examine deeper topics that are based more on judging the maturity of the readers, rather than their skill level. This method is based on examining levels of meaning, text structure, language conventionality/clarity, and knowledge demands of the text. [These aspects are definitely all good things to consider, but they must be a real pain to figure out for teachers, because they’re all so highly subjective. The internet must be a wonderful resource for teachers with this kind of a topic, because they can look at other teacher blogs, or form their own, and share their thoughts and tricks for particular books, or even certain themes or genres]

Reader and Task Considerations: This section focuses more on the reader rather than the text itself. It takes into consideration factors such as student motivation, stamina, verbal reasoning, general reading ability, English language proficiency, or prior knowledge; these are factors that require thinking deeply about readers when selecting and using complex texts. The authors point out that “[d]etermining the complexity of texts is important, but only to the extent that they are combined with effective instruction to support thinking and learning” (106). [Like the qualitative measures, this is a much more subjective category that requires teachers really knowing and understanding the abilities of their students. In the last chapter that I read, from Doug Beuhl's Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines, he included an outline for scaffolding instruction that moves from I-do/You-watch -> I-do/You-help -> You-do/I-help -> You-do/I-watch that allows students to slowly develop the skills they need to conquer texts of higher and higher levels of complexity. That is a technique that relates to this through the relationship between students and teachers that allows the teacher to properly guide the student in their development of diverse reading skills.] 

Drawing Conclusions- Stick Figures Allowed

My favorite thing about studying the topics discussed in this chapter is, quite honestly, the fact that I don't have to worry about some of them as thoroughly as my future-teacher classmates will. I love knowing and understanding this, don’t get me wrong, but it is my hope that as a librarian – basically, as a third-party member who is not a part of the official education system – that I would have the ability to approach and/or work with students struggling with reading in school and help them learn more about themselves and what they can handle. I prefer this one-on-one relationship better because I can focus more on the individual student’s needs.