Text Complexity

Improved Essays
Helping Students Grow as Readers Text complexity is something that is very important for students to continue to develop their reading abilities and teachers can help. The three factors used to measure the text complexity are quantitative, qualitative, and matching material to the reader and the task. Each of these things ensure that students are being challenged in their reading, growing their vocabulary, and feel as though they are reading for a purpose. As a teacher, one must take time to match their student’s interests and abilities to be sure that reading experiences are successful. Also, one must observe students to steer them toward certain selections of what they will want to read, should read to challenge them, need to read to build …show more content…
Four factors come to mind when thinking about why text complexity is important. The first is if a student is challenged too much they may become discouraged with reading and not learn from the material as intended. Next, if the complexity is not challenging enough a student will become bored and also be discouraged from reading. Also, if the text complexity does not match the student their vocabulary will not continue to grow. Finally, if the text complexity and text type does not suit the student, they will become lost in what they are reading and be discouraged. Teachers can help in many ways to ensure that students are reading the appropriate material at the right …show more content…
It can be easy for a reader to become bored, discouraged, and just not want to read at all. Reading is a vital part of our lives and as teachers we have to place high importance on building strong readers. Knowing our students and meeting their reading needs is through encouraging them to read within their interests, explore other texts, read to learn, and read with purpose is vital. We have to support students in ways that will help them to achieve all that they. Providing the right level of text complexity and helping them learn through reading is a very important task as a

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Priscilla Witte is a first grade teacher in an area that is striving to meet the required Common Core State Standards. Specifically, being able to understand different texts with stable difficulty as they continue to advance through their education. To start she had to find a way to distinctly determine what is considered a complex text. One commonly used system for regulating the difficulty is the Lexile framework, which uses “semantic difficulty of words in a lexical database and sentence length to match books to readers.” (p.30)…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since beginning this course, I have been resistant. Ever since Jr. High it has been hard for me to keep a book long enough to stay interested. One way i get involved with the characters is by comparing him/her to me. If not to me, I compare them to other characters. Once you find similarities or differences, it is easier to get intrigued in your book.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    It’s interesting, really, to see some of my old papers from middle and high school. I look back and laugh at the time, maybe around the third grade, when my classmates and I would groan and complain about having to write an ENTIRE PARAGRAPH. Now, after years of writing significantly longer academic papers that stretch far beyond a simple paragraph, my style and the depth of my topics have evolved based on what I’ve read. The most important pastime for anyone who wishes to write, unsurprisingly, is to read a wide variety of material, starting at a young age. Studies have shown that children who read more than their peers exhibit a larger vocabulary as well as more complex writing styles.…

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    This study pertains to explore college freshmen’s reading miscues in reading aloud sessions of complex academic texts, and their relation with the readers’ eye movement. Thus, this Research Hypothesis raises the following research questions: (a) What are the types of reading miscues that college students produce during reading aloud sessions? (b) Are there similar reading miscues patterns across participants? (c) Are the reading miscues related to text complexity? (d) Are the readers’ eye movement related with the reading miscues?…

    • 79 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    If these “experienced readers” are so good and still manage to fail in some areas, when are we going to be good enough to carve this skill to perfection. Teachers are into this too, this article refers to both students and teachers because everybody needs to upgrade in something. I observed that Haas and Flower’s article was meant for teachers as well when they said, “Seeing reading as a constructive act encourages us as teachers to move from merely teaching texts to teaching readers” (Haas & Flower 169) as well as “Many of our students are “good” readers” (Haas & Flower…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As children, we are taught that the ability to read is important and are even required to have a period of silent sustained reading. There is an implication that reading is always literary, however, there isn’t one specific subject that is tied to reading. I’ve read history books, books about animals, encyclopedias, anything to just read. Not only did it deepen my passion for books, it helped me develop my writing skills. I gained knowledge from the books that I read which evolved into writing my own stories.…

    • 1670 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    PART A: I agree with Carol Tomlinson’s statement about curriculum being the ultimate identifier of potential. Potential is having or showing capacity to become or develop into something in the future. School curriculum is defined as the course of study observed by the school. I do believe that the curriculum has to reflect the student’s needs to be the ultimate identifier of potential. We know that all students learn differently.…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Disciplinary Literacy

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This way, students are inspired to read and write like content-area professionals. By helping students dig deep into these texts, teachers are not only helping them become more literate…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The National Curriculum (2014) and the impact it can have on teaching pupils Literacy In Primary Education, teachers are responsible for ensuring pupils reach age – related expectations which are noted in the National Curriculum (NC) (2014). The NC provides statutory and non – statutory guidance for every subject including English which assists teachers. The purpose of the programmes of study in the NC is for teachers to understand what pupils need to learn and helps teachers to plan effective lessons. The NC covers aims which include the teacher’s responsibilities to: “Promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken word and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment” (DfE, 2014: 13). The aims also comprise conventional literacy skills which the National Early Literacy Panel…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article Supporting Secondary Readers, the author talks about the different strategies that the teachers use to support readers that are having trouble. According to the author, 8.7 million fourth through twelfth graders struggle to read their textbooks everyday while in school (Ness, 80). If the students cannot read their textbook, then it makes it real difficult for them to try and learn the material they are required to learn. A reason to support this is that the students will not be able to comprehend what they have read, because they are not able to read the information accurately. So this is where the teacher become the primary resource of making sure the children understand what is going on.…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Learning to read is a skill many can obtain quickly or not so well. Myself, on the other hand was one of the many children who struggled with not only the thought of reading, but the actual process of reading not only a book, but sentences, word and sounding out words. Struggling through elementary with reading problems and on and off again help made it seem even worse. Going into kindergarten was intimidating, with all the bright colored posters with words even I couldn’t read. Having to be assigned seats next to strangers who soon would become my closest friends.…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Non Reading Autobiography

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ironically, though I wasn’t immediately taken with reading, I became an avid reader after those first few difficult years. I was a regular at my elementary school’s small library, and I competed in everything book-related that I could. Battle of the books, spelling bees, and English classes were my favorite pastimes in grade school. Other children dreaded completing summer reading and literature studies, but I looked at reading…

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    My Readability Assignment

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This readability assignment was very interesting. Not only was it interesting to see what a difference a few more or less sentences can make, but also how important syllables and word choice are when it comes to estimating readability. Until last week, I had forgotten about how difficult this was. After hours of practice with this assignment, I can honestly say that I understand it more and I can confidently use it in my future teachings.…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    They may be agreeable or disagreeable, but taking the time to comprehend a novel provides a beneficial experience, whether or not the reader has enjoyed the content. Uninteresting books can still provide readers with new insights, new vocabulary words, or a brain-building way to pass time. Although everyone has preferences as far as books are concerned, every book provides a person with the chance to learn something they may never have learned…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I couldn 't find a way to make myself interested in the things I was reading. Every year there was a new summer reading assignment and every year I didn’t read it. I would try to but along the way I would end up opening Sparknotes and reading the summaries of each book instead. At times I felt bad because I knew that I should be taking advantage of the access I had to those books, but they bored me. I longed to be able to dive into books and absorb everything in them, but I couldn’t get more than my toe in the water.…

    • 1544 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays