Kuunari

A year ago I read the book A Close Look at Close Reading: Teaching Students to Analyze Complex Texts, Grades K-5 by Barbara Moss, Diane Lapp, and Maria Grant. This book was disappointing, never naming race or rarely discussing multilingual learners. It did explain what close reading is clearly, and as a tool, it has it’s place in a complete language arts classroom. I’ll be posting the essays for the next 11 weeks on Tuesday.

Text complexity, as explained by the authors of A Close Look at Close Reading, provides a an effective way to understand the demands that text can make on a reader. The authors provide a set of three components for text complexity that combine to illuminate what students will be required to do to understand the text. The three components are quantitative features, the qualitative features, and the reader/text factors. For me, text complexity provides a better picture of the true demands of a text than simply a lexile or reading level might suggest in my fourth grade classroom. 

Quantitative features of text complexity refer to the features of the text that can be analyzed through counting or other computative method. The common core standards uses the lexile text measures, which is based on word frequency and sentence length. The lexile number can range from 0L to 2000L. College and career texts typically average 1400L, while fourth grade texts can range from 400L up to 940L.

As an experienced educator, I am well aware that more can impact the ability of my students to read and comprehend a text than just the lexile, however, it is often a good starting point in making sure a text will be appropriate for my students. 

The second component that the authors mention is qualitative features. These include text structures including organization, text features, relationships between ideas, language features including author’s style and vocabulary, meaning, author’s purpose, and knowledge demands. These components match up with common core standards for K-5. Depending on the complexity of each of these components, a text can be made easier or more difficult than the lexile score might suggest. As an educator, I must decide how much scaffolding will be required as a student analyses and identifies each of these standards. 

Finally, reader/text factors can impact the complexity of a text. Most of these are simply a rehash of qualitative and quantitative features, but from the perspective of the reader. The reading and cognitive skills reader/text factor connects to the lexile of the text and qualitative demands of the text. Prior knowledge and experience connect to the vocabulary and knowledge demands from the qualitative factors.

Motivation and engagement and task concerns are around the delivery of the lesson rather than the text itself. The authors seem intent on taking something holistic and organic, reading, and applying overly detailed analyse and criteria. In addition, they start with the quantitative and qualitative factors of the text before even considering the student. To me, this is backwards. The two primary concerns should be student interest and content connection, which isn’t even explicitly mentioned in any of the factors of text complexity.

It’s as if the writers have forgotten that reading exists within a larger scope of knowledge acquisition and construction and are hyper-focusing on the text, draining the interest and excitement out of reading. Students need to first and foremost engage with the text, and be ready to wrestle with it. For me, that is the true definition of text complexity, text that the reader can and wants to grapple with.