English Language Development

Figure 6.3. Associated Ranges from Multiple Measures for the Grades Six through Eight

Text Complexity Band

ATOS

(Renaissance

Learning)

Degrees of

Reading

Power®

Flesch-

Kincaid

The Lexile

Framework®

Reading

Maturity

SourceRater

7.00–9.98 57–67 6.51–10.34 925–1185 7.04–9.57 4.11–10.66

Source

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. n.d. “Supplemental

Information for Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy: New

Research on Text Complexity,” 4. Common Core State Standards Initiative.

The increasing complexity of text occurs across a number of dimensions: levels of meaning
and purpose; text structure; linguistic features and language conventions, including vocabulary;
and knowledge demands, including life experiences, cultural and literary knowledge, and content
knowledge. (See chapter 2 of this framework.) Texts judged as relatively simple on a measure of
quantitative complexity may be far more complex because of one or more of these dimensions.
Students’ growing cognitive capacities at this age enable them to grapple with ideas and concepts that
are more difficult; however, students’ comprehension may be constrained by their level of exposure
and depth of knowledge in each content area, the breadth of their vocabulary, their understandings
of the features of academic language and standard English beyond vocabulary, their command of
the foundational skills in reading, or other dimensions. Text complexity is also affected by the tasks
that students are asked to do. For example, many students may find it easier to summarize a text
and determine its central argument and claims than to assess whether the reasoning is sound and if
irrelevant evidence has been introduced.

To support students as they grapple with complex
readings, teachers need to understand the text and task
dimensions that contribute to the complexity of a text
or texts and consider the background and skills of their
students. Teachers should work together to analyze the
features of texts they use in lessons at a grade level or
in an interdisciplinary project and to identify the ways in
which they can scaffold instruction for students to increase
comprehension. As students encounter rich and demanding
texts, it is important that they engage deeply and call upon
their own thinking to make meaning of what they read.
Teachers support students’ meaning making by calling attention to text features and the language
used in texts, bringing students back to texts to reread for different purposes, supporting their
background knowledge, and more. As students increase their volume of reading and build stamina for
engaging with intriguing and complicated concepts and language, they make steady progress towards
the upper ends of the text complexity band for grades six through eight. (See chapter 2 of this
ELA/ELD Framework for more on text complexity.)

Questioning. Teachers use questions during instruction to monitor student understanding, and
they guide students to generate questions to help make meaning of text for themselves. Teachers
ask questions before and during reading to guide students as they interpret the meaning of text
(Boardman, and others 2008). They also teach students to generate their own questions about
what they read before, during, and after reading by engaging them in metacognitive conversations
about how they are making meaning from what they read. Generating questions about text engages
readers and helps them establish purposes for reading (National Institute of Child Health and Human

Teachers should work together

to analyze the features of texts

they use in lessons at a grade

level or in an interdisciplinary

project and to identify the

ways in which they can scaffold

instruction for students to

increase comprehension.

Grades 6 to 8 Chapter 6 | 515