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Kara Harniman Livingston EDU 742 Fall A Module 4: Text Complicity Analysis- World History. (2006). NY: Holt & Rhinehart. p. 145.

Quantitative Measures Lexile Measure: 820L Mean Sentence Length: 11.13 Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.36 Word Count: 178

Qualitative Measures Levels of meaning: Slightly Complex -Explicitly stated; clear, concrete with a narrow focus - Focus is broken down by section to establish clear detail of content. Structure: Very Complex -Organization of Main Ideas: Connections between an expanded range ideas, processes or events are deeper and often implicit or subtle; organization may contain multiple pathways and may exhibit traits common to a specific discipline -A lot of usage of dates (BC, AD), book is organized by region/civilization/culture and chronologically within cultural unit -Text Features: If used, greatly enhance the readers understanding of content -content and academic vocabulary is highlighted, italicized, boldfaced -glossary, biographical dictionary, and gazetteer are user-friendly -Use of Graphics: If used, essential integrated graphics, tables, charts, etc.; may occasionally be essential to understanding the text -several graphics used throughout text: maps,

Reader-Task Considerations Cognitive Capabilities: - Content is chunked into smaller pieces based on themes of geography, culture, politics, religion, technology, and economics Reading Skills: - Sentence structure and length is more applicable to strong readers. - Compound sentence structure has proven difficult for lower-level readers to comprehend. Read aloud modeling seems to help these students. Motivation and Engagement with Task and Text - Students seem to like the graphics but are bored with the text itself, which is for the most part dry and highly informational. - Each unit is broken down into smaller sections, average of three to five vocabulary words per section to be introduced. Prior Knowledge and Experience

illustrations, primary source excerpts, rich color, photos when available Language conventions and clarity: - Conventionality: Complex; contains some abstract, ironic, and/or figurative language -Vocabulary: Somewhat complex language that is sometimes unfamiliar, archaic, subject-specific, or overly academic -Sentence Structure: Many complex sentences with several subordinate phrases or clauses and transition words Knowledge demands: Very Complex - Moderate levels of disciplinespecific content knowledge; some theoretical knowledge may enhance understanding; range of recognizable ideas and challenging abstract concepts

There is some application of prior experience but for the most part this text approaches the content as if it is the students first encounter with it. Content and or Theme Concerns - Content and themes are easily applied to current world and real life experiences, particularly the If you were there feature, which allows students to be in the first person in an historical setting with some prior knowledge from the previous days lesson. Complexity of Associated Tasks - Tasks we have used with this text include Cornell Notes, map skills activities, Restate, React, Illustrate - We often create our own tasks to coordinate with text when those offered by publisher are too generic or simple in format.

For my text complexity project I chose to take an excerpt from the textbook we are currently using in sixth grade, World History by Holt and Rhinehart. We have used this text for several years in my school, and I have long thought that it was a complex text for my students. I was not surprised when the Lexile Analyzer determined it to be at about 820. In fact, I analyzed three excerpts that I chose randomly from the text, and one of the three was analyzed at 940. Until recently, we had no other resources available to allow us to level text to make it less threatening yet still challenging to our students. This year, we have a group of students that are quite exceptional in math, but cannot read for comprehension. They are fluent, but cannot answer questions that determine if they comprehend what they are reading. The graphics of this text are more useful to me in explaining the content being studied than the text itself, and I spend time regularly analyzing them with the students as reinforcement to the content being taught. I break the text into even smaller chunks than the publisher, as the content is new and unfamiliar to most of my students. I have designed and tweaked several graphic organizer ideas to accommodate the text, and use the support materials frequently as homework to reinforce vocabulary more than anything else. The text is built around vocabulary. Each section offers three to five new content vocabulary words, as well as academic vocabulary that is both recognized and unfamiliar. There is a great deal of frontloading required in ancient civilizations, and the text offers some activation of prior knowledge, but there is not a lot to be activated as this is new content. The maps are very clear and concise, and the organizers and biographical focus pages are great enrichment to the text. However, the prior academic vocabulary required to read this text goes far beyond what most of my students have learned before sixth grade.

This text is really only suitable to my high level reading students, those with strong decoding and context cue skills. The main points to be made are not easy to identify, and a lot of inference is involved in the style in which this book is written. Because this text is dry and highly informational, I have supplemented it with more kidfriendly books with lower Lexiles and eye attracting graphics to enrich the content being studied. In particular I use a series called You Wouldnt Want to Be offered by Scholastic and written by a group of authors to engage students with short, clean sentences, factoid information that the students find enthralling, and illustrations and diagrams that attract the eye of a sixth grader. I also read aloud from The History of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. Her text is much easier to comprehend for my students, and her use of vivid vocabulary and a storytelling format is enhanced by references to previous lessons. The World History textbook on its own is not enough to support the multiple levels of readers in my classes, but the graphics are more than adequate in addressing the content in each section. In this age of CCCS and a drive towards using more informational texts, there has to be consideration for scaffolding or ability grouping in lesson planning. More time will need to be spent examining text apart from graphics, or using pictures, photos, maps and other illustration features as support to the text being examined. All content area teachers are going to have to be able to spend time analyzing text for Lexile and readability. Reading is not just an ELA curriculum standard anymore. National standards are going to require a great deal of higherlevel thinking processes, and all content areas are going to be held accountable for the progress each student makes in literacy improvement. I am glad I found support materials that enhance the text and engage my students. If not for these resources, many of my students would not be able

to explain ancient civilizations, their rise and fall, and the development of modern society through religious, political, cultural, geographical, technological and economical changes.

References: http://groups.ascd.org/resource/documents/122463CCSS_Text_Complexity_webinar_handout_3.pdf World History. (2006) NY: Holt & Rhinehart.