Complex Text, Reading, and Rigor

All over America, teachers are putting on a good show figuring out how to engage students and motivate them to read more via web tools. These ideas are great, effective, and sweeping the nation. While reading is being ramped up, librarians can work like stage crew behind the scenes to ensure that students and teachers are aligning their reading choices with the objectives of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This might not be as much fun as creating book trailers on Animoto or instituting Goodreads accounts for our students, but this is our time and the Common Core is our playbook. We have been directed to dialog with our peers and collaborate. Take your cue and put on a good show!

The Core of the Common Core State Standards

How can we use the tech tools at our disposal to help teachers align their instructional focus with the Common Core? With the arrival of our Common Core State Standards, we have learned that there are six dramatic instructional shifts for English Language Arts (ELA) instruction. David Coleman, one of the consultants who crafted the Common Core stated in an instructional seminar to educators of New York that ELA instruction must get tough (see http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/docs/bringingthecommoncoretolife/part4transcript.pdf). There are six major shifts in ELA within the Common Core, and librarians can help classroom instructors with all of them:

1. Literacy begins in the earliest grades but needs a greater nonfiction focus (currently fiction accounts for 80 percent).
2. Literacy is a K-12 road (not just elementary).
3. Text complexity matters.
4. Text-dependent questions, which require students to pay attention to the text itself, are critical.
5. The ability to write an argument based on evidence and complex information is central.
6. Students need to read literature with rich vocabulary.

For most ELA teachers who have operated in a whole-language setting, carefully crafting wonderful reading lessons around great pieces of literature, this will be a tough shift of roles. They are being asked to read from the same script as their neighbor; to move from a literature focus to teaching literacy via complex text, focusing on building vocabulary and a brain full of common knowledge—a major shift in tectonic teaching plates.

The Word Is Vocabulary

Librarian enters: “Let’s institute a word of the day/week program at each grade level. I can provide the focus point for students to participate and keep the grade level master list. If students find these words in their reading choices, they can accumulate points. If the words are aligned with vocabulary of the discipline, it is likely they might choose more nonfiction reading resources to find the words. Classroom instruction will be supported and achievement will increase.”

Librarians can become a conduit for orchestrating a vocabulary-building program that aligns with Common Core teaching objectives, grabs the vocabulary of the discipline, and connects the library with the classroom. Kids’ pictures can be archived on bulletin boards, and bar graphs for classroom vocabulary mining can be kept on paper or in Excel. The possibilities are endless—but we need technology to assist in all this record keeping and promotion. We also get to teach a valuable search strategy to save time. Technology is our friend.

One information literacy objective could be incorporated by teaching the students to search for a keyword within the article by using Control + F. If students learn to use this feature to find the vocabulary of the discipline, you will have taught an information literacy and technology searching skill while supporting a timesaving feature of the technology. Yes, technology saves us time, so we can “scan” more. It has increased our efficiency.

Mining for Complex Text with Technology

Another major instructional shift of the Common Core that can be assisted with technology is the mining of complex text—text that requires multiple readings to mine the meaning. This Common Core objective crosses all the disciplines. Teachers have been asked to find appropriate articles, correctly lexiled, to use for classroom instruction. This is a major shift away from a text-driven instructional model that enables the teacher to teach from a text outline that has been mapped and paced for “coverage.” We want to uncover and discover, rather than cover.

Librarian enters: “I can help you find complex text articles on any subject matter that you need to teach. Please let me know a content area and I will send you via email a number of articles that are correctly lexiled for classroom use. Or, if you stop by the library, I will gladly show you how to mine rigorous and relevant articles via the Internet from your home or classroom. In fact, you could teach your students how to do this and assign it as homework for them to find a compelling curriculum-related article and use the best one with the class. Our databases provide lexile levels in their results.”

This is not rocket science or like navigating the open seas without a sextant. It should come easily for us. The result is that you have taught your teachers an effective search strategy, supported the Common Core, saved teachers time, and guided instructional material selection all via a simple technology tool to which you are accustomed. We have saved time with technology, ramped up reading, and bridged a gap between the library and classroom instruction.

Promoting Primary Sources

Another way in which a librarian can use technology to enhance classroom instruction is by helping teachers to find curriculum-relevant primary source documents correctly lexiled for instruction.

Librarian enters: “I know this is a faculty meeting and you really want to exit, but I thought I’d share another five-minute tip to save you fifty minutes of searching. In the following historical archives, you can find libraries of primary source material. I will show you how to use technology embedded in Word to ascertain the lexile level of a piece of history. These compelling documents can be read, analyzed, digested, discussed, and debated to enhance instruction and align it with the Common Core.”

Lexile ranking is an algorithm developed by Metametrics. The algorithm analyzes the predictability of comprehension for a certain grade level. At a lexile of 750, it is likely that 75 percent of a third grade class will comprehend the material. The premise of raising the lexile reading levels was to ensure that classroom instruction returned to “rigor.” Instructional material used in the classroom should “stretch” the reading level and not just accommodate it. David Coleman states that repetitive reading at a higher level, accompanied by instructional support, will in turn increase the students’ ability to read faster than having students reading more volume at their ability.

The Library of Congress and the New York State Archives are goldmines of primary sources appropriate for instruction. In one quick search within the Library of Congress, I found many rich letters from Helen Keller written to Alexander Graham Bell, for example. These are easily “lexiled” using the free Lexile Analyzer at Lexile. com, and could be used to accompany lessons on inventions, biographies, and more. Students would be required to read the text, digest it, and create inquiry questions for research and more. Ponderings such as “Why did Helen Keller know Alexander Graham Bell?” should easily become known during the reading. How did she learn to read and write, let alone be so funny?

The primary sources can be copied and pasted into Microsoft Word to ascertain the approximate grade level by turning on readability statistics hiding within the spell check options. (Transcriptions of primary source documents are usually available next to the letter images in the Library of Congress archives.) While Word uses an algorithm called Flesch-Kincaid, rather than lexile, it is a close match. With a simple Google search, charts can be found all over the Internet which correlate Lexile levels to other reading programs your school may use.

Super Librarian and OPAC Save the Day

Librarian enters: “From the comfort of your home or classroom, you can search our library catalog for a handful of books on any curriculum topic. Let me demonstrate how this is done. With these books, you can create a learning center (differentiated instruction which is called for in the Common Core) where students can search for answers to critical questions. By using these correctly lexiled books and mystery questions, you are providing a level of investigative challenge that directly aligns with the Common Core premise of drawing conclusions, synthesizing information, and reading rigorous and relevant texts.”

Differentiated instruction can be supported by doing a lexile search of your library for curriculum topics at a certain grade level. Many book-jobbers will lexile your entire collection for you, either for free to obtain your business or for a nominal cost with a 70–80 percent success match. If your entire collection is lexiled, it is easier to be responsive to instructional needs with a reading level search and keyword. At Metametrics’ website, www.lexile.com, anyone can easily analyze the lexile of existing core novels to see whether they are appropriately aligned with the Common Core recommendations.

Librarian enters: “I have analyzed your grade’s ELA core novels and found that only half are targeted at the correct lexile level according to the Common Core recommendations on this chart. Here is a possible list of both fiction and nonfiction resources that you might want to consider in its place. Or, visit the library and I will show you how to easily find alternative titles to help increase our students’ reading ability.”

If you play the roles of a supportive colleague, instructional resource leader, information literacy instructor, and research and reading guru, your colleagues will come back for a curtain call and encore.

Originally published in Library Media Connection 30, no. 5 (March-April 2012).