Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards (hereafter CCSS) contains a review of the research stressing the importance of being able to read complex text for success in college and career. The research shows that while the complexity of reading demands for college, career, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past half century,…

The Common Core State Standards represent the first standards document to address whether students are able to read progressively more complex texts as they progress across the grades. This article gives an overview of the three components of the model of text complexity that were identified in Appendix A of the Standards and also were the basis…

Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards attends to students' capacity with complex text. This standard distinguishes the Common Core State Standards from previous standards documents. This article describes a process--the Text Complexity Multi-Index (TCMI)--that supports teachers in studying texts to support their students in…

This article presents an overview of how to relate reading to a content area, specifically technology education. The author notes that, with the new focus on Common Core English Language Arts State Standards and state-developed standards, technology and engineering teachers should include disciplinary literacy in their curriculum. Academic…

Computational tools and resources play an important role for vocabulary acquisition. Although a large variety of dictionaries and learning games are available, few resources provide information about the complexity of a word, either for learning or for comprehension. The idea here is to use frequency counts combined with intralexical variables to…

University educators work with preservice teachers who often feel overwhelmed when facing high school science classrooms full of reluctant readers. These struggling students often have various special-education modifications or are English language learners (ELLs) with different degrees of language proficiency. Teachers report that these students…

One of the key requirements of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts is that students are able to read and access complex texts across all grade levels. The CCSS authors emphasize both the limitations and lack of accuracy in the current CCSS model of text complexity, calling for the development of new frameworks. In response…

What is meant by text complexity is a measurement of how challenging a particular text is to read. There are a myriad of different ways of explaining what makes text challenging to read, from the sophistication of the vocabulary employed to the length of its sentences to even measurements of how the text as a whole coheres. Research shows that no…

The Common Core Standards for the English Language Arts (CCSS) provide explicit guidelines matching grade-level bands (e.g., 2-3, 4-5) with targeted text complexity levels. The CCSS staircase accelerates text expectations for students across Grades 2-12 in order to close a gap in the complexity of texts typically used in high school and those of…

This is a conceptual paper, based on several semesters of collaboration in which the American author interacted with students in the Taiwanese author's EFL classes in Taiwan. The best native language users are typically those who read extensively, especially reading for pleasure in their youth. This gives them a large vocabulary and an intuitive…

Provides step-by-step procedures for developing an index which uses the Gunning Fog technique to evaluate the level of reading difficulty of textbooks. Cites examples, illustrations, and several warnings in the discussion. (RT)

One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found…

Reported is a study designed to determine whether reading grade level (RGL) assessment techniques used for elementary and secondary education textbooks would discriminate among plant and soil science textbooks. The study was to select the RGL indices suited to quantify the readability of these sources, and to identify the factors affecting…