Keys to Measuring Text Complexity

Catherine Gewertz
Teachers Tackle Text Complexity
Published Online: March 16, 2011
Education Week
Complete URL: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/16/24text_ep.h30.html?qs=rigor+of+texts

**This article seems to fit right in with the recent topics discussed in Ed Psych.**

After finding that students stumble when answering questions derived from complex texts on the college-entrance exams – teachers are rethinking what texts to teach and how to teach them. Teachers have been steering away from complex texts and focusing on narrative texts at the expense of informational and expository ones. Teachers in disciplines other then English have been resistant to teaching reading. This article highlights a pilot program with two objectives: getting students engaged in complex texts, and helping them acquire literacy skills specific to disciplines such as history and science.

The article goes on to give some specific literacy skills needed to successfully read complex texts in various disciplines. For example: “In history, students often need help making connections among events, evaluating information from multiple sources, and seeing how the author’s point of view serves as an interpretive lens, Mr. Shanahan said.” Experts are looking at the ways each discipline read and reason. They are hoping that defining these differences can help teachers figure out how to help students navigate speed bumps when reading materials specific to their discipline.

One final point to this article is that we can’t over simplify, and still expect our students to be able to read and comprehend complex texts. “You can’t build knowledge without reading sufficiently rich and complex text.” Put another way: “Too often, teachers simplify rather than dive deeply into it,” she said. “On the secondary level, you can’t really make it simpler and still maintain the level of content. You have to amplify instruction around it.” Basically teachers need to let students be part of the discipline – history students being historians, and help them do this by giving them the tools necessary to reading texts specific to the discipline.

The intended audience is practitioners.

This article is relevant to both our future teaching careers, and our current Ed Pysch course. It was an interesting read – very practical.