Throughout 2021, the Afficient English team has been committed to elevating our English content to meet the needs of learners across the globe. By tracking student data across our platforms and incorporating customer feedback, we realized the benefits of incorporating developmental reading metrics into Afficient English. While our curriculum has always been aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and content standards for science and social studies, it was unclear how developmentally appropriate our fiction and nonfiction passages were across grade levels. Therefore, we decided to incorporate Lexile alignment into our reading comprehension lessons.
What is Lexile, you might ask? The Lexile Measures for Reading are a scientific approach to leveling texts based on the difficulty of vocabulary and complexity of sentence structure. While the Lexile framework is not the only measure for text complexity, it is one of the most widely recognized and used around the globe for grades K-12. The objective of the Lexile framework is to prepare students for the complexity of texts that they will read at the college level. Through a 2010-2019 research study on national norms from tests that reported Lexile measures from a sample of 3 million U.S. students, the following Lexile ranges were developed for each grade:
As you can see in the chart above, there is a specific Lexile range for texts that students should comprehend per grade level in order to ensure they are ready for college-level reading material. For example, in fourth grade, a student should be reading within an 850-1160 Lexile range to be on track for reading texts at a 1300L or above by the end of high school. With these parameters in mind, we assessed all of our Grade 2 through Grade 4 passages for vocabulary level and text complexity and have updated our reading comprehension exercises with these Lexile ranges:
As you can see in the passage above, this nonfiction passage falls between an 810-1000 Lexile range, making it appropriate for late 3rd-grade to early 5th-grade readers. We hope that including these Lexile ranges gives you confidence that our passages are not only engaging and informative but also appropriately rigorous for your children. As we continue to elevate and refine our Afficient English content for grades 5-8 through the coming months, you will see these Lexile ranges updated throughout our product. If you are interested in having your child exposed to developmentally complex reading material on a daily basis, please take our English Diagnostic Test today.