Defining “Deep Reading” and “Text-Dependent Questions” In my English 10 class, I used to teach a lesson about satire through Dr. Seuss’ The Butter Battle Book. To begin this lesson, I would tell students, “While this is, on one hand, a children’s book, it is also a satirical look at the Cold War era and arms races.
Let’s talk about what you already know about the Cold War,” and doing due diligence to pre-reading activities, we’d begin listing everything we knew about the Cold War era. Then, we would read the book aloud together in its online format. Looking back on this lesson with my common core lenses, I took all the joy out of reading from my students. Where I went astray of common core expectations. What the common core asks us to do is to stop doing all of the work of reading for our students, to stop stealing the fun of reading and put it back in their hands. Deep reading, the kind of reading encouraged by common core standards, asks students to “read like a detective” (NYSED) where they are looking closely for details. References. Finding readability using Microsoft Word - Lexile Rankings and Other Readability Formulae: Finding Grade-Level/Reading-Level Appropriate Children's Books - LibGuides at Mohawk Valley Community College.
Having trouble finding grade-appropriate reading material for your student? Here’s a neat trick that can help. NOTE: The following only works on Microsoft Word 97 through 2003. For Word 2007, see farther down. 1. Cut and paste a text or type a text into a blank page. 2. At the top of the screen, click on Tools. 3. Show readability statistics. 4. Check, a box of readability statistics will pop up telling you, among other things, the text’s Flesch Reading Ease Score (the higher the number, the easier the text should be to read for the recommended grade level) and its Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Any grammatical errors, the last box to pop up will be the readiability statistics, which will include the text’s Flesch Reading Ease Score (the higher the number, the easier the text should be to read for the recommended grade level) and its Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. NOTE: Keep in mind that the more text you paste or type into Word, the more accurate the readability results.