Lexile and Reading Levels

Tip:
Have you tried to find a variety of books on the same topic that reach different reading levels? Do you know about Lexile scales? Did you know that all major standardized reading tests can report student’s scores as a Lexile score?

For complete information begin at the “Welcome” page at The Lexile Framework for Reading® site.

Briefly, Lexile measures comprehension (semantic difficulty) and sentence length (syntactic complexity) of books and newspapers, and is used by over 450 publishers. The Lexile scale measures from 80L (beginning readers) to 1700L (advanced).

How do Lexile scores relate to grade levels?

  • Go to the book database and type in Frog and Toad and you bring up a range of books in the same series from 320L to 400L.
  • Type in Of Mice and Men and you bring up Steinbeck’s book Lexile score is 630L and Johnson’s review of the book’s score is 1300L.
  • Advanced search lets you look for Lexile ranges, keywords, and more. This could be a great way to find resources to differentiate learning.
  • There is even a search for Spanish books.
  • Register for the Lexile Analyzer to put in your own text or text from word, .pdf or other textfiles.

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