Teachers are encouraged to use technology to determine, search for, and create varying reading levels of informational texts. Check out this video that discusses ELA's Shift 3 the “staircase of complexity” and the need to provide students with increasingly more difficult texts:
With several ways to determine a text’s reading level, one tool that district teachers have access to is MSWord. The teacher must first enable Readability Statistics, and then after a spell check on the document, a reading level is given. The box looks like this:
To set this up, check out this link: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/test-your-document-s-readability-HP010148506.aspx
And for another step-by-step (with images) explanation, check out this webpage: http://grok.lsu.edu/Article.aspx?articleid=14250
And for another step-by-step (with images) explanation, check out this webpage: http://grok.lsu.edu/Article.aspx?articleid=14250
Teachers can also search many databases and online encyclopedias by reading level. Even Googling can be narrowed by reading level: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1095407?hl=en
Finally, more and more online tools are available that help create varying leveled texts. One excellent site is at http://www.newsela.com/. This site offers the same current news article at different reading levels with the click of a button. Another site to consider is http://rewordify.com/index.php. This tool allows you to enter your own text (or cut and paste) to "simplify" by focusing on the more difficult vocabulary. Check them out!
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