The increased emphasis on ensuring that all students are able to read and understand complex texts has prompted MetaMetrics, the developer of the widely used Lexile Framework for text complexity, to extend the Lexile scale to enable more precise measurement of text complexity in grades K-2.
In the past, the Framework identified texts with Lexile levels below zero (i.e., 0L) simply as Beginning Reader and included a “BR” code without an associated Lexile level. With the extension of the scale, BR texts will now include a numeric Lexile value after the BR code. For example, BR100L represents a Lexile level of -100L and BR300L represents -300L. [Read more…]
The Lexile scale itself has not changed. It has only been extended to include measures of text complexity below zero, with larger BR values indicating lower reading levels. Educators may want to use the analogy of a thermometer to help them understand Lexile measures below zero. A text at the BR300L level is written at lower level than a text at BR100L, much as a temperature of -30 is colder than a temperature of -10.The use of the BR code ensures that no text is ever associated with a negative number.