How might you go about determining the difficulty level of materials?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Materials are often assessed using the following techniques:
1 To find a level that is not too easy or too difficult, select reading matter so that students will know at least 95 percent of the words and have about 75 percent comprehension.
2 Consider the grade level or readability level as suggested by the publisher of the reading material.
3 Search the Renaissance Learning website to find a book?s ATOS score, expressed in a grade equivalent that measures words per sentence and characters per word.
4 Use the Lexile Analyzer software or search the Lexile website to find a book's lexile score, incorporating sentence length and word frequency.
5 Refer to the Degrees of Reading Power test and related websites summarizing its results to measure average number of letters per word and sentence length.
6 Calculate by using provided formulas, including the Fry Readability Graph or the Primary Readability Formula.
7 Use a leveling system (particularly for primary-grade reading materials) such as the Fountas and Pinnell list of leveled books.
8 Level books on your own using a reference such as The Qualitative Assessment of Text Difficulty, which provides benchmark passages and directions, or the detailed Basic Leveling Index system, which offers seven levels from beginning-reader through first-grade levels.
9 Consider reader and task factors.
10 Use professional judgment.