International Literacy Day

On September 13th, the world celebrates International Literacy Day. In celebration of this day coming up, we are going to talk about Lexile levels.

Lexile levels are a scientific method on figuring the reading ability and text demand  by using the semantic and syntactic features of the materials. This is applied to over 100 million books, articles, and websites which help people strive for the ideal reading experience. The lower the score, the easier the readability is. These scores are based on quantitative methods, and therefore do not reflect factors such as multiple levels of meaning or maturity of themes.

The Lexile scale itself runs from below zero Lexile to above two thousand lexile. Books that are marked below zero Lexile also have a BR in their numbering which stands for Beginning Reader. If you see a book with the Lexile reading of BR110L that means that the Lexile measure is one hundred and ten units below zero Lexile.

There are other codes for the Lexile scale. AD means that the material is adult directed. This doesn\’t mean that it is adult material, but actually that the material is usually read to a child. NC means that the material is non-conforming. This means that the materials have a higher Lexile measure than what the publisher intended for their audience. HL means that the material is high-low. This means that the materials have a Lexile measure that is much lower than the average reading ability of the intended age range of its readers.

IG means that the material is an illustrated guide. This means that the materials consist of independent pieces of sections of text that could be put in a new location, and that would not affect the overall flow of the material. GN means that the material is in the form of a graphic novel or comic book. This means that materials content has the majority of the text appear as voice in thought bubbles. Lastly, NP means that the material is non-prose. That means that the material comprises of more than fifty percent of text that cannot be assigned a Lexile measure.

Here is a chart to show the different types of books and their levels! Happy reading!