Welcome to TeachingBooks!

Use the TeachingBooks Text Complexity Toolkit to help put the right book in each reader's hands and incorporate text complexity analyses into your instructional plans.

The tool also compiles reading measurements for lists of titles to help educators meet the needs of different readers.

The Text Complexity Toolkit has three main features

1. Data for titles
2. Rubrics to facilitate thinking and discussions about texts
3. The ability to analyze collections of title

Locate data for a title to help match titles to readers. Search for a title. Select View Text Complexity.

Here you will find available Quantitative Measures such as Lexile level, as well as a chart of other reading measures.

Further down you will see the Qualitative Measures, when available, compiled from professionals to create a reliable, crowdsourced data point. Consider adding your own assessment as you reflect on a title.

Next, you’ll see Reader and Task Considerations and Educator Grade Recommendations.

Completing a text complexity rubric provides a purposeful way to think deeply about the literary structure of the texts you’re teaching, allowing you to prepare your approach to a specific text with different student learning styles in mind.

To complete a rubric, select Add your own assessment to this crowdsourced measurement. TeachingBooks has two types of rubrics: literary and informational.

For this title, we will be using the Literary Rubric. Follow prompts and reflect on Meaning, Text Structure, Language Features, and Knowledge Demands.

Once you have completed these sections, select Submit Review. Here review and adjust if you wish. Select the grade levels that you can envision using this text.

Next, make notes on Cultural Representation and Diversity using prompts adapted from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice Curriculum.These notes are only for your own use and will not be part of the crowdsourced data. They can be referenced to guide text selection and conversation.

To save your rubric, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this page and select Finish.

To find your completed rubrics. Make sure you are logged in as an educator by checking to see your name at the top of the screen.

Then using the toggle menu, indicated by the three lines next to the TeachingBooks logo, find all of your completed rubrics. Reference when teaching a text, sharing it with a book group, or recommending a title.

Analyze a list to discover immediate insights into text complexity and reading levels. List analysis reports also offer data about genre, cultural and curricular classifications, and recency of publication date.

Simply locate the list, and select View list. At the top of the page, you will see the triangle icon and List Analysis Report. This report offers cumulative data for the titles on the list. To locate the Text Complexity data, select Quantitative Measures or Qualitative Measures from the top of the report.

The report shows the range of reading measures for the titles that have data available. Scroll to see the genres, curricular areas, available instructional materials, and more.

To learn more about the TeachingBooks Text Complexity Toolkit look under For Educators, Literacy & Standards Connections and Text Complexity Toolkit. Thank you for watching.