Qualitative factors of texts include the following (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2012; NGA & CCSSO, 2010b).
• Levels of meaning and purpose: Such as the density and complexity of the information, use of figurative language, and stated and implied purposes
• Structure: Such as the text’s genre, organization, narration, and use of text features and graphics
• Language conventionality and clarity: Such as its use of English language variations and registers
• Knowledge demands: Such as the assumed background knowledge, prior knowledge, cultural knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge
Qualitative factors can make a text more or less complex, and cannot be measured quantitatively. For example, Spoon River Anthology (Masters, 2007), a book often used in high school curricula, does not have a Lexile score because of its extensive use of poetic verse, rendering it unsuitable for quantitative measures. But the personal epitaphs of its 212 characters, all buried in a small-town cemetery, make it a complex read for adolescents. Assessing text complexity using these factors is an excellent task for members of a collaborative planning team who are experienced with using a text and are familiar with its structure.
Using the rubric in table 2.2, members of an eleventh- and twelfth-grade English team meet to discuss informational texts for use in their classrooms. They turn their attention to The Story of Art (Gombrich, 2006), an informational text on art history and criticism. The team identifies several aspects of the book that would affect its complexity. The book’s subject matter draws extensively on the background knowledge of readers in regard to historical themes. Team members note that although the book has a conversational tone and is intended for adolescent readers, its subject matter would be unfamiliar to some students.
Table 2.2: Qualitative Factors of Text Complexity
Source: Adapted from Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2012.
Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore for a reproducible version of this table.
In addition, references to the many figures in the thousand-page book disrupted the reading. For example:
But in appreciating these works, we must not forget how quickly the fashions they reflected became obsolete while the paintings have retained their appeal: the Arnolfini couple in their finery, as painted by Jan van Eyck, figure 158, would have cut funny figures at the Spanish court as painted by Diego Velázquez, figure 266, and his tightly laced Infanta, in her turn, might have been mercilessly mocked by the children portrayed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, figure 305. (Gombrich, 2006, p. 465)
The team notes that it would be helpful for students to preview the plates in advance of the reading and then refer to them again as they encountered these references in the text. By recognizing what made the text more complex, the teachers were able to design their instruction around reading this informational text, which allowed them to identify the extensive background knowledge of history while addressing the text’s unique organizational structure.
The third dimension for determining text complexity concerns the match between the reader and the task (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b). Factors that are internal to the reader include his or her cognitive capabilities, motivation, knowledge, and experiences. The task demand also influences the relative difficulty of the text. Teacher-led tasks such as an interactive read-aloud provide a high degree of scaffolding and make an otherwise difficult text much more comprehensible. Peer-led tasks, such as a small-group literature circle discussion, provide a moderate level of scaffolding as students collaborate to understand the task. Individual tasks, such as independent reading, provide the least amount of scaffolding and place most of the responsibility on the reader. In order for students to progress toward increasingly more complex texts, they need a mixture of all of these tasks (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2012). An overreliance on one level of task difficulty occurs at the expense of others and can stymie a student’s progress. This is an ongoing discussion that collaborative planning teams should have as they design instruction with specific students in mind.
The anchor standards, and the grade-level standards that follow them, are far too complex to teach in a single lesson, or to teach in isolation. Keeping this concept in mind is important as collaborative team members examine these standards for in-depth reading. It is the interaction of these standards within and across domains that makes them powerful. To divide and then reassemble them as isolated lessons will undermine the enduring understandings the standards articulate. The overarching goal should be to teach the habits of effective communicators and to avoid isolated strategy instruction (Frey, Fisher, & Berkin, 2008).
In the following sections, we will examine the Reading strand’s parts—Literature and Informational Text—across grades 9–12. The grade band is an essential vantage point for viewing and discussing the CCSS, precisely because it prevents the silo effect that can occur when grade levels operate independently from one another. While grade-level planning must occur in the collaborative teams, the work of the school’s professional learning community should first and foremost foster communication and collaboration across grades in order to maximize the potential that the anchor standards afford. This horizontal collaboration ensures that all grade-level teams understand their role in relationship to teaching toward the anchor standards.
Reading Standards for Literature in Grades 9–12
This part is linked directly to narrative text types—poems, drama, and stories, including mythology, fantasy, and realistic fiction. Although nonfiction biographies and autobiographies often use a narrative structure, they are situated as a type of informational text. Students in high school English are traditionally exposed to a high volume of literature, although genres like poetry and drama are often reserved for specific genre studies units and are used more rarely across the school year. Table 2.3 contains sample titles from the text exemplars in appendix B of the Common Core State Standards (NGA & CCSSO, 2010c).
Table 2.3: Text Exemplars for Literature Texts in Grades 9–12
| Genre | Grades 9–10 | Grades 11–12 |
| Stories | Bradbury (2012): Fahrenheit 451 | Morrison (1994): The Bluest Eye |
| Drama | Fugard (1982): “Master Harold” … and the Boys | Soyinka (2003): Death and the King’s Horseman |
| Poetry | Poe (1984): “The Raven” | Neruda (2005): “Ode to My Suit” |
Source: Adapted from NGA & CCSSO, 2010c.
The standards for literature for each grade level are drawn directly from the anchor standards and are organized in the same manner: Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, and Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity.