REVIEW: Checking Readability

Below is an article from Using Technology to Support Diverse Learners Edited by Senior Research Associate, Julie Duffield.  How many applications can I think of for this software?  My moderate to severe Special Day Class students and I write stories a lot.  These become their leveled readers.  They take great pride in the stories and the illustrations.  Many of them have stories that build from book to book.  Wouldn't it be something to be able to quantify their work?  An actual grade level determined by their own words and thoughts.

Here's the article.

Checking Readability

What it is:
After Word does a spell check on a document, it can also tell you the reading grade level.

Can you think of students that would enjoy checking the grade level at which they are writing? A number of students willingly seek the impartial judgment of the computer and are challenged to improve their writing.

This feature can also be useful if you are selecting electronic text from Internet sources and want to ensure that it's the appropriate reading level for your students. For example, the readability level of Alice in Wonderland is about mid-second grade. A teacher wanted to provide a summary of the story first, and went online to find a short summary at SparkNotes.com. It looked too advanced, so he pasted it into Word which indicated that the summary was at a 12th grade readability level.

How does it work:
To determine readability, go to the Spelling and Grammar in the Tools menu, and check "Show Readability Statistics" in the Grammar section. Every time you run the spell check, the last line in the dialog box will give a readability ease and grade level.

Word computes two scores. The Flesch Reading Ease formula uses the average sentence length and average number of syllables for a score that usually ranges from 6-70. The higher the number, the easier the reading. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level converts the Reading Ease score to a United States grade school level. A passage with at least 200 words gives a valid score. Here are two brief examples.
When rain falls it causes seeds to sprout which results in plant growth.
Grade Level: 3, Reading ease: 96

Precipitation in the winter causes seed germination, which results in plant growth.
Grade Level: 10.7, Reading ease: 59