Text Complexity by Declan

Here, Declan explores text complexity. What is so highly significant about his insights here is that they help students to make meaning when they interact with texts. If we want to have a significant impact on students, we need to set the stage for them to find meaning.  Thank you for your thoughtful post, Declan!  

-- Teachers of Significance

Task Complexity Deserves Attention

By Declan Fitzpatrick

I’m a curriculum coordinator which means most people don’t know what I do with my time. Luckily I get to spend a lot of time working with teachers developing units, lessons, and assessments. We decide what units go into a course, what books go with which units, and how students will demonstrate their increasing mastery of important literacy skills. It is my job to make the case to the school board that we know what we’re teaching, and we really are teaching the right things.

In my professional circles, working with other curriculum coordinators, the Common Core State Standards have created wave after wave of anxiety. The current wave that seems to be washing over every one is anxiety about text complexity. The CCSS documents spend pages talking about what makes a text complex with qualitative and quantitative measures to ensure that every student is properly challenged and assessed with newly defined grade level texts. Suddenly, curriculum coordinators are scrambling to move books around and make sure that the books in the curriculum have the appropriate text complexity for the grade level.

The idea that each grade level of students must have an appropriate list of core texts that are all deemed to be on-grade level is absurd to me. We should put books in the units in the curriculum where they fit with the concept being studied. Sometimes we struggle with really hard texts, read them slowly, with a lot of teacher support, and take the time we need to understand them. Sometimes we read really easy and engaging texts because they are fast and fun. Sometimes we do both at the same time.

Should the 9th grade unit on mythology include the opportunity to read the Lightning Thief? Oh, but it’s really a 4th grade text. Should the 10th grade unit on the outcast include Kafka’s Metamorphosis? Yes and yes, if students can do useful things with a text, they should read it.

The CCSS documents clarify that the quantitative and qualitative measures only make up one third of the elements of text complexity. The other two things that determine a text’s complexity are variations in the reader and variations in the task the text is being used for. If readers don’t know the meanings of the key vocabulary in a text, if they have never been exposed to the context of a text, if they aren’t the original intended audience of a text, the text will be complex for them. Variations in the task for which readers are using a text also contribute to its complexity. We cannot control the variable of the students. It’s time we spent some time looking at the complexity of the tasks we ask students to engage in.

At University City High School for several years now teachers have been using student response writing and analytical reading levels to focus on teaching complex thinking. Students write to capture their thinking in preparation for discussion and for further writing. Every time they read, students know that they are going to have to write. They follow some standard requirement and produce 100-250 words of reader response. Teachers have been using Analytical Reading Levels (ARLs) to prompt and support students as they write at increasing levels of complexity. ARLs are a set of descriptions that clarify 7 levels of increasing complex tasks that students can attempt in their response writing. The levels provide teachers with a common way of describing and modeling increasingly complex thinking that students can do with a text. The lowest level begins with providing who, what, where information that is essential to the story. The highest level requires students to explain how the author structured the story so that it would suggest a theme.

Analytical Reading Levels	Focus on a moment that…
7. Structural Generalization Explanation of a pattern of choices the author made to selectively emphasize certain information in order to suggest a theme.	Uses a technical element to suggest a generalization about human experience “The author uses…to suggest…” “The author repeats…because it emphasizes…”
6. Author’s Generalization Theme, application of principle, statement of universal truth, premise of the text.	Projects a generalization about the real world “The story suggests that when people…”
5. Complex Implied Relationships Generalizations, patterns, ideas that are suggested throughout	Connects to a trend “Throughout the story…”
4. Simple Implied Relationships Ideas that are clearly implied but never stated	Suggests something (not stated directly) “When the narrator says…it suggests…” “The real reason that…”
3. Stated Relationships Links made in the text, two ideas with relationship explained	Explains something to you “The narrator or a character explains…” …cause, effect, similarity, difference “The narrator claims that…happened because of…”
2. Key Details Divisions, turning points, essential definitions, so important likely stated only once	Changes (or reveals) things Plot Character/ Your opinion of a character “Things really changed when…” “One important detail is…”
1. Basic Stated Information Fundamental who, what, where; constantly referred to	Sets up the story characters, actions, problems, and settings who is doing what where

The levels are based on a hierarchy of question types developed and established by George Hillocks Jr. for use in creating Reading Inventories. Instead of using the levels to create questions for the students to answer about a specific text, we use the levels to prompt students to write in increasingly complex ways as they capture their thinking.

       

Because we have worked together as a department to develop a collective understanding of these levels, we can use them to examine student work. Looking through a stack of student work together, we have common language to characterize the student thinking present in their writing. We can give students feedback that begins with describing how they have succeeded:

         “You do an excellent job of noticing and explaining the reasons that Richard provides for his behavior.”

and continue with a focus for how they might grow:

        “Now try to judge or evaluate Richard explanations. Do you trust all his explanations? Do you agree?”

We can evaluate our own teaching by evaluating the level of work it generated from the students. We can try new things and have a reasonable measure of whether the impact on student work was positive or negative.

When students come to know and understand the levels of response, they can adjust the task in order to reduce the complexity.

With all these variables, we don’t need to stress about precisely leveling books and proscribing them to specific grade levels. We should match the texts to the reader and to the unit of study. We should make the reading as engaging as possible, push the complexity of their thinking, and worry more about how much and how often students are reading.