Text Complexity: Primary Teachers’ Views

Fitzgerald, Jill; Hiebert, Elfrieda H.; Bowen, Kimberly; Relyea, Jackie Eunjung; Kung, Melody; Elmore, Jeff

doi:10.1080/19388071.2014.954086

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…They found nine text characteristics as most important for the students in judging text complexity, including word structure, word meaning and sentence and discourse level characteristics. In another study, Fitzgerald, Hiebert, Bowen, Relyea-Kim, Kung and Elmore (2015) examined early grades teachers' assessment of text complexity. Teachers emphasized characteristics such as word decodability, word frequency, pictures and word meanings, among others.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Readability and word complexity of SERPs snippets and web pages on children’s search queries

Bilal

Li-min

2019

AJIM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the readability and level of word complexity of search engine results pages (SERPs) snippets and associated web pages between Google and Bing. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed the Readability Test Tool to analyze the readability and word complexity of 3,000 SERPs snippets and 3,000 associated pages in Google and Bing retrieved on 150 search queries issued by middle school children. Findings A significant difference was found in the readability of SERPs snippets and associated web pages between Google and Bing. A significant difference was also observed in the number of complex words in snippets between the two engines but not in associated web pages. At the engine level, the readability of Google and Bing snippets was significantly higher than associated web pages. The readability of Google SERPs snippets was at a much higher level than those of Bing. The readability of snippets in both engines mismatched with the reading comprehension of children in grades 6–8. Research limitations/implications The data corpus may be small. Analysis relied on quantitative measures. Practical implications Practitioners and other mediators should mitigate the readability issue in SERPs snippets. Researchers should consider text readability and word complexity simultaneously with other factors to obtain the nuanced understanding of young users’ web information behaviors. Additional theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. Originality/value This study measured the readability and the level of word complexity embedded in SERPs snippets and compared them to respective web pages in Google and Bing. Findings provide further evidence of the readability issue of SERPs snippets and the need to solve this issue through system design improvements.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Readability and word complexity of SERPs snippets and web pages on children’s search queries

Bilal

Li-min

2019

AJIM

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“…As the orchestrators of activities, teachers in the NOW Play project might reflect on how, in dramatic play or other play activities or when using books or other common classroom events, they are optimally designing learning opportunities and incorporating specific activities and structures to help move each child to the next level of understanding. Research shows that teachers of young children, when selecting texts to read, acknowledge criteria like word difficulty and frequency; they also include criteria, such as concept difficulty and considerations such as the prior knowledge and interests of the children (Fitzgerald, Hiebert, Bowen, Relyea-Kim, Kung, & Elmore, 2015). Teachers chose texts that fit these criteria when identifying stimuli for children's writing.…”

Section: Discussion: Using Reflection On the Data For Optimizing Learmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Writers in Northern Communities: Ways Teachers Might View and Reflect on Writers’ Representations

Parr

2017

L & L

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"What did I write?" is the title of a seminal book (Clay, 1975), illustrating how we can learn what children know about print, in part, from their representations. Children's writing is socially and culturally situated; play is one context shown to help develop the use of symbol systems. A framing with several lenses is designed and applied to illustrate to teachers ways to consider the samples of early writing accompanying the play of young children in remote Northern communities in Canada. There is consideration of how information could be used to inform and optimize educative actions in such learning contexts.

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“…The helpful concept of individualized text complexity (Fitzgerald et al., ) invites teachers to consider students’ background knowledge and interests in connection with the concepts in texts. It also meshes well with the tridimensional framework for evaluating text complexity in the Common Core State Standards, in which reader and task factors are one of the three areas of analysis (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, ).…”

Section: Classroom Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Hard Should the Books Be in Small‐Group Reading? It Depends

Kelly¹

2019

The Reading Teacher

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Teachers balance many goals when selecting texts for small‐group reading. The author explored the impact of one variable that teachers consider, quantitative text difficulty, on students’ participation, discussion, comprehension, and fluency in small‐group discussions of informational science texts. Six bilingual third graders identified as reading below grade level participated. Students’ comprehension scores were the same for matched and difficult texts. Matched texts benefited three students in terms of fluency and two students in terms of participation. Difficult texts benefited three students in developing conversations around print and ideas (rather than focusing on pictures) and in having more inferential (rather than merely literal) talk. Different levels of text had drawbacks and advantages, and the findings encourage teachers to use both matched and difficult texts at different times and for different instructional purposes.

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Text Complexity: Primary Teachers’ Views

Cited by 8 publications

References 22 publications

Readability and word complexity of SERPs snippets and web pages on children’s search queries

Readability and word complexity of SERPs snippets and web pages on children’s search queries

Early Writers in Northern Communities: Ways Teachers Might View and Reflect on Writers’ Representations

How Hard Should the Books Be in Small‐Group Reading? It Depends

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