So you have a class with a range of learners (who doesn't) and you are trying to differentiate your instruction by choosing a range of reading material for the project your students are working on. You know that you can use something like EBSCO to search for articles because it will give you the lexile reading level of the articles you find. But what about articles on the internet... is there a way to determine the reading level, easily? Why yes there is. I happened across a site called "
Read-able" (The Readability Test Tool) which allows you to plug in the URL of a page you are considering and it reports back the readability using a number of different metrics. Their motto: "Let's make the unreadable readable."
As they say on the site:
The Readability Test Tool takes the text on your web page and gives a score for the most used readability indicators.
- Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease
- Flesch Kincaid Grade Level
- Gunning Fog Score
- Coleman Liau Index
- Automated Readability Index (ARI)
You can even get a
bookmarklet to drag to your address bar so that you can easily (one click!) get a sense of the page. This is a great tool, well worth checking out.
