Deciphering Reading Counts! Lexiles

WHAT IS READING COUNTS!?

Each elementary school in Orange Unified utilizes Scholastic's Reading Counts program to create a personalized and engaging learning environment that supports independent reading accountability. Students choose from thousands of popular and engaging titles, read the books, and take the corresponding quizzes. This program:

PERSONALIZES suggested reading choices to match student interests and reading levels
EMPOWERS educators with reports and actionable data at the student, school, and district level
REINFORCES comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency skills
MOTIVATES students to meet and increase their achievement through positive reinforcement when they reach/exceed measurable goals, such as points earned or words read

WHAT IS A LEXILE?

A Lexile measure is a unit for measuring text difficulty based on the syntax and semantic difficulty. Semantic difficulty refers to the level of vocabulary used, and syntax refers to the level of difficulty in terms of sentence length. The Lexile scale is a developmental scale for reading that ranges from below 200L for beginning-reader level to 1700L for advanced level. All students take the Reading Inventory at least 3 times per year to monitor progress of their Reading Lexile score:

Grade Level	Year-End Proficiency Ranges
1	190-530L
2	420-650L
3	520-820L
4	740-940L
5	830-1010L
6	925-1070L

CHECKING PROGRESS

Students may check their progress both before and after taking a quiz. When students click Check Your Progress on the Home Screen, the Student Reading Report opens in a browser window. This is the same report teachers may send home, which shows the following information on student quiz history:

Current Annual Goal: Students’ personal goal for the year, expressed in either points earned or books read. Teachers may set goals for each individual student in the Program Settings in SAM
Progress Toward Goal: The number of points students have earned or books they have read for the year
Total Points Earned (YTD): The number of points students have earned for the year
Avg. Attempts per Book: The average number of times students have taken a quiz for each book
Date: The date students took the quiz
Book: The title of the book students have read and took the quiz on
Author: The author of the book
Lexile: The book’s Lexile measure
Reading Level: The book’s reading level, an alternate method to Lexile measures to gauge a book’s readability, expressed as a grade equivalent
GRL: The book’s Guided Reading Level. Each letter corresponds to a grade, as described in the chart below (some letters apply to two grades):

Grade	Letters
K	A–C
1	B–I
2	H–M
3	L–P
4	O–T
5	S–W
6	V–Z

Score: The percentage of questions on the quiz that the student answered correctly
Points: The point value for the book, which students earn when they pass the book’s quiz. Teachers may change the passing grade for a student through SAM. They may also set a points multiplier for a student (if they wanted to double the points earned for a struggling reader, for instance, in order to boost that student’s confidence)
Words Read: The number of words in the book

For additional information about Reading Counts!, please visit https://www.hmhco.com/products/assessment-solutions/literacy/reading-counts.htm

To learn more about your child's lexile scores, please contact your child's teacher or visit https://lexile.com/parents-students/