Hey everyone!
So I thought that it would be nice if I just added a couple more things to my belief of a flawed lexile measure. First off, after doing a little bit of research, I now believe that I MUST turn all of these facts into my english teacher. I just hope I can channel my inner lawyer. Well, here's the facts. Those of you who have heard of the author John Steinback or any of his books such as "The Grapes of Wrath" or "East of Eden" should be thoroughly disappointed because Lexile.com believes that those books (which by popular belief are pretty much college books) have a lexile of 700. Yup, lexile believes that they are 7th grade books. Also another story which I could not stop laughing at was when I was doing research off of google about lexile and I found this article on Wikipedia.com. It stated that a 32 paged children's picture book has a lexile of 830. I went straight back to lexile and.....it was completely true! The only difference was at the beginning it showed an NC and then 830. What the NC stands for is non-conforming meaning they make the score higher than usual to that high ability readers are able to read it. So apparently a children's book has a higher reading level than a college book. Also have you guys ever heard of Black Beauty, no not the movie but the actual book. Well, even if you haven't it's apparently a 10th grade book. It's this small 210 paged book with really big lettering and a picture taking up every other page. Take out all the pictures and you probably have only 100 pages or less. The book that I wish to read for my English project is "Jurassic Park" and, before you say anything, yes it was a book before it was a movie. I just thought that it would be interesting to see how the author's life ties to dinosaurs haha. Except I can't use the book because of this Lexile problem. Lexile believes that this very very small lettering 399 page book with tons of vocab in every single page is a 7th grade book. So if I don't turn all this information into my English teacher, I'll be stuck writing about a horse. Wouldn't that just be a wonderful essay to read about? Answer: Absolutely not! I'm prepared to fight for lexile to disappear off the face of the Lake Central databases. It needs to because there's no way anyone in the 7th grade can read a college book that takes years to comprehend.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Lexile Measures flawed?
Hey everyone!
So there has been a lot of things on my mind lately. First of all, you all remember that I was put onto the Open guard yes? Well we had our very first competition yesterday! I think it went really well for our first show and home show. Problem was that because it was our home show we couldn't actually compete with the other Open guards but we still got judged. I have no idea what the judges thought of us but we certainly made a lot of people cry which was our whole plan anyways so it was a good thing! I also currently have a project that I am doing in my Honors English class. It's where we research an author and then read one of their books and then see how the author's lives tie to the book. The twist is that we have to have a lexile range of 960 or higher. Which brings me to my main subject: Lexile measures. I strongly believe that lexile measures are incredibly flawed in almost every single way. Because of these measures we had to go from book to book trying to find one high enough. The problem is the way that these people determine the lexile measure of a book. Here's a little bit from the lexile website Lexile.com:
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell
So there has been a lot of things on my mind lately. First of all, you all remember that I was put onto the Open guard yes? Well we had our very first competition yesterday! I think it went really well for our first show and home show. Problem was that because it was our home show we couldn't actually compete with the other Open guards but we still got judged. I have no idea what the judges thought of us but we certainly made a lot of people cry which was our whole plan anyways so it was a good thing! I also currently have a project that I am doing in my Honors English class. It's where we research an author and then read one of their books and then see how the author's lives tie to the book. The twist is that we have to have a lexile range of 960 or higher. Which brings me to my main subject: Lexile measures. I strongly believe that lexile measures are incredibly flawed in almost every single way. Because of these measures we had to go from book to book trying to find one high enough. The problem is the way that these people determine the lexile measure of a book. Here's a little bit from the lexile website Lexile.com:
"A book, article or piece of text gets a Lexile text measure when it's analyzed by MetaMetrics. For example, the first "Harry Potter" book measures 880L, so it's called an 880 Lexile book. A Lexile text measure is based on two strong predictors of how difficult a text is to comprehend: word frequency and sentence length. Many other factors affect the relationship between a reader and a book, including its content, the age and interests of the reader, and the design of the actual book. The Lexile text measure is a good starting point in the book-selection process, with these other factors then being considered."This quote makes me very concerned about lexile measures. Its the fact that the age and interests of a reader determines the measure that scares me the most. If it were really determined by that then why on earth is a a 32 page children's picture book have a lexile of 830 but Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton has a lexile of 710? It's very flawed. Lexile measure irks me.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Seriously about half of this is about grape juice
Hey everyone!
So it's been way to long since I last wrote in this. Thus, I need to update immediately! I had a really great Christmas this year and so far a great 2012! How about you guys? I got a lot of stuff for Christmas but I don't wish to brag. However, I had one new years resolution this year and I have so far kept it all this year. My resolution was to give up soda. It's been fairly easy so far. Rumors say that it takes 21 days to break a habit and its been 8. So I've got a little ways to go. I've been drinking this amazing grape juice called Welch's light. At first I was a little skeptic because I've had normal Welch stuff before and it wasn't the best in the world. So I decided to try a glass. It took a couple sips to get use to but after a while I was hooked. I've already gotten 3 bottles of the stuff! And I keep wanting more! I've had almost 2 glasses a day of this stuff. Which really isn't good because I bought all these other drinks to substitute soda and I have yet to try them haha. Well, I made some pink lemonade tonight though. So I guess that's one out of three that I haven't tried yet. We also got these smoothie things that aren't real smoothies because there's no ice in them. They're more of a juice than anything else. The only problem I'm having with all these things so far is the obvious, I can't seem to get enough water a day. I mean, aren't you supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day? If so I haven't done that in my entire life! Which is a very sad 14 years. Anyways I can't seem to find a way to make the water in my town taste good. At my old house the water in that town tasted great! Now I'm still trying to get used to the new flavor. Which yes, different towns have different flavored water. Some are tap some are well. I'm pretty sure my home town had well water. You'd think that after 3 years that you'd get used to a different taste right? That's exactly it! I haven't had enough water lately that I haven't been able to get use to it!...........................Alright I know that this is COMPLETE nonsense and 7 out of 10 readers will not care what I'm rambling on about but hey. I have to get it out of my system somehow? Anyways tomorrow is the start of finals week. Which is completely stressing me out in almost every single subject. What makes finals week silly is the fact that I have a final test in Colorguard, Yes, Colorguard! It is technically a class you know. Except we go outside or we sit around and do nothing sometimes. Anyways our coach had us write down what was going to be on the guard final. It's absolutely ridiculous. One of the questions is "what is the name of the fall show?" Yeah! As if hearing it a million times by announcers and seeing it everywhere didn't get it stuck in our heads! Oh and the "extra credit" is how to spell his last name. Which is okay credit considering we don't go by his full last name. We call him Mr. B but it's really Buzalski. Alright I HAVE to stop rambling now. I have an Algebra final tomorrow and I might need to look over a few things.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell
So it's been way to long since I last wrote in this. Thus, I need to update immediately! I had a really great Christmas this year and so far a great 2012! How about you guys? I got a lot of stuff for Christmas but I don't wish to brag. However, I had one new years resolution this year and I have so far kept it all this year. My resolution was to give up soda. It's been fairly easy so far. Rumors say that it takes 21 days to break a habit and its been 8. So I've got a little ways to go. I've been drinking this amazing grape juice called Welch's light. At first I was a little skeptic because I've had normal Welch stuff before and it wasn't the best in the world. So I decided to try a glass. It took a couple sips to get use to but after a while I was hooked. I've already gotten 3 bottles of the stuff! And I keep wanting more! I've had almost 2 glasses a day of this stuff. Which really isn't good because I bought all these other drinks to substitute soda and I have yet to try them haha. Well, I made some pink lemonade tonight though. So I guess that's one out of three that I haven't tried yet. We also got these smoothie things that aren't real smoothies because there's no ice in them. They're more of a juice than anything else. The only problem I'm having with all these things so far is the obvious, I can't seem to get enough water a day. I mean, aren't you supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day? If so I haven't done that in my entire life! Which is a very sad 14 years. Anyways I can't seem to find a way to make the water in my town taste good. At my old house the water in that town tasted great! Now I'm still trying to get used to the new flavor. Which yes, different towns have different flavored water. Some are tap some are well. I'm pretty sure my home town had well water. You'd think that after 3 years that you'd get used to a different taste right? That's exactly it! I haven't had enough water lately that I haven't been able to get use to it!...........................Alright I know that this is COMPLETE nonsense and 7 out of 10 readers will not care what I'm rambling on about but hey. I have to get it out of my system somehow? Anyways tomorrow is the start of finals week. Which is completely stressing me out in almost every single subject. What makes finals week silly is the fact that I have a final test in Colorguard, Yes, Colorguard! It is technically a class you know. Except we go outside or we sit around and do nothing sometimes. Anyways our coach had us write down what was going to be on the guard final. It's absolutely ridiculous. One of the questions is "what is the name of the fall show?" Yeah! As if hearing it a million times by announcers and seeing it everywhere didn't get it stuck in our heads! Oh and the "extra credit" is how to spell his last name. Which is okay credit considering we don't go by his full last name. We call him Mr. B but it's really Buzalski. Alright I HAVE to stop rambling now. I have an Algebra final tomorrow and I might need to look over a few things.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell
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