What Are Lexiles?

Lexiles help the student decide if a book is right for them by not being too easy or too hard. The Lexile measure is the difficulty level at which the student can easily understand about 75 percent of the text. It is recommended that the student read at a level that is between 100 points below and 50 points about his/her personal Lexile score.

The Lexile Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to measuring readers and books on the same scale. Go to the Lexile web site, www.lexile.com, to learn more about the Lexile Framework or to search for a book with a particular Lexile measure. The site will also link to the libraries that have that book so the student knows where to find it to read. The Berea City School District online catalog has the capabilities to search for a book by a particular Lexile measure too. Students need to type in their Lexile number and then search "All Fields" to find the titles in their school's collection that are at that number.

A Lexile measure (a number followed by an "L") reflects either the difficulty of a text or a reader's ability. A 200L book is for a beginning reader, and a 1700L book might be read by a college student. Lexile measures are based on semantic difficulty (word frequency) and syntactic complexity (sentence length). Lexile measures do not address reader interests, age appropriateness of the topic for the reader or the actual quality of the story so finding the appropriate book to match the student's capabilities and interests is very important. Lexile measures do not directly translate to grade levels but the chart below shows the “typical” Lexile range for the different grade levels.

To find more book titles by a Lexile number, check out NoveList. This database is available to all Ohio residents courtesy of OPLIN (Ohio Public Library Information Network) and can be accessed from the Cuyahoga County Public Library's website.

Our Curriculum Department has purchased the database, NoveList K-8 Plus, for student, parent and staff use this year. Check with your school librarian for the username and password to use.