Readability vs. Leveling

I enjoyed reading the article Readability versus Leveling by Fry. I did not understand much about readability and leveling so it was nice to read about their histories, similarities, and differences. The article defined both terms and discussed the relationship between the two. It is important for educators, especially reading teachers, to know about readability and leveling in order to provide their students with books on their reading level. Most readability formulas are objective and can be done by a computer, but can also be done by hand. Leveling is less objective and cannot be done by a computer. Leveling contain seven different factors: content, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgement, and format. Readability is based on sentence length and vocabulary. Leveling is not typically used outside of the elementary classroom, whereas readability has a much wider range. There are pros and cons to both readability and leveling. I think that both should be taken into consideration while choosing reading materials for your students.

Below is an image of the Dale-Chall readability index computation sheet.