San Rafael City Schools uses the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), a reading comprehension assessment, as one measure of student progress toward reading mastery.  This assessment is given to students in grades two through ten, three times per year.

The score students receive on the SRI, corresponds with their lexile level. Readers have a lexile level and books have a lexile text measure.  "A Lexile text measure is based on two strong predictors of how difficult a text is to comprehend: word frequency and sentence length."  (Lexile website). You can learn more about lexile levels and how they can be used to match readers with books on the Lexile website.  Our school library catalogues, also have the lexile text level listed for books in the library record for the book.

Students who are performing at or above grade level on the SRI should be encouraged to read daily and allowed to choose books that interest them.  Students performing below grade level should be encouraged to read daily and choose free reading books that are interesting, but also within 50 points of their lexile/SRI score.  In this way, books will not be too easy, or too difficult.  Bear in mind the following quote from the Lexile website. 

"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." 

If you would like to learn more about matching readers with books, talk to the library aide at your school.  They'll be happy to help!