Literature
Take this quiz to find out which classic female literary character you are!(This is me, Elizabeth Bennett.)
Speaking of female literary characters, I have to mention my daughter here. She is thirteen. She is smart. Oh, she is so smart! She just completed a SRI (Scholastic Reading Inventory) at her school. This system scores a person's reading level and then generates a list of novels for summer reading based on the child's level. My dear darling daughter, scored a 1327 on the Lexine Scale so her list came back all classics. What the hell does this Lexine BS mean, you may ask? As did I. So I investigated the link to Lexine and they explain their criteria (OK, it wasn't me it was my Dad because he is supremo-nosey where his darling grandbabies are concerned, but I checked it out, too). According to this site, many of the books in her level are college graduate student texts! Now, I realize that she is not going to pick up a college grad school text and go to town with it, but it does say something, doesn't it. She is a girl who can be challenged, analyze complicated texts, think! My baby is going places, and I am so proud (Hi, Little Girl, I mean you)! She is a girl no more, to be at that level. She needs to be challenged. Time to put my feminism shovel on full throttle and fill her head with the good stuff!
Seriously, though, she is a teen. One thing about teens, as a Mom, you know nothing. I am technically talking to the furniture when she is in the room. Oh, well. Someday she will be thirty, and then won't I be smart.
Seriously, though, she is a teen. One thing about teens, as a Mom, you know nothing. I am technically talking to the furniture when she is in the room. Oh, well. Someday she will be thirty, and then won't I be smart.
posted by macboudica at 8:56 PM
1 Comments:
I looked at your links to try to decode what the Lexine scale is actually measuring and have the following observations:
1) It is based primarily on the complexity of the syntax (language rules) and semantics( vocabulary) of several thousand books. Each book id scored after processing to eliminate non-core material such as chapter titles.
2) The score of each child being rated is derived from a combination of factors including comprehension and speed of a variety of printed samples during a timed set of tests.
The conclusion I draw about what the test actually says about your daughter can be illustrated by a computer metaphor. She is like a fairly sophisticated desktop (I could also say laptop, but due to her young age I won;t go there) with a healthy three gig cpu and a lot of RAM and a large but nearly empty hard drive. She has a few simple programs (methods, processes, edit routines) and not nearly as much data (vocabulary) as she would need to comprehend the advanced college level materials, although she is currently wired to do so. For the nonce, she needs more sophisicated programming and data to improve to the point where she can function at the limits of her capability. Ideally, she should someday be capable of directly determining the processes(programs) that run on her CPU herself. Until then, you and significant others in her life such as her teachers are needed. Good luck! I raised a bright kid or two already and all I have some real horror stories to show for it.
Post a Comment
<< Home