PM Books and Benchmark Resources are levelled using a simple numerical sequence with fine gradations. Levelling depends, after Level 2, on more than a dozen factors, all of which are controlled to match young learners’ growing skills.
These factors include
- children’s conceptual understanding
- traditional story structure or ‘story grammar’ (in the Story Books)
- meaning (paying attention to clarity, logic, cause and effect, factual accuracy)
- choice of appropriate sentence structures
- prose that flows easily, without awkwardness
- steady introduction and reinforcement of high frequency vocabulary
- a low ratio of unknown to known words
- the repetition of many grapho-phonic forms in meaningful context
- the clarity of the layout
- the clarity of the typography
- the amount of text on a page
- the length of the book
- the supportive illustrations
- correlation with Fry Readability scores after Level 20.
A valid Benchmark test must include the concepts, language structures, vocabulary and typography that children meet in their daily reading.
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