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of these reading approaches put students on the spot for reading out loud to their
peers while reading a passage that is unfamiliar and written at a difficult level. Most
students hate this and feel belittled. Instead, when students read out loud—and they
should—choral reading or echo reading should be used. Choral reading is used when
the text is familiar, but echo reading is used when the text is unfamiliar or presenting
a new concept with lots of jargon words and concepts being presented. For both
these approaches, the teacher is the lead reader, so students hear the words being said
by the teacher and/or the students around them. In this way, everyone gets the same
amount of time reading out loud but in a non-threatening manner.
• Teachers need to be familiar with the state’s learning objectives for each
grade level and each content area. Lower-grade-level learning objectives are
the prerequisites that must be known for students to learn. For example, when
teaching Grade 4, the content object prerequisites are found in Grade 1–3. Without
this prerequisite knowledge, students will have a difficult time learning Grade 4
objectives.
• To help build prerequisite or background knowledge, a variety of resources
including pictures, drawings, and clipart should be used to promote discussion and
writing. The school librarian is a great resource.

Conclusion
Teachers’ concerns over the years have not changed. They want their students
to succeed and to learn content, whether it is science, math, social studies, health,
and so forth. However, students’ success in science (or any other field) is related to
their reading ability. This makes the readability of all textbooks critical to classroom
instruction. If textbooks are unreadable, students will not read them as they cannot
make sense out of the text. If students are going to profit from their science reading
experience, they need textbooks that are easy to read so that they can concentrate on
learning the unfamiliar science information. Considerable time and effort have been
spent to help adults learn and enjoy reading. Now, more effort needs to be put into
helping our children have good content textbooks that they can read and from which
they can learn.

References
Baldwin, S., & Kaufman, R. (1979). A concurrent validity study of the Raygor Readability
Estimate. Journal of Reading, 23(2), 148–153.

Brewer, J. (2018). Measuring text readability using reading level. In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of information science and technology (4th ed.; pp. 1499–1507). IGI Global.

Burton, R. (2014). Readability, logodiversity, and the effectiveness of college science textbooks.
Bioscene, 40(1), 3–10.
Cavanagh, S. (2018, Dec. 3). Texas, a prized K–12 market, approves wave of instructional
materials. EDWEEK Market Brief. https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k-12/texas
-prized-k-12-market-approves-wave-instructional-materials/

Chall, J., & Dale, E. (1995). Readability revisited: The new Dale-Chall Readability Formula.
Brookline Books.

Chiang-Soong, B., & Yager, R. E. (2010). Readability levels of the science textbooks most used in
secondary schools. School Science and Mathematics, 93(1), 24–27.

32 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators