Parents & Carers

Lexile® measures at home

The Lexile Framework® for Reading is an approach to reading measurement that matches pupils to appropriately challenging reading materials.

By taking the guesswork out of choosing the "right" books, Lexile measures give parents and carers the confidence to select materials that will help improve pupil reading skills across school subjects and at home.

Lexile measures defined

The Lexile Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to measuring readers and reading materials.

A key component of the Lexile Framework is a number called a Lexile measure. A Lexile measure indicates both the difficulty of a text and a child’s reading ability. Knowing the Lexile measure of a book and the Lexile measure of a child helps to predict how the book matches the child’s reading ability – whether it’s too easy, too difficult or just right.

Both a Lexile reader measure and a Lexile text measure are represented as a simple number followed by an “L” (e.g., 850L), and are placed on the Lexile scale. The Lexile scale ranges from below 200L for beginner readers and beginning-reading text to above 1700L for advanced readers and text.

Matching a child’s Lexile measure to a text with the same Lexile measure leads to an expected 75-percent comprehension rate – not too difficult to be frustrating, but difficult enough to encourage reading progress.

Your child’s Lexile measure

Children in schools that use an independent test from GL Assessment called Progress in English will receive a Lexile measure with their scores, as well as a recommended reading list that corresponds to their reading ability. In many cases, teachers will pass this information on to parents and carers so that they know where their child’s reading is at and are in a better position to help with reading at home. If your child doesn’t yet have a Lexile measure, why not make your school aware of Lexile measures by using our Send to a friend email link?

Your child’s Lexile range

A reader’s recommended Lexile range is 50L above and 100L below his or her Lexile measure. These are the boundaries between the easiest kind of reading materials for a child and the hardest level at which he or she should be able to read successfully.

Lexile measures at school

In a school setting, Lexile measures are used in a variety of ways. For example:

Year-on-year monitoring of a child’s reading progress, helping teachers to decide when intervention and additional support are required
Setting of reading goals
Analysing and developing school library collections to more fully meet the needs of all pupils
Matching teaching materials used across the curriculum more closely with pupils’ reading ability

Finding books that will help your child

Once you have your child’s Lexile measure, you can easily create a personalised reading list by using the Find a Book feature on this website. This will search through the UK Lexile Book Database, containing tens of thousands of fiction and nonfiction books, and generate a bespoke book list that is personally tailored to the reading ability and interests of your child.

Other ways to use Lexile measures at home

Ensure your child gets plenty of reading practice, concentrating on material within his or her Lexile range.
Encourage your child to take their reading list to school or the public library.
Communicate with your child’s teacher and school librarian about his or her reading needs and accomplishments.
When a reading assignment proves too challenging for your child, use activities to help. For example, review the words and definitions from the glossary or look at the questions at the end of the chapter before your child reads the text. Afterwards, be sure to return to the glossary and questions to make certain your child understood the material.
Celebrate your child’s reading accomplishments. One of the great things about the Lexile Framework is that it provides an easy way for readers to keep track of their own growth and progress. You and your child can set goals for reading – sticking to a reading schedule, reading a book at a higher Lexile measure, trying new kinds of books and articles, or reading a certain number of pages per week. When your child hits the goal, make an occasion out of it!