Balanced Reading Program: Dual in emphasis, stress on both acquisition of skills and application of program skills. A balanced beginning reading program includes instruction in word identification skills as well as instruction in reading comprehension strategies. Components of a balanced program include reading to whole groups of students, guided reading activities with groups of students, shared with groups of students, and independent reading by individual students.

Comprehension: Ability to understand written language.

Fluency: Ability to read aloud with appropriate intonations and pauses indicating understanding meaning, with only occasional stops to figure out words or sentence structure.

Read Aloud: A book that a teacher or parent reads to children.

Leveled Books: Books grouped and graded for difficulty based on specific text characteristics.

Guided Reading Level (GRL) : Guided Reading is an essential part of an early literacy program. It is a context in which a teacher supports each reader’s development of effective strategies for processing text at increasing levels of difficulty. (Fountas and Pinnell,1996)

Lexile Level: A Lexile is a unit measurement that is used to determine the difficulty of text and the reading level of readers. It is an equal interval scale and can be used to measure growth.

Dale-Chall: Original vocabulary-based formula used to assess materials for fourth grade and beyond.

Flesch Reading Ease : Normally used to assess adult materials, shows scores on a scale between 0 and 100.

Flesch Grade Level: Most reliable when used with upper elementary and secondary materials.

Fry Graph: Used over a wide grade range of materials, from elementary through college and beyond.

FOG: Widely used in the health care and general insurance industries for general business publications.

Powers-Sumner- Kearl: Used in assessing primary through early elementary level materials.

SMOG: Unlike any of the other formulas, SMOG predicts the grade level required for 100% comprehension.

FORCAST: Focuses on functional literacy. Used to assess non- running narrative, e.g. questionnaires, forms, tests, etc…

Spache : Original vocabulary-based formula widely used in assessing primary through third grade materials.