Digging into complexity

Last week some of work that Lil and Lacy did around the idea of complex readings of text got me thinking more about the area of text complexity... it's value in school, how it's commonly perceived, and what it really means.

So, I've been thinking about it, but other than thinking that text complexity may be more complex than commonly assumed, I really wasn't sure to what to think.

But then came Erika and Sarah's awesome demos, along with Lil's lunch conversation on assessment, and I feel like I found a few answers, or at least new layers to consider. I'll try to use this blog space to work though some of my thinking.  No promises about coherence.

There has been plenty of talk about complexity over the last few years.  I'm sure that the language of the CCSS has been a driving factor in that.  I know that the CCSS appendix devotes some space to defining what it means by complexity.  But a piece of this that I keep thinking about today, throughout the demos, is that the CCSS also defines different types of texts and writing, and I'm feeling like that this act of categorizing works against engaging with the complexities of any text.

In doing things like calling a text argumentative or informational, listing characteristics that define good writing in those genres, and saying that students need more exposure to reading information texts, we are narrowing our focus of reading and writing instruction.  But from both of the demo's today and the reading activities from last week have shown me that it is engaging with a text in broad and diverse ways that bring out the complexity in the text and in our thinking about it.

So, I'm wondering if the standards get complexity wrong or at least do it a disservice by attempting to define it.   Or if we, the readers of the standards get complexity wrong and apply it to our reading of the standards to think that it means something other than what it really does.  Or if we Maybe it's neither, or a little bit of both. If there is a way to engage students in real complex reading and writing activities that also fits under the CCSS umbrella.