Text Leveling System

Kipper's Snowy Day

RDQ:	296	Max Word/Sent	34	Total Words	644		Diff Words	265
Lex	540	Ave Word/.Sent	9	Hi Freq occurs	357	55.4%	Hi freq	89	33.6%
AR	2.2	Long Sentences	10.6	Low Freq occurs	15	2.3%	Low freq	10	3.8%

It was a new morning and it was snowing! 
Huge cotton ball snowflakes were tumbling past Kipper's window. "Yes!" said Kipper jumping out of his basket. "Yes! Yes!" He grabbed his scarf and wound it three times around his neck. "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Kipper was very positive about snow. Kipper rushed outside. The snow lay deep and smooth and new like an empty page waiting to be scribbled on. He made a paw print and then another. And then with a whoop he went charging around and around crisscrossing this way and that until the garden was full of his tracks. Kipper stopped to catch his breath letting the swirling snowflakes melt on his tongue. Then he fell backward into the snow and lay there panting. When he stood up he found that he had made a perfect Kipper-shaped hole. He tried again. Then he tried a different shape. And another. "I bet Tiger hasn't thought of this" he said and he ran off to find his best friend. Kipper found Tiger at the top of Big Hill. He was wrapped up in a fat bundle of silly wooly clothes. Kipper plopped a friendly snowball on top of his head. "Help" said Tiger. Tiger pointed up at the sky. A watery sun was seeping through the gray clouds. "It won't last" he said. "It'll all be gone by tomorrow. There's a warm wind coming." Tiger was like that. He knew about things. But this was not at all what Kipper wanted to hear so he started throwing snowballs at his friend. Tiger was very easy to hit because the silly woolly clothes were wrapped so tightly around him that he could hardly move. And his own snowballs stuck like little pom-poms to the silly woolly gloves. "Look at my new game" said Kipper falling backward into the snow. "You get up very carefully ... and there you are!" And there he was or at least the shape of him. Tiger stretched out his arms and fell backward with a soft woolly crump. But when he tried to get up he could not. He was too round. He just lay there waving his arms and legs like a beetle on its back. Tiger heaved himself over onto his tummy but rolled too far and found himself on his back again. He tried again. The same thing happened. Snow began to stick in thick lumps to the silly woolly clothes. Crossly he heaved himself over once more. This time he rolled over twice three times four times ...Slowly at first and then a little faster and then a lot faster and the very fast indeed Tiger rolled down the hill. And as he went the silly woolly clothes picked up more and more snow so that by the time he reached the bottom he had changed from a small dog into a giant snowball. The giant snowball fell to pieces. Kipper charged down the hill. "Are you all right, Tiger?" he panted. Tiger pulled of his silly woolly hat. A big grin spread across his face. "Again!" he said.So that is what they did all day long taking turns to wear the silly woolly clothes. And by the time the sun began to dip toward the hill making their shadows long and skinny Kipper and Tiger had rolled enough snow to the bottom to build a giant snow dog. They watched their shadows lengthen and fade. "It'll all be gone by tomorrow" said Tiger. "There's a warm wind coming. But for once Tiger was wrong. The warm wind stayed away and that night another snowstorm smoothed out all of Kipper's paw prints making the garden like a clean white empty page once more. And the snow dog stood at the bottom of Big Hill wearing Tiger's silly woolly clothes ...for almost three ... whole ... weeks.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Dialog: Two speakers

Vocabulary: Few decoding/definition issues

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Blend of written/oral

Concept: Fanciful

Features

Topic

Winter

Snowmen

Dogs

Snow

Low Frequency Words

charged	charging	heaved	lengthen	positive
scarf	smoothed	swirling	woolly	wooly