Text Leveling System

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

RDQ:	1258	Max Word/Sent	31	Total Words	1346		Diff Words	519
Lex	790	Ave Word/.Sent	9	Hi Freq occurs	901	66.9%	Hi freq	204	39.3%
AR	4.0	Long Sentences	11.2	Low Freq occurs	86	6.4%	Low freq	72	13.9%

I hate my father. I hate school. I hate being fat. I 
hate the principal because he wanted to fire Ms.
Finney my English teacher.
My name is Marcy Lewis. I'm thirteen years old and
in the ninth grade at Dwight D. Eisenhower Junior
High.
All my life I've thought that I looked like a baby
blimp with wire-frame glasses and mousy brown hair.
Everyone always said that I'd grow out fo it but I was]]
convinced that I'd become an adolescent blimp with 
wire-frame glasses mousy brown hair and acne.
My life is not easy. I know I'm not poor. Nobody 
beats me. I have clothes to wear my own room a 
stereo a TV and a push-button phone. Sometimes I 
feel guilty being so miserable but middle-class kids 
have problems too.
Mom always made me go to tap and ballet lessons. 
She said that they'd make me more graceful. When it 
came time for the recital I accidentally sat on the 
record that I was supposed to dance to and broke it. I 
had to hum along with the tap dancing. I sing as 
badly as I dance. It was a disaster.
Father says that girl children should be born at the 
age of eighteen and married off immediately.
Stuart my four-year-old brother wants to be my 
best friend so that I can help him put orange pits in a 
hole in his teddy bear's head.
I'm flat-chested. I used to buy training bras and put 
tucks in them.
I never had any friends except Nancy Sheridan. 
She's very popular but her mother and mine are PTA 
officers and old friends so I always figured that Mrs. 
Sheridan made her talk to me-Beauty and the Blimp.]] 
School is a bummer. The only creative writing I 
could do was anonymous letters to the Student 
Council suggestion box. Lunches are lousy. We never 
get past the First World War in history class. We 
never learned anything good at least not till Ms. 
Finney came along.
So my life is not easy.
The thing with Ms. Finney is what I want to talk 
about. She took over for Mr. Edwards our first 
English teacher. He left after the first month. One rumor 
is that he had a nervous breakdown in the faculty 
lounge while correcting a test on noun clauses. 
Another is that he had to go to a home for unwed 
fathers in Secaucus New Jersey. I personally think 
that he realized that he was a horrible teacher so he 
took a job somewhere as a principal or a guidance 
counselor.
When Mr. Edwards left we got a whole bunch of 
substitutes. None of them lasted more than two days. 
That'll teach the school to group all the smart kids in 
one class. We were indestructible.
The entire class dropped books pencils and pens at 
an assigned time. Someone put bubble gum in the 
pencil sharpener. Nancy pulled her fainting act. We made]] 
up names and wrote them on the attendance list. All 
the desks got turned around. Mr. Stone the principal 
kept coming in and yelling.
And then Ms. Finney came.]] 
 Celeste Sanders was the first to spread the news.
"Hey we got a new English teacher. A real one not a sub. First-period class says she looks like a kid."
"A new one. Let's walk in backwards."
"Everyone give a wrong name."
"Let's show her who's boss."
Everybody rushed down the halls and into class. Some of the guys started to make and throw paper airplanes. Alan Smith played "Clementine" on his harmonica. He'd learned it from the instructions on a]] 
Good and Plenty box. Jim Heston played the Good and Plenty box and Ted Martin played a comb. There was applause and cheering after the performance. At 1:15 the coughing started. A few kids didn't do anything but I did. I really didn't like what was happening but if you're a blimp with fears of impending acne you go along with the crowd.
Ms. Finney just sat there. She was young and wore a long denim skirt a turtleneck jersey and had on weird jewelry - giant earrings that hung down to her shoulders and a macrame necklace. She didn't smile or yell or cry or read a paper or do any of the things that teachers normally do when a class gets out of hand. She just sat there and looked at everybody.
Finally it got quiet. Everyone started to squirm. It was really creepy after a while.
"O.K. Give her a chance" someone muttered.
We all looked around to see who was talking. It was Joel Anderson the smartest kid in the class. When almost everybody else would be fooling around he would sit there reading a book. Some of the kids thought he was a little weird but everybody usually listened to him.]] 
He put his book down looked at Ms. Finney and said "Are you going to teach us anything?"
Somebody giggled.
The class got very quiet.
I looked at Joel and thought how brave and smart and cute he was. We'd been in the same classes since kindergarten but I hadn't said more to him than "Hi" and "What's the homework assignment?" I didn't like to embarrass anyone by having them be seen talking to me.
Ms. Finney stood up looked at the class smiled turned to the blackboard picked up a piece of chalk and wrote:
"Ms. Barbara Finney."
Turning around again she smiled and said "That's my name. I'm your new English teacher and I hope this year is going to be a good one for all of us."
I thought about that. First of all she'd written "Ms." Was she just trying to be sharp or was she really into it? And she'd written her first name. Teachers never do that. They never admit to having first names. They're always Miss or Mr. or Mrs. hardly ever Ms. and never with first names. It's]] 
supposed to be a big mystery like do teachers really have to go to the bathroom or do anything but teach and go to meetings?
She spoke again.
"I decided to be an English teacher because I care about people communicating with people. That's why I'm here. I want to do it and help you all to do it too as effectively as possible. A poet named Theodore Roethke once said 'Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.' Please let's try to move among mysteries together."
The class looked at her and at one another.
Alan Smith laughed and said "What is this gonna be a class of detectives?"
Ms. Finney looked at him without smiling. But she didn't yell either.
"I know that this may all seem a little strange to you now. Maybe it won't work but let's try. Take out a piece of paper and for the rest of the period think about communication and write about what it means to you."
We all took out paper. I stared at mine and then snuck looks at Ms. Finney. She was young and pretty]] 
and seemed nice. She sounded smart. She was different but I wasn't sure how and I didn't know if I could trust her. I mean she was a teacher and an adult.
During one of my looks she stared right at me and smiled. I lowered my head and pretended to be writing. Dumb teacher. Who did she think she was? What does a blimp know about communication? How could she know what it feels like to be so fat and ugly that you're ashamed to get into a gymsuit or talk to skinny people? Who wants to say "This is my friend the Blimp"?
Class was almost over and I still hadn't written anything. I stared at my paper again and began:]]
Communication is spelled backwards.
For the rest of the year I want to improve my handwriting so that I can write legible letters to the Student Council Suggestion box.
Marcy Lewis]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Table of Contents

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Character development

Complex Problem/Solution

Simple Plot

Topic

Teacher/Teaching

Self Esteem

*Human Body & Health

*Feelings, Behaviors

Low Frequency Words

accidentally	acne	adolescent	anonymous	applause
assigned	assignment	attendance	ballet	bras
chalk	chested	comb	communicating	communication
convinced	correcting	coughing	council	counselor
earrings	effectively	eisenhower	embarrass	faculty
finney	gonna	graceful	guidance	guilty
gymsuit	handwriting	harmonica	heston	immediately
impending	improve	indestructible	instructions	jersey
jewelry	junior	kindergarten	legible	lounge
lousy	lowered	lunches	macrame	miserable
mousy	muttered	mysteries	necklace	ninth
noun	performance	personally	poet	roethke
rumor	secaucus	sheridan	squirm	stereo
substitutes	suggestion	that'll	turtleneck	unwed
vulnerable	weird