Text Leveling System

Into the Sea

RDQ:	1189	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	1351		Diff Words	478
Lex	780	Ave Word/.Sent	14	Hi Freq occurs	843	62.4%	Hi freq	149	31.2%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	20	Low Freq occurs	69	5.1%	Low freq	57	11.9%

Tap, tap, Scritch.  The tiny sea turtle is the last hatchling to
break out of her leathery egg and crawl up the sides of a sandy
nest.  She is not much bigger than a bottle cap and would make 
a good meal for a hungry sea bird or a crab.  But at this moment,
at dawn, the crabs are resting in muddy burrows and the 
beach is quiet and empty.]]
The turtle smells the sand and stares
at the bright moonlight that glistens
across the ocean.  She rests a moment
and then, like a windup toy, pulls
herself quickly across the beach with 
her flippers.  Always she heads straight
for the silvery moon light.  Clack, click
clack.  A crab pops out of its burrow 
and sees the dark moving shape.  Just
in time, the turtle reaches the edge of
the water.  A gentle wave splashes
across her back and carries her into 
the sea.]]
Instinctively the turtle knows how
to paddle with her flippers and dive
beneath the surface.  She is still 
swimming hard when the sun moves
into the sky.  Every few minutes she
comes up for a breath of air.  Her
eyesight is much better in the water.
She sees a jellyfish, a starfish, and a 
barracuda with a big mouth.  None
of them see the turtle.  Her white 
underside blends in with the 
shimmering white surface of 
the ocean.]]
Splop.  The turtle comes up for air in a patch of sargassum
weed.  A tiny crab and a water strider ride on the floating raft.
Below, a sargassum fish uses the plant for camouflage.  They all 
drift with the winds and current while the weeds hide them
from the sharp eyed sea birds above and the hungry fish below. 
The little turtle floats around in the clump for several months,
eating tiny plants and animals called plankton.]]
As the turtle grows, her shell grows with her and gets a little
harder.  She likes to dive into long streams of seaweed that grow
on the ocean bottom,  There, mussels and seahorses sift water for
plankton to eat.  When a strong current comes up, the seahorses
grab on to the seaweed with their tails, while the mussels hold 
on to rocks with threadlike feet.  But the little turtle is not yet
strong enough to swim against this current.  She drifts away with 
the moving water.]]
The turtle spends her first winter in a 
warm, tropical sea full of brilliant colors
and creatures with big mouths.  Like all
sea turtles, she cannot pull her head and 
flippers into her shell for protection, but 
she finds many places to hide in the coral
reef.  When a butterfly fish swims in her
direction, she darts under a ledge.  This fish 
has a dark tail spot that looks just like an
eye.  The turtle watches closely to see which
end is the front and which is the back.]]
By now the turtle has been in the 
sea for over a year.  She is as big as the 
sea birds and most of the fish.  She has 
developed strong swimming muscles
and swims four times faster than a 
human.  
The turtle has no teeth but bites off
pieces of seaweed with the sharp ridges
of her jaw.  She spends two whole
months eating her way through a rich,
wavy garden of sea grass.]]
After several more years, the turtle
grows into one of the biggest creatures
in the sea.  Sharks, however, are still 
a danger.  When one comes near her
feeding area, she swims out into a 
warm current far away from 
the shallow ocean shelf.  She 
crosses deep, deep water where
sunlight cannot reach the 
bottom and seaweed cannot 
grow.  There is not much to eat in the 
middle of the ocean, but she continues
on her long journey, living on the extra
fat in her body.]]
Even a big turtle can get very tired.
Sometimes she stops to sunbathe on 
the surface of the water.  The sunlight
discourages the barnacles and marine
grasses from growing on her shell.  She 
likes to float for hours in the midday 
sun.  A remora, with a special fin on its 
head, attaches to her underside for a 
free ride.  Then a tired brown booby
flutters down to join them for a rest
on the surface of the ocean.]]
The turtle hears humpback whales singing in the sea.  She 
dives underwater and the bird flies away.  She passes a 
humpback swimming in slow circles and blowing a ring of 
thick bubbles.  Many small fish get caught in the swirling,
whirling water of this bubble net.  With a strong push of its
fluke, the whale comes up through the middle and swallows
hundreds of trapped minnows in one huge gulp.  The turtle
swims swiftly away, but the remora stays behind to catch a 
ride on the whale.
At three hundred pounds, the turtle is a fully grown adult. 
Soon eggs begin to form in her body, and she finds a current
that seems familiar to her and follows it back across the ocean.]]
The turtle swims deep under the water for almost two hours, 
but before she comes up to breathe, she swims below a fishing 
boat.  Suddenly she finds herself trapped in a net.  Each time she
tries to swim away, her flippers scrape the sides of the net and 
almost get tangled in the woven ropes.]]
She bumps into metal bars.  Clunk.  Shrimp and small fish 
swim through the slots between the bars, but the turtle is much 
too big.  She swims over them and finds an escape door at the 
bottom,  Soon she is at the surface of the ocean, taking in 
big gulps of fresh air.]]
After a rest, the turtle follows the same familiar current
through the sea.  She swims many hundreds of miles in this
flow of water.  Finally she crosses over the top of one ocean
mountain and along the steep side of another.  When she pops
her head out of the water, she sees the top of the second
mountain.  It is a round island, with a warm sandy beach.]]
There are many other turtles just like her in the water.  Some
are male and some are female.  A male swims up to her and 
nuzzles her head.  He swims in front of her, touches her
flippers, and gently nips her shoulder.  They mate and he 
fertilizes her eggs.  The male turtle swims out to the deep 
ocean, but she swims off in the other direction.]]
After more than twenty years in the sea, the turtle returns to 
the land.  She waits until nighttime, when the tide is high, to 
come in.  She is slow and awkward as she pulls her huge body
up onto the sandy beach.  She does not see well on land.  Tears
stream down her cheeks, as they do in the water, to help her
body get rid of extra salt from the sea.  She pokes her nose into
the sand.  The turtle seems to know that she has come back to 
the same island where she was born.]]
Slowly she drags herself across the 
beach.  When she gets near a small
bush, she stops to rest and then 
begins to dig a nest in the sand with 
her flippers.  Thump, scrape, whoosh,
wheeze.  It is hard work as she scoops
out a hole for her body and a deeper 
chamber for her eggs.  Sand flies
everywhere, covering her back and 
head.  She works for three hours, 
laying over one hundred eggs
and then covering them with sand.]]
Once again the turtle crosses the beach.  Waves sweep the 
sand off her back and lift her into the water.  Her huge body
feels lighter and she sees clearly again.  She leaves the sandy 
nest behind her.  If  nothing destroys the eggs, her babies will 
hatch in two months.  Perhaps one or two will get past the 
crabs and the sea birds, the fish and the fishing nets, and 
like their mother, will return to lay eggs on the same sandy
beach before making their way back into the sea.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Inferences: Some implications

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Colorful, figurative

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Environmental

Features

Integral Setting

Topic

Turtles

Undersea Life

Life Cycle

Amphibians

Animals: Ocean

*Animal Life

Low Frequency Words

barnacles	barracuda	booby	burrow	camouflage
carries	coral	current	discourages	eyed
familiar	fertilizes	fluke	fully	glistens
gulp	gulps	hatchling	humpback	instinctively
leathery	ledge	lighter	marine	minnows
moonlight	mussels	nighttime	nips	nuzzles
plankton	protection	reef	remora	ridges
sargassum	scritch	seahorses	shallow	shimmering
silvery	splop	starfish	strider	sunbathe
swallows	swiftly	swirling	tangled	threadlike
tropical	underside	underwater	wavy	whirling
windup	woven