Text Leveling System

It's About Time

RDQ:	243	Max Word/Sent	22	Total Words	408		Diff Words	167
Lex	500	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	244	59.8%	Hi freq	68	40.7%
AR	2.1	Long Sentences	2.7	Low Freq occurs	17	4.2%	Low freq	11	6.6%

Do you know what time it is? 
If you do, you probably are looking at a clock or watch.]]
Long ago, people didn't have clocks or watches like you do. When the sun rose, they got up, and when the sun went down, they went to bed. They told time by the position of the sun in the sky. 
People discovered that they could use a stick and the sun to tell time. This was called a shadow clock. They put a stick in the ground, pointing straight up. The direction of the stick's shadow and how long or short it was told them the time. ]]
A better kind of shadow clock was called a sundial. Sundials have a pointer and a base. The pointer casts a shadow on marks around the base. People could tell time by reading the marks. But shadow clocks were not good for telling time on cloudy days - or at night.]]
One kind of clock that didn't need the sun was a water clock. A water clock was a container with a tiny hole in the bottom. Water would steadily drip out of the hole. Marks on the inside of the container showed the time. 
It took one hour for the water to go down one mark. ]]
Another kind of clock that didn't need the sun was a candle clock. You would know the time by how much of the candle had melted. The candle had marks down its side to show the hours. 
Sometimes people used candle clocks as alarm clocks. They would put a nail in the candle at the time they wanted to wake up, hanging a shoe on the nail. When the candle melted down, the nail fell out and the shoe would hit the floor with a BANG!
Now there are all kinds of timepieces, from tall grandfather clocks to watches we wear on our wrists. 
Most clocks run on electricity from batteries. Many clocks have two hands that point to numbers in a circle on the clock face. These are called analog clocks. 
Other clocks don't have hands, only numbers. These are called digital clocks. ]]
Inside one kind of analog clock is a carved bird called a cuckoo. Every hour, the door opens and the bird pops out to sing its song: cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo! ]]
There are many more types of clocks, too. Clocks hang in and on buildings. Clocks adorn wrists and mantles. Clocks are everywhere!]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Oral/Natural

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Captions

Inserts/Side bars

Table of Contents

Glossary

Bold/Italicized Words

Headings

Additional activities

Features

Topic

Time

Clocks

*History

Low Frequency Words

adorn	analog	cuckoo	digital	electricity
mantles	pointer	steadily	sundial	sundials
wrists