Text Leveling System

The Story of Jeans

RDQ:	606	Max Word/Sent	19	Total Words	724		Diff Words	322
Lex	660	Ave Word/.Sent	9	Hi Freq occurs	371	51.2%	Hi freq	101	31.4%
AR	3.0	Long Sentences	1.3	Low Freq occurs	61	8.4%	Low freq	43	13.4%

Introduction
Take a look in your closet or clothes drawer. Do you see a pair of jeans? You probably do. The average American owns about seven pairs. You may be wearing a pair right now. Or you might have a jean jacket, shirt, or a pair of denim shoes. Jeans are so common, you may wonder who invented them and how the fashion took off.
History
Jeans were invented by a German man named Levi Strauss. He went to the U.S. in 1847 and followed the Gold Rush to San Francisco. He carried many kinds of fabric to sell to dry goods stores. Business was booming in California during the Gold Rush. Levi quickly became a successful businessman.
The miners in California had a problem with their pants. When they found gold or ore, they carried it in their pockets. But the metal was heavy, and the pockets ripped. In 1873, Levi became partners with a tailor named Jacob Davis. Jacob and Levi made tough denim pants with copper rivets sewn into the seams. Rivets are strong metal fasteners. The miners loved the "waist overalls," as they were called, and they quickly became popular. 
Changing Fashions
Levi's jeans were work pants. Male workers wore them all the time. But a gentleman wouldn't think of wearing jeans. Women didn't wear pants at all. But this changed when Western movies became popular. All the cowboys wore jeans. People thought the cowboys looked tough and cool. But jeans still weren't proper for places like school, stores, or offices.
During World War II, off-duty U.S. soldiers wore jeans. 
They made jeans seem like tough, casual American pants. They became a symbol of America in many other countries.
Back in the U.S., fashions changed. Movie stars wore jeans in their films. Teenagers everywhere loved them. Some schools banned jeans because of their "rebel" image. But casual clothing, including jeans, became popular for more and more occasions. 
Eventually, jeans were so common that it became okay for anyone to wear them. You can even find pictures of the president wearing jeans.
In the 1980s, clothing designers made new styles. They bleached, decorated, and stonewashed (wore out) jeans. They made them baggy, stretchy, and flared. In 2000, the Italian designer Gucci sold a pair of jeans for $3,715.00. 
Jeans are dyed every color of the rainbow. Denim is used to make almost everything, including jackets, hats, skirts, shoes, and wallets. Antique, or old, jeans are also popular. You can find them in thrift stores for a very low price. 
Or you can find them in specialty stores, where they are very expensive.
How Jeans Are Made
Most jeans begin as fibers growing on the cotton plant in puffs called bolls. The bolls are picked and the seeds are removed. Then the fibers are combed to untangle them. The fibers are called lint, like the lint in your pocket. Machines twist the lint into a thick rope. The rope is pulled, twisted, and stretched into a long, thin thread called yarn.
Yarn is dyed before it is woven into denim. Blue denim is made from both blue and white yarn. When your jeans wear out or rip, you can see the white threads showing through. Denim is woven in a diagonal pattern. The fabric is so sturdy that it is used in some paper money. That's why money doesn't fall apart if you accidentally wash it in your pocket.
Bundles of fabric are called bolts. One bolt of denim weighs 500 pounds (227 kg). It can make 60 pairs of adult-size jeans. Electric saws cut through 120 layers of cloth at once. The cloth is cut into many sizes and sewn together. One pair of jeans goes through 37 different sewing steps. It takes 213 yards (195 m) of thread to sew one pair of jeans.
Now, people can even order custom-made jeans. You can send all your measurements to a custom jeans company. They will make a pair to fit you perfectly. 
Conclusion
Today, all kinds of people around the world wear jeans. People wear them everywhere. Designers have even made denim tuxedoes for the most formal occasions. Jeans are popular today for the same reasons they were popular when Levi Strauss first made them. They look good, they last long, and they are comfortable. That's probably why you own a pair or two, or seven, yourself.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Oral/Natural

Inferences: Some implications

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Table of Contents

Glossary

Bold/Italicized Words

Additional activities

Features

Topic

Clothes

*History

Sewing

Low Frequency Words

accidentally	antique	average	bolls	casual
combed	conclusion	designer	designers	diagonal
drawer	eventually	fabric	fashion	fasteners
fibers	formal	gentleman	german	gucci
image	introduction	jeans	lint	measurements
occasions	overalls	partners	pockets	president
reasons	rebel	rivets	sewn	specialty
stonewashed	stretchy	sturdy	symbol	tailor
teenagers	thread	threads	tuxedoes	wallets
woven