Text Leveling System

Elephants

RDQ:	489	Max Word/Sent	27	Total Words	708		Diff Words	301
Lex	630	Ave Word/.Sent	12	Hi Freq occurs	416	58.8%	Hi freq	109	36.2%
AR	2.7	Long Sentences	5.4	Low Freq occurs	23	3.2%	Low freq	19	6.3%

The Largest Land Animal
Elephant Bodies
Elephant Families
Food and Water
Keeping Elephants Alive
Did you know that elephants are the largest land animals in the world? 
I saw an amazing picture of a mother elephant with her baby. 
I wanted to learn more about elephants, so I checked out a book from the library. 
I learned many unusual facts about elephants that I can share with you.
If you've ever seen an elephant in a zoo, you know they are huge. 
An adult male can weigh as much as six cars! 
I definitely don't want an elephant to sit on me! 
Elephants have heavy gray bodies, thick legs, wrinkled skin, and floppy ears. 
Many elephants also have a pair of tusks, which are long, pointed teeth.
Elephants use their tusks to peel the bark off trees and to dig for minerals.
One really interesting part of an elephant is its long trunk. 
An elephant's trunk is its nose and upper lip joined together into a special shape. 
An elephant can use its trunk like a hand to pick up food or other objects. 
The trunk works like a hose when an elephant drinks water or gives itself a shower. 
A trunk can even work like a snorkel, helping an elephant breathe while under water.
I read about two kinds of elephants. 
One kind lives in Africa, and the other kind lives in Asia. 
Here's what I learned about their differences.
Elephants live in families of four to ten females and their young. 
The females, called cows, are all relatives-grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters. A wise old female called the matriarch  is the leader of the family. 
She helps her family find food and water. 
She also keeps the family together and helps everyone stay safe.
Male elephants stay with their mothers until they are about 11 years old-teenagers, in elephant years. 
Then they go to live with other males. 
Adult males, called bulls, often live alone except when they mate with females. 
Sometimes bulls use their tusks to fight each other for a female.
Baby elephants, called calves, are incredibly cute! 
When a calf is born, everyone in the family strokes it with his or her trunk to welcome it. 
All the adults help care for the calves. 
If a calf gets stuck in the mud at a water hole, everyone helps pull it out. 
If a lion is near, the adults stand in a circle around all the calves to protect them.
Elephants are herbivores, or plant eaters, and they like many kinds of food. They eat grass, leaves, bark, branches, fruit, flowers, and seeds. 
Elephants are always on the move, looking for food and water.  
They eat so much that they can't stay in one place for very long. 
When they leave an area, the plants have time to grow back.
Sometimes three or more families of elephants join together to form a herd. 
A herd may travel together to look for food and water. 
Elephants often walk in single file with each family following its matriarch. 
They follow the same routes year after year as they move from place to place.
Elephants need to drink water, just like people. 
Because they live in hot places, they also need water to cool off. 
Elephants like to give themselves showers. 
They also like to roll in mud or cover themselves with dust. 
Elephant skin may look tough, but it's really very sensitive. 
Mud and dust help protect an elephant's skin from insect bites and the sun's heat.
I was sad to learn that both kinds of elephants are endangered. 
Even though it is against the law, people kill elephants for their tusks. 
The tusks are made of ivory, which people use to make jewelry and pieces of art. 
People also change a lot of wild land into farms, which leaves some elephants with no place to live. 
Many people around the world are trying to save elephants. 
Some countries have created special parks to protect elephants. 
Hunters are less likely to kill elephants that live in the parks than ones that live in the wild.
Elephants are amazing animals. 
I hope people can help these gentle giants stay alive for a very long time.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Simple graphics supplementary to text comprehension

Vocabulary: Few decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Story/Poem

Captions

Table of Contents

Glossary

Index

Bold/Italicized Words

Headings

Additional activities

Features

First Person

Present Tense

Topic

Elephants

*Animals

Low Frequency Words

calves	endangered	herbivores	herd	incredibly
ivory	jewelry	likely	matriarch	minerals
objects	relatives	routes	sensitive	shower
showers	snorkel	teenagers	wrinkled