Text Leveling System

The Great Big Brain Book

RDQ:	950	Max Word/Sent	52	Total Words	1974		Diff Words	625
Lex	730	Ave Word/.Sent	14	Hi Freq occurs	1356	68.7%	Hi freq	230	36.8%
AR	3.5	Long Sentences	22.7	Low Freq occurs	108	5.5%	Low freq	86	13.8%

Your amazing brain
brains are amazing! They are in charge of every single thing our bodies do. Just think of all the things you wouldn't be able to do without your brain walking, talking, thinking, feeling, not to mention your lungs moving in and out so you can breathe and your heart beating as it sends blood around your body. Brains help us to taste. Brains help us to listen. Brains help us to be happy. Brains help us draw. Brains help us cry. Brains help us to pull things down.]]
You wouldn't be able to learn or remember anything or have any new ideas. No one would ever invent anything or write a book or paint a picture or be able to play a musical instrument. In fact, we wouldn't be able to do anything at all without our brains. Cat brain says: smell it, see it, stalk it. Brains make our heartbeat brains help us to think. Brains make our lungs work. Brains help us to run. Brains help us to read. Brains help us to talk and shout.]]
The command center
our brains have been compared to computers because they process information. And to the universe because they are so complicated. Movement, memory, language, behavior reading, touch, sensation sight memory, language, hearing, balance connects the brain to the spinal cord]]
some say our brains are like a factory because they make so many things. Or like a spider web because of their complex structure. Or even like a city, where everything does what it is supposed to on most days a miracle of organization! Let's think of it as a control room or command center, sending and receiving messages to and from all parts of the body. Nap lap snack shred sofa lap another nap stare at food on human's plate bigger snack]]
your growing brain
your brain sits inside your skull, the hard bony covering you can feel all over your head. It protects the brain from injury and Accidents. Your brain started to develop before you were born, in the first few weeks you were growing in your mother's body. It was fully formed by the time you had been there six or seven months. A brain weighs 3 lbs. A 2 year olds brain is 80% of its final size. But he's not a know it all yet. His brain is nearly as big as mine. Moms got two brains. One in her head and one in her baby. ]]
The brain is 2% of the human's body weight. Humans can make fresh brain cells in their 90s. There are 86 billion nerve cells in your brain. A whale's brain is five times heavier than a human's. 75% of your brain is water. I've lost 3 lbs. hope it's not my brain. A cat's brain only weighs 1 oz. By the time you are six years old, your brain is almost fully developed but it changes again a lot during the teenage years.]]
The senses
one of the brain's job is to send messages around our body to reach our nervous system, using \ tiny cells called neurons, and to receive messages back. So, if you touch something, the neurons head back to your brain to say if it's hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth, or a range of other things sticky, furry, slimy, prickly. It's like an alien from outer space. Or a spider crossed with a Caterpillar.]]
And it's the same with the other four senses: smell, sight, hearing, and taste. Neurons also send  back messages to our brains about pain and whether our body is too hot or too cold. They help us keep our balance when we stand, walk, ride a bike, or balance on a balance beam. And all these things are done so quickly that we don't even have to think about them.]]
Walking and talking
our brains control the muscles, bones, and tendons that allow us to move our arms and legs. Small children have to learn how to use all these things together so they can learn to walk. It's the same when we talk. We have to learn to use our breath and our tongues, teeth, and vocal cords.]]
The brain allows us to do All kinds of difficult things with our hands and arms, from picking up small things to carving tiny sculptures.
When the message gets a bit scrambled, you might be clumsy and drop or spill things.]]
Thinking and learning
Different parts of the brain allow us to learn and understand different things but it's hard to say which part creates ideas or where your imagination sits in the brain.]]
We can think about what we know, and make decisions. We can plan something like a journey or solve problems. Many people can do several things at once because their brains let them organize their thoughts and movements so well.]]
How are you feeling? Our feelings, whether we are happy or sad, excited or bored, angry or calm, all come from somewhere in our brains. You may feel happy and excited thinking about something fun you are going to do during the weekend or sad because your dog is sick, or angry because your teacher thought you had done something bad that you hadn't.]]
But all those things go through your brain and cause your reactions to them. Our brains can be trained to have different feelings we can learn to control what we feel.]]
Language
We learn to talk because our brains help us hear what other people say often our parents first. Our brains teach our mouths to make lots of sounds, which are mostly just babbling and nonsense when we are very small. Gradually, we make just the sounds that mean something in our own language, starting with words like Mama and Dada or more and bang. Learning to read and write words comes later]]
but what if you are born without being able to hear? Then you may learn sign language, which also involves your brain to make the signs and understand them. And if you are blind, you may learn to read Braille, a system of raised dots on a page, for which of course you need your brain just as much, to help you understand them.]]
Remember, remember!
One of the most important things your brain does is to remember things. Some things that you learn, like walking, don't need you to think about them anymore you just do them. But the memory of how to do them is somewhere deep inside your brain. It is the same when grown-ups learn to drive a car or play the piano. Let's stroll down memory lane. One hundred years ago grandpa was born. Joke. Six years ago I was born. I can't remember that, but grandpa can. Two years ago Theo was born. One year ago I was five. twelve hours ago I was asleep. five minutes ago I put on my coat to go out with grandpa.]]
We can store memories like pictures in a photo album. They can be good or bad, happy or sad. But for some people who have had a stroke or have an illness that affects memory, called Alzheimer's, memory stops working correctly. They can remember things that happened ages ago, when they were children, but not what happened yesterday. And some people lose parts of their memory altogether. This is called amnesia and can be The result of an accident.]]
Sleeping and dreaming.
When we go to sleep, our bodies don't switch off. Instead, they sort of power down. Our brains keep working while our sails are refreshed and renewed by having a good, long rest. When we are deeply asleep, our brains give us dreams. These can be very lifelike and sometimes strange. They can be happy images of being by the sea or in a magical jungle.]]
Or they can be horrible nightmares about being chased and eaten by monsters. No one knows exactly why we have dreams and what they are for. Maybe it is all part of recharging our brain and getting rid of things we don't need.]]
Energy
along with many other things, your brain controls your energy levels. The brain itself uses a quarter of all the glucose in your body, which is the main source of energy. If our brain doesn't get enough glucose, we may faint or have problems concentrating. This is one of the reasons it is so important to have a good breakfast. This is what can happen to people who have diabetes. They need to be sure to eat regularly and take their medicine, so that their bodies have the right level of glucose to function, especially their brains.]]
Our brains tell us when we are too hot or too cold and help us by sweating or giving us goose bumps. When you think of all the things your brain does, it is not surprising it uses a lot of energy. Our brains tell us when we need to eat or drink and when we need to go to the bathroom. Or when we've had enough to eat and when we are tired and need to sleep.]]
Taking sides
our brains are divided into two equal halves. The left side takes care of the right side of the body and the right side looks after the left side of the body. No one knows exactly why this happens.]]
The front left part of our brain is involved with language, math, and scientific facts. The right side is supposed to respond to art and music and may even be where our imagination comes from.]]
When brains are different.
Sometimes brains develop differently and then people may have epilepsy seizures or autism. Or an accident may cause brain damage, meaning that any of the many, many things of brain does can go wrong. Sometimes a brain develops a tumor a fleshy growth that can appear anywhere in the brain. The tumor presses on nerves and gives us terrible headaches and causes many other problems.]]
For older people some things that give their brains problems are dementia and Alzheimer's. They can also have strokes caused by developing blood clots on the brain or bleeding in parts of the brain. All of these things can cause people's memories to fail and other things to stop working. Sometimes they can no longer recognize members of their families and their personalities may change period this is terribly sad for the people who love them.]]
Artificial intelligence.
You may have heard someone say AI which stands for artificial intelligence. That makes us think of robots machines that look a bit like people. But what it does is to behave a bit like a human brain, using computers to learn information and follow rules. Systems like this can recognize speech or be given enough information to solve problems. AI lies behind ideas like driverless cars, which might be what all people have in the future.]] But our brains help us do all those things and much more!]]
Hooray for brains!
What is amazing is that your brain continues to do all the many things you have read about in this book. Your intelligence and personality come from your brain. All the things that make you different from anybody else start in your brain. Your personality, interests, and abilities also depend on who your parents were, how you were brought up, and the love and care you received.]]
But whether you are left or right-handed, how well you can solve problems, how much you like being with other people or prefer being on your own, whether you like to read or play games or are good at sports or all the results of how your body and brain interact. Long live brains! What would we do without them?]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Speech Bubbles

Unconventional format

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Formal

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Author's purpose: Obvious

Features

Topic

Brains

*Human Body & Health

Low Frequency Words

abilities	affects	alien	alzheimer's	amnesia
artificial	autism	babbling	complicated	concentrating
dada	decisions	dementia	diabetes	driverless
epilepsy	fully	function	furry	future
glucose	gradually	growth	halves	headaches
heartbeat	heavier	illness	imagination	injury
intelligence	interact	interests	involved	involves
language	lbs	level	levels	lifelike
lungs	magical	medicine	memories	mention
messages	miracle	movement	movements	musical
neurons	nightmares	olds	organization	personalities
personality	prickly	process	reasons	recharging
recognize	refreshed	regularly	respond	result
results	rough	scientific	scrambled	sculptures
seizures	sensation	shred	source	speech
spinal	stalk	stroll	structure	sweating
tendons	terribly	theo	tongues	universe
vocal