AI and more specifically generative AI is radically transforming education. As an EdTech blogger, I spend tremendus amount of time reviewing and experimenting with various AI tools and I am really blown away by the immense capabilities these AI tools offer especially for us in education. You can now use AI to easily create interactive lessons, generative engaging activities, and instantly design instructional resources that in the near past would have taken days to prepare.
I am well aware of legitimate concerns teachers voice regarding this technology especially in regards to issues related to privacy, bias, plagiarism, over-reliance on AI, among others. However, I prefer to focus on the opportunities these tools bring because whether we want it or not AI is here to stay and to thrive in this new environment, we must learn how to integrate it effectively.
The purpose of today’s post is to show you another area where the educational potential of AI is clearly visible: levelling reading resources and personalizing reading experiences for students. The AI tools I selected for you today will enable you to adjust reading levels of any text or article to match different grades. For instance, you can take a complex article and adapt its reading level your 5th graders and vice versa.
AI Tools for Adjusting Reading Levels
Of course, mainstream AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc) can also be used to level reading resources; however the AI tools I have for you today are especially designed with teachers and educators in mind. They offer tailored features that make adapting reading levels seamless and highly effective in the classroom.
1. Brisk Teaching
Brisk Teaching is an AI Chrome extension that offers a suite of AI features enablign teachers to create teaching materials, generate feedback on students work, create quizzes and presentations, and many more.
Head over to a web page, click on Brisk Teaching extension at the bottom right corner and select Change Level. Brisk will show you the article’s current reading level and will also enable you to select a different reading level. Once done, click on Change reading level and the document with the new reading level opens up in Google docs. For full tutorial, check out Brisk Teaching Review.
2. Lexile Tool by Eduaide
Eduaide is another powerful platform that offers a wide collection of educational AI tools. These tools are arranged into different categories including ‘professional duties,’ ‘accessibility,’ ‘wellness,’ ‘administrative’ and more. Under the Accessibility category, you will find these two AI tools called Lexile Increaser and Lexile Decreaser.
The earlier, that is the Increaser tool, allows you to paste the text of any document and generate a similar text at a higher reading level, making it suitable for advanced learners. The latter, the Decreaser tool, does the opposite. It simplifies text to match lower reading levels which ensures accessibility for struggling readers or younger students.
To learn more, check out Eduaide Review post.
3. Diffit
Diffit is another equally powerful AI platform that offers a wide range of AI features to help teachers create interactive teaching materials. Diffit also has this embedded feature which allows you to adapt any source material to the reading level of your choice. You can paste in your text, upload a PDF, provide the URL of a website or YouTube, and select the reading level you are interested and click on ‘Generate resources’.
Diffit will generate an adapted passage that matches your chosen reading level, making it accessible and engaging for your students. Additionally, Diffit provides options to create supplementary teaching materials like quizzes, summaries, or discussion prompts tailored to the adapted text.
To learn more, check out our Diffit Review post.
4. Almanack
The popular educational platform Almanack offers this handy AI tool called Lexile Level Adjuster that you can use to instantly convert any text to the reading level of your students. Here is how it works: First login to your Almanack account, click on ‘AI Tools’ on the left hand side, scroll down and select ‘Lexile Level Adjuster’.
Next, provide your source materials: you can copy and paste text, upload a file, provide the URL of a web page or video, then choose which grade you want to adjust to , and click on create. Your adapted text is instantly generated and is displayed in a new editor where you can edit it the way you want.
You can also use the ‘Lesson Bundle’ button on the right hand side to create various teaching materials based on the newly generated text. These include flashcards, slides, worksheets, quizzes, learning games, and many more.
To learn more, check out our Almanack Review post.
Final thoughts
The AI-powered reading level adjusters I share above will help you differentiate instruction and enhance accessibility by preparing reading materials that speak to various learning needs and reading levels. I encourage you to try them out and see which one stands for you the most.
