Strategies to Support Struggling Adolescent Readers, Grades 6-12

When students are in elementary school, a teacher who has expertise in teaching the fundamentals of reading instructs them. At the middle and high school level that stops – and the timing could not be worse. The literacy demands increase exponentially, yet typically schools do not teach adolescents how to successfully read the increasingly difficult materials they encounter throughout their day. As the rigor increases in their classes, student coping skills become less effective. Consequently, the achievement gap becomes wider and more difficult to close during the adolescent years.

When it comes time to prescribe an intervention, middle and high school teachers are hitting a wall. Decoding and comprehension materials are often presented at an elementary level. The students feel bad enough that they struggle with reading; assigned ‘baby work’ increases the stigma. This book addresses the need for 6-12 teachers to have appropriate literacy intervention materials to use with struggling adolescent readers.

This book will also help teachers learn how to support any adolescent reader—struggling or not—when they encounter challenging text. The book features two strands: decoding and comprehension. Each strand contains lessons, materials, a difficulty dial, tips for implementation and student samples.