Curriculum & Instruction
We now know a lot about effective adolescent literacy instruction, including how to identify at-risk children and how to intervene effectively. The articles in this section offer information on what effective instruction looks like — in the classroom, throughout a school, and district-wide.
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A Critical Analysis of Eight Informal Reading Inventories
There are a number of current informal reading inventories. Each has its strengths and limitations and unique characteristics, which should be considered in order to best fit a teacher's needs.
The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early Impact and Implementation Findings
While much has been learned about literacy in the elementary grades, less is known about programmatic approaches that help struggling adolescent readers acquire the skills they need to succeed in high school. The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study tests the effectiveness of two supplemental literacy interventions targeted to ninth-grade readers with reading comprehension skills that are two to four years below grade level. The interventions studied are (1) Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy from WestEd and (2) Xtreme Reading from the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
Five Areas of Instructional Improvement to Increase Academic Literacy
How can content-area, non-reading-specialist teachers contribute to academic literacy? They can incorporate these five techniques throughout their lessons: (1) provide explicit instruction and supported practice in effective comprehension techniques, (2) increase the amount and quality of reading content discussions, (3) maintain high standards for text, conversation, questions, and vocabulary, (4) increase student motivation and engagement with reading, and (5) provide essential content knowledge to support student mastery of critical concepts. Find out why these strategies, and the literacy areas they represent, are so important.
Word-level Interventions for Struggling Adolescent Readers
This article, excerpted from the report Academic Literacy Instruction for Adolescents: A Guidance Document from the Center on Instruction, advocates that teachers spend less time focusing on specific reading fluency and accuracy targets, since those vary significantly depending upon the purpose of the reading, and instead use reading interventions with demonstrated impacts on adolescent fluency and accuracy.
Writing Next
How can thousands of low-achieving adolescent writers develop into the flexible and fluent writers required by colleges and employers? This report recommends and details eleven fundamental elements of writing instruction and suggests ways to implement them in the classroom.
Reading Next
Millions of today's adolescents lack the reading skills demanded by today's world. The impending crisis — millions of under-literate young people unable to succeed economically and socially — requires an immediate response. This report outlines 15 key elements of effective adolescent literacy programs, and recommends that schools use a mix of these elements, tailoring the combinations to the needs of individual students.
A Theory of Adolescent Reading: A Simple View of a Complex Process
How do adolescents move from reading words to applying knowledge learned from a text? See the adolescent reading model and the Strategic Intervention Model (SIM) clearly illustrated.
Adolescent Literacy: Where We Are Now?
This essay summarizes adolescent literacy interventions and trends, and its relation to dropout rates.
Critical Thinking: Why is it so hard to teach?
Learning "critical thinking skills" can only take a student so far. Critical thinking depends on knowing relevant content very well-and thinking about it, repeatedly. Here are five strategies, consistent with the research, to help bring critical thinking into the everyday classroom.
Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?
How does the mind work — and especially how does it learn? Teachers' instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
