Adolescent Literacy

A huge problem as students progress through the grade levels is that more and more of them begin to hate reading. About two-thirds of our 12th graders and about 70% of our 8th graders in the United States do not read at grade level. Many students report that they do not read for pleasure on a regular basis. Reading is a process where we need practice to improve. If students are not reading on their own, then they are not gaining practice in using the strategies and skills taught at school.

One way to help adolescents to begin to enjoy reading is by finding interesting books based on their hobbies and interests. This can be daunting for teachers who have a diverse range of students within their classrooms each with individual interests and at differing reading levels. A website that may be of interest is the Ohio Resource Center. This website provides books that catch the attention of adolescents and many of the books are recommended by adolescents.

Another tool to use with teenagers is technology. Teenagers spend a lot of time online. Creating an online scavenger hunt where students have to go to given websites to read information about a topic and record their responses is one way to help them learn using one of their favorite activities. This would give you the opportunity to find websites at various levels to help those students who are not at grade level and who would struggle reading the social studies or science text book for the topic.

Another tool to help teenagers, not as much with motivation but more so with comprehension, is a comprehension connector. This is a simple graphic organizer designed or chosen by the teacher to have the students fill out as they read. This helps students to focus on what is most important in the text and to record their thinking. As with all assignments, teachers should model how to use the comprehension connector before having students work individually with the comprehension connector. Some examples of comprehension connectors can be found at: Choice Literacy.