Adolescent Literacy: Helping Students Who Read Below Grade Level

As a middle school media specialist I have discovered some ways to help our reluctant readers. One company that I highly recommend is Townsend Press. They have a series of short novels called The Bluford series. The books can be purchased from them in paperback for $1 per book. They deal with teenagers and teenage problems. Our students love them - even the boys who usually only read non-fiction.
There are a lot of publishers who now publish graphic novels (the kids call them comic books) and low level-high interest non-ficiton books. Most library media specialists in a school setting should know who the publishers are.

Have you looked into using Bookshare.org? They recently permitted free membership for schools serving students with print disabilities. As much of the funding is coming from IDEA, your class might qualify. They have a collection of more than 40,000 books and 150 periodicals available on audio.

The info about free qualifying memberships is on the BookShare.org website. They also have Teacher Recommended Reading by grade level.

Give your local adult literacy resource center a try. I've taught adults to read, and the resource center has quite a bit of material that can hold the interest of older readers.

One way to guage motivation to read is by looking at student independent reading during summer months. A 2006 survey of urban adolescent students (Summer Reading Survey Report ... see link below) indicates that students are reading email and web at rates that far surpass their reading of books. I think that educators need to really understand how important this trend is becoming and do a better job connecting our work in school to those kinds of readings that students are intersted. That being said, there is not eveidence in this report that student web reading is helping them in vocabulary, reading fluency or reading comphrension. Actually, my analysis suggests that it is only student that have better comprehension skills that make gains from independent reading (see AEAR presentatation in How summer reading predicts fall vocabulary scores same link below) I also want to follow up on the plug for the school librarian but mentioning that the children's librarians in large urban centers have access to an amazing range of texts and are often willing to request them from the entire library system for your students. This approach has been very successful with my students in getting really compelling books in their hands to generate interest in topic they did not know they were interested in (like ancient Greece.) http://www.joshualawrence.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index

I read these postings with great interest, especially noting that I have taught "special ed" for 31 years. Like my son, many of my students have learning disabilities. The National Center for Learning Disabilities and the National LD Association report that over half of learning disabled students are significant delayed in reading. Since textbooks have a readability level similar to the intended grade level, such as a 7th grade social studies textbook has a 7th grade readability level, a student with poor reading skills experiences great difficulty accessing the general core curriculum. The United States Department of Education-Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has announced that it is revising the definition of "print disabilities," which is currently defined by the Library of Congress's National Library System (NLS). The NLS defines "print disabilities" as those who are blind or have significant visual impairments or orthopedic disability that doesn't allow a person to hold a book or turn pages. Many of us are hoping that the revised definition will be more expansive and at least include students with other disabilities. Copyright law has special provisions for those with "print disabilities." (Please note that a handful of states, notably Kentucky and Arizona, already have laws in place for textbook accessibility for ALL disabled students.) The revised definition could have very important implications to education across our nation. This is critical in that the 2004 Reauthorization of IDEA (national special ed law) has provisions for those with "print disabilities" and established the "National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard" (NIMAS) as the national file format. NIMAS gets all K-12 textbook publishers and public schools on the same page and allows the base digital file of printed instructional materials to be transformed into CDs, mp3 files, as well as Braille and large print books. ACCESSIBLE or UNLOCKED CDs of textbooks, etc. can then be interfaced with other software, such as text-to-speech. Text-to-speech software not only allows the student to hear the text but also can easily be rigged to highlight the word or sentence as it is being read aloud, thus pairing the visual with the auditory. In addition, many commercial text-to-speech programs have greatly evolved in the last couple of years and now include many other learning supports in the same program. These include not only PHONIC spell checkers but also "fact" depositories to stash research information for later retrieval into papers, homophone checker, word prediction, scanning, graphic organizers, single words translated into another language, notetaking, and highlighting by different colors and then collecting the highlighted text by color to generate a student-made study guide. In addition, one program can directly go into the text while others require the user to copy the text and then import it on to the program's clipboard before the program's featuers can be activated. This extra step could be obstacle for some students. Also, the former program can also read pdf files, including email and many Internet-based files. Some of the major vendors are significantly discounting for volume purchases; another is also selling school and district licenses for any student to use. Many of these learning supports give a struggling student, including those who are English Language Learners, a fighting chance and provide great learning tools for many "typical" students as well as addressing different learning styles. All in all, this exciting software adds an important tool to a teacher's set of tools to address differentiated instruction. Please help spread the word of these strives in educating ALL students!

Your most valuable partner in teaching reading is your school librarian. This credentialled teacher can partner with you to direct students to the reading that they will enjoy. We are also here to team with you, the classroom teacher, in teaching reading strategies at the secondary level. Far too many reading teachers forget that this ally is there to support and teach students the vital skills they need. We're also experts in the literature of our patrons - ask us for titles!