A new read on teen literacy
The new focus on reading in the middle- and high-school years follows a period of intense efforts to tackle the problem in the early grades, when lagging readers typically still need help decoding words. Now there's a growing recognition that reading skills need to be nurtured well into adolescence, when students struggle with comprehension more than anything else. Most well-regarded programs share common elements: an intensive class on basic reading strategies for below-grade-level performers, more time devoted to building the habit of reading for pleasure, and an effort to get teachers schoolwide focused on comprehension and writing. In New York City, more than a third of ninth graders arrive unprepared to do college-prep work; henceforth, struggling sixth and ninth graders will take a double-period literacy class, and all students will be reading and writing more. At J. E. B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., where President Bush last month announced his $1.5 billion plan to raise high-school standards and performance (including $200 million to support literacy instruction), 76 percent of students were reading below grade level eight years ago; today, only a handful are behind by 11th grade. "Ideally, I'd like every kid reading at the college level," says Principal Mel Riddile, who puts even honors ninth graders through reading instruction in the computer lab and gives every struggling student 95 minutes every day of either reading or English.
At many schools, including Stuart, all faculty members are being asked to become teachers of reading strategies appropriate to their disciplines. That can require a big adjustment when there's so much content to cover to prepare for state assessments, and when conventional wisdom says that reading is the job of instructors in kindergarten through third grade. ("My No. 1 problem at first was teacher resistance," says Riddile.) Math, science, and history teachers alike are trained to hit hard on new vocabulary, for example, and to help students find clues in root words, in similar words, in context. "So much of what we do outside of narratives is tied to vocabulary--a water table is different from a math table is different from tabling a motion," says Donna Alvermann, a literacy expert at the University of Georgia. "In literature, you can miss a lot of the words and still get the story. Students attack informational texts the same way--and miss the substance."
Strategies. To make sure that doesn't happen, teachers increasingly spend time in class on "prereading" strategies, examining headings, captions, photos, and graphics for a sense of where the author is going. They might sort out ideas using diagrams and think out loud as they make their way through a passage, demonstrating how good readers constantly question the author's intent, backtrack when they're confused, make connections to prior knowledge, and predict what will happen next. Those who try these techniques in their classes often realize that they're covering more content, and more successfully, notes Cynthia Greenleaf, codirector of the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research group whose approach is used by many schools, including Willard Brown's. When Brown began working on reading skills on his own several years ago, he found that other chemistry teachers typically got weeks ahead of him in the fall. "But I could get ahead by spring, because there was opportunity for independent learning--the text started to make sense," he says. Now, his colleagues are being trained in the same techniques.
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