| Contact Us |
|
   |
      
|
|||
 |
 |
|
|
|
The interviewees and guests on RIF Exchange 305: "Older Students and Literacy" helped answer these questions: Q: Why focus on older students? Shouldn't we focus our attention and resources on younger children? A: Young children are rightly the first priority in fostering literacy. However, an exclusive focus on the primary years may come at the expense of older students. In middle schools and high schools, courses are based upon the assumption that students are reading to learn-and that they have completed learning to read. Many secondary school teachers are not equipped to handle non-readers in their classrooms. And research indicates that even teachers who know how to teach reading in their content areas rarely do. Carol Santa (1999), former President of the International Reading Association (IRA) and a studio guest on RIFNet show 305, describes a lack of concern with secondary school reading:
A large percentage of older students struggle with reading. The 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which examined secondary reading skills, revealed that although the large majority of all adolescents are able to carry out simple reading tasks, only 40% can read well enough to comfortably manage standard high school texts. Barely 6% of American 17 year olds can read at what NAEP designates as an advanced level, i.e., they can synthesize and learn from specialized reading material. Whereas reading scores for fourth grade and eighth grade students have risen since NAEP reading scores were first administered in 1971, the scores for twelfth graders have gone down. Research data report that over 3,000,000 high school students cannot keep up with their classmates because of reading difficulties. So extensive is the problem that some experts argue "secondary teachers should just assume that most of their students cannot read at grade level," ("Johnny Still Can't Read," Peggy J. Farber, Harvard Education Letter Research Online, July/August 1999).
Q: How should our policies toward older readers change? A: Educators have been re-examining approaches to adolescent literacy. Even the term "adolescent literacy" itself signals a shift in thinking from previous terms such as content area literacy or secondary reading. The International Reading Association has played a significant role in recognizing new opportunities for supporting the literacy growth of adolescents, especially through the Commission on Adolescent Literacy that was established in 1997 and will serve through May 2003. One of the main accomplishments of the Commission was the publication of Adolescent Literacy: A Position Statement (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999), which was written to remind policy makers, educators, and the general public about the supports adolescents need in order to achieve continuing literacy growth:
The authors of the position statement make recommendations for focusing on the literacy needs of adolescent learners, including providing them with:
To read the full text of IRA's Adolescent Literacy position statement, go to IRA's Web site: http://www.reading.org/positions/adol_lit.html Q: Are there any specific strategies to help older students become better readers? A: Yes, indeed. Educators have developed specific teaching strategies to meet the needs of older struggling students. Jack Humphrey, director of the Middle Grades Reading Network in Evansville, IN, has been a leading advocate in reforming approaches to middle school literacy education. He offers 12 administrative strategies that, while written for middle schools, apply equally well to high schools:
In terms of teaching strategies, there is a consensus in the reading literature that teachers need to focus on helping older students improve their comprehension skills. Vicki Jacobs, in her article, "What Secondary Teachers Can Do to Teach Reading," (Harvard Education Letter Research Online, July/August 1999) defines the need in this way:
Several innovative approaches have been explored in schools. Among the more promising ones singled out by secondary reading experts are the following: Schema theory. This approach to reading looks at comprehension in three stages: (1) pre-reading, (2) guided reading, and (3) post-reading. One of the purposes of pre-reading is to acknowledge the different contexts, experiences, biases, and background knowledge of students that will influence how they read and learn from a text. By knowing what students bring to their reading, teachers can provide them with bridges, or scaffolds, clarifying unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts, and offering other necessary information in the process. Guided-reading activities should engage students in probing the text beyond its literal meaning for deeper understanding. They should include multiple points of view, which is a requirement of higher stages of reading. Students should have the opportunity to revise their preliminary questions, search for tentative answers, gather, organize, analyze, and synthesize evidence, and begin to make generalizations or assertions about their new understanding. In the post-reading stage, teachers give students ways to articulate their understanding of what they have read, and then to test its validity, apply it to a novel situation, or argue it against an opposing assertion. SCAN and RUN Strategy. As described by its developer George Salembier, SCAN and RUN is an acronym that refers to seven strategies that assist students in planning and monitoring their comprehension before, during, and after reading their text. The cues are as follows: S = Survey Headings and Turn Them Into Questions, Salembier has developed a four-step plan to teach this strategy. Step 1: Introduce, model, and memorize the strategy Four dimensions of classroom life are targeted to support adolescent reading development:
At the center of these interacting dimensions, and tying them together, is an ongoing metacognitive conversation in which teacher and students think about and discuss their personal relationships to reading, the social environment and resources of the classroom, their cognitive activity, and the kinds of knowledge required to make sense of text. Reciprocal teaching. An instructional procedure developed by Annemarie Palincsar and Ann Brown, reciprocal teaching is designed to involve teachers and students in a dialogue about text material, during which four comprehension strategies are actively employed:
Each of these strategies aids students in constructing meaning from texts as well as providing teachers with a means of ensuring that students are in fact understanding what they read.
Q: What role does motivation play in developing reading skills? A: Motivating adolescents may very well be the key to turning older students into readers. With so many competing interests in a teen's life - from active social lives to extracurricular activities - it's no wonder that even many adolescents who are fluent readers choose not to read. The problem is further exacerbated by school practices that drain many teenagers' interest in reading. Getting students interested in required reading remains a challenge for most schools. The situation is most challenging in high schools where studying the required texts - works of literature or the classics - has taken the place of student-directed independent reading. Finding a solution seems clear: first, if reading is to be required, select books that are inherently interesting to teenagers. There are many resources educators can utilize to find books that will appeal to teenagers. A good starting point is with the Award Lists for young adult literature. Here are some of the leading ones: The Alex Awards were created to recognize adult books with great potential appeal for a younger audience. Selected by a task force of the Young Adult Library Association (YALSA), some of the selections for 2001 were:
The Margaret A. Edwards Award honors the lifetime achievement of an author whose work has helped adolescents become aware of themselves and address pressing questions. The 2001 award winner was Robert Lipsyte, author of The Contender and One Fat Summer. There are also a number of resources of recommended titles for this audience, including: YALSA's Best Books for Young Adults. In 2001, 76 books of fiction, nonfiction, biography, and poetry were recommended by YALSA for young adults, ages 12-18. YALSA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. In 2001, the committee selected 16 books in the field of the paranormal, 22 Westerns, 25 read aloud titles, and 22 works if poetry. Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Each year YALSA also selects outstanding titles that will appeal to reluctant teen readers. In 2001, 36 fiction and 43 nonfiction works were singled out. Editors' Choice. Each year Amazon.com selects their favorite books for teens. Their top five in 2000 were:
In general, looking for "young adult" titles is a wise approach for locating books of interest to this age group. (Since the 1960's, publishing houses have targeted Young Adults as a specific reading audience.) But as Robert Cormier, a leading author of the young adult genre states,
Once provided with reading that is of interest to them, most adolescents report that they enjoy reading. To ensure that selected titles are going to be motivating, many feel that adolescents should have a choice in what they read. Sometimes, the activities and assessments that accompany required reading can make reading enjoyable books a dreaded chore. Being tested, required to write essays, or responding to numerous fact-based questions can take the joy out of otherwise enjoyable books. Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, Founder of the Australian Centre for Youth Literature, likes to ask teachers about their favorite books and then hit them with this question: "Do you feel a terrible urge to write an essay about them?" According to Nieuwenhuizen and other experts in the field, many teens lose interest in reading because books stop being fun. Some reading, according to these experts, needs to be relegated strictly to the realm of enjoyment. In fact, Nieuwenhuizen reports that when teachers speak of their wish to include Harry Potter novels in their curriculum, she begs them not to: "Leave something just for pleasure." |
|
|
Order Videos Online |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Questions and Answers
