Adolescent Literacy: Teaching Reading Comprehension in Middle and High School

Reading is a high focus area in elementary school, but reading comprehension instruction tends to drop off once students reach upper elementary and middle school grades. Content educators would agree, however, that many students fail to have the reading skills to successfully understand their math, social studies, and other content area textbooks as they progress in higher grades and more challenging courses. Reading ability is a key predictor of achievement in mathematics and science, and the global information economy requires today’s American youth to have far more advanced literacy skills than those required of any previous generation.

The National Center for Education Science, Institute of Education Science (IES), created a report titled Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices. This study highlights findings from research-based strategies to improve adolescent literacy. There are four recommended practices:

• Provide explicit vocabulary instruction and strategies to help students become independent vocabulary learners.

• Provide direct and explicit comprehension strategy instruction.
• Provide opportunities for extended text discussion and student engagement.
• Provide intensive intervention for struggling readers and monitor all students' reading progress.

To acquire the skills they need, students must work hard to refine and build upon their initial reading skills. Students in upper elementary grades and in middle and high school classes need help to acquire more advanced skills, especially those related to content area learning

Pepper has recently released a new Pepper Online Workshop (POW) based on the IES report described above. In this workshop, we focus on the fourth recommended practice of providing intensive intervention for struggling readers and monitoring all students’ reading progress. The POW, titled “Interventions for Struggling Readers”, focuses on exploring what adolescent literacy looks like and how content teachers can build comprehension instruction into their existing teaching. The workshop also explores how teachers determine students’ skill levels so they can help pinpoint students that need additional assistance. While schoolwide teacher collaboration across content areas is essential for improving outcomes for struggling readers, in many situations adolescents that struggle with reading need qualified specialists to provide intensive and individualized interventions. If you are interested in learning more about reaching the needs of struggling adolescent readers, be sure to check out our new POW, Interventions for Struggling Readers.

Pepper provides a wide range of courses for teachers that allow for growth and learning opportunities. You also have access to Pepper's online learning community where you can meet others who are teaching and learning about adolescent literacy.

Using Digital Tools to Individualize Instruction

As part of their Extending the Digital Reach report, Education Week also published an article highlighting how ed-tech tools are changing the ways in which teachers can differentiate their literacy and reading instruction. This report, Digital Tools Aim to Personalize Literacy Instruction, focuses on how new technologies can transform learning by providing individualized instruction. Education Week talked with Graphite, a division of Common Sense Media, and a Pepper partner, to gain insight on some of these new tools.

Graphite specializes in providing teachers and schools with free research-based classroom tools. They provided some suggestions for helping teachers create personalized literacy opportunities for students. Here are some of their recommendations:

1. Customize Texts to Each Student's Reading Level - Online programs such as Raz-Kids and Newsela provide topical reading at a variety of levels.
2. Allow Teachers to Target Specific Reading Skills - Apps, such as Lexia Reading Core5, are now available that allow teachers to target reading skills that students need to develop.
3. Diagnose and Respond to Individual Students' Strengths and Weaknesses - Software, such as Read 180, will analyze a student’s reading and then provide additional texts and vocabulary based on their assessment results.
4. Encourage Teachers to Offer Customized Supports - “Digital tools and interactive e-readers can also allow teachers to customize the reading experience for students—and make themselves an integral part of each student's reading process.”
5. Have Students Show What They've Learned in Different Ways - Differentiation. Tools such as, BookBuilder, give students opportunity to write, edit, and publish their own writing and ideas.

Technology can provide support and opportunity for students to experience learning on a level that they understand. It gives teachers an opportunity not to just “teach to the middle”, but to teach each student as they need for learning and understanding.

Pepper Reading Courses are available to help you apply new literacy instruction concepts to your classroom. Also, be sure to check out Graphite in the Pepper Resource Library to find technology tools to meet the needs of individual students.

Using Socratic Seminars and Literature Circles: Teaching by Questioning

The use of Socratic Seminars, also known as Literature Circles, in the classroom gives students the opportunity to engage and connect with their peers around a commonly read text. It should be noted that the use of the Socratic Method is not just for high schoolers, but can easily and effectively be used at all grade levels. Ross Cooper, Supervisor of Instructional Practice K-12, Salisbury Township School District, Allentown, PA, uses Literature Circles in his 4th grade classroom and talks about it in his recent article, “(Almost) Paperless Literature Circles”. The biggest thing to see here is that students own this process and thus are directing and managing their own learning - with some careful guidance from Cooper. Key to his implementation was his making sure that each student, in each group, had a role. Here are the “jobs” that his students performed:

• Connector: Go into detail regarding a specific text-to-self or text-to-text connection.
• Passage Picker: Find one or two paragraphs that are moving in some way. Write why you picked each passage and describe your thoughts.
• Plot Twister: What exactly would you change in the chapters that you read for homework to make them go the way that you would have preferred? Why?
• Wonderer: As you read, create a list of relevant statements starting with "What if?" or "I wonder."
• Predictor: Based on what you read for homework, explain what you think is going to happen next. Also explain why you made your predictions.
• Psychologist: Give advice to one of the book’s characters. What would you tell him or her to do, and why?
• Journalist: Pick a character and, based on what you read for homework, write a passage in his or her personal journal.
• Student Choice: Decide how you would like to respond to the chapters that you read for homework. If you aren't satisfied with any of the jobs, create your own idea.

These roles ensure that each student is actively engaged in the process. It also gives students the opportunity to direct their own learning.

The Paideia Institute focuses on training schools, administrators, and teachers to use the Socratic Method in their schools and classrooms. The word Paideia is pronounced (py-dee-a) from the Greek "pais, paidos": the upbringing of a child. According to The Paideia website, “socratic seminars continue the tradition of Socrates, the classical Greek philosopher who taught his followers by asking questions. Today, Socratic dialogue can transform students’ learning experience in classrooms from elementary through high school and beyond. When facilitated by a skilled teacher, the Paideia approach to Socratic Seminar can lead to:

• Significantly improved student achievement in core Language Arts skills, including reading, speaking and listening, and writing
• Increased student motivation because students get to generate and express their own ideas"

The use of the Socratic Method is generally characterized as "teaching by asking questions". Paideia officially defines Socratic Seminar “as a collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated with open-ended questions about a text.”

Pepper Langauge Arts Courses provide a great launching point for incorporating the Socratic Method and Literature Circles into your classroom practice. In the K-5 group, two courses, Text-Based Discussions in Elementary School and Balancing Informational and Literary Texts, provide great opportunity for engaging students in question-based learning. At the Middle and High School level, Text Discussion and ELA/Literacy Shifts courses are available for teachers.

Pepper Courses and your Pepper Learning Community can be great resources for implementing new ideas. Utilizing the experience and skills of teachers from around the country can provide unique opportunities for networking and sharing lesson ideas and classroom management tips.

New Writing Course: Argument Writing for High School

Argument Writing for High School was released on August 3, 2015, along with 3 other new Writing Courses from Pepper.

This course focuses on teaching high school students to write persuasive arguments. Participants will learn to deconstruct, analyze, research, and write an argument essay that meets standards and expectations for high school (grades 9–12).

Teachers will also be taken through all stages of the writing process, from learning the elements of an argument writing essay to analyzing sample texts, choosing fruitful topics, completing writing activities, considering their audience, gathering research, revising and editing their work. All of these stages are designed to help participants formulate their own strategies for teaching argument essay writing. A template is provided that walks users through exploring a potential topic for writing and helps them evaluate if this is a topic they want to pursue. Click image to enlarge view:

The course requires 6 hours of work online with an additional 4 hours offline. You can get more information and a full course outline by clicking here.

These courses were authored by content experts from Accelerated Literacy Learning.

Check out this course and our other offerings in Math, English/Language Arts, and Special Ed, by visiting Pepper!

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FREE WestEd Webinar: Reading and Writing, Common Core Style!

One of the areas on which the goals of Common Core are focused is building literacy--not only in traditional ways via ELA education, but also across the curriculum. Reading and writing, and the skills that are part of reading and writing, have an enormous role to play as students learn to engage with a variety of texts, topics, ideas, and problems.

This WestEd webinar takes a closer look at Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 1, and attempts to connect it to evidence-based interpretation in other subjects and areas as well. This is a great opportunity to gain a better, clearer understanding of how the CCSS can help students develop literacy and put interpretive skills to work across disciplines.

TAKE A LOOK HERE for the webinar (approximately 34 minutes), and be sure to CLICK ON THE FOLDER to download supporting PDFs and other materials!

The School Librarian and Common Core--A Critically Important Role!

In the information age, the school librarian is arguably one of the most important roles in any school. Because Common Core has the goal of helping students become intelligent, engaged, critically aware readers and interpreters of information, the library can be a fantastic hub where students can make connections across subjects and deepen and broaden the concepts and learning tools they get in their classrooms.

This paper, a joint effort of the education reform organization Achieve and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), aims to help school librarians think about how they can play a transformative role in their schools as part of the transition to Common Core State Standards.

Classroom teachers also can benefit from the information in this brief, since it is through meaningful collaboration with librarians that schools can "cooperatively break the isolation of the traditional classroom."

CLICK HERE to download the full PDF text of the brief!

ELA/Literacy Lessons Aligned to Common Core—Created For Teachers, By Teachers!

It’s always helpful to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. Taking a look at lessons developed by other educators can inspire, inform, and challenge you, as well as provide great, concrete ideas for adapting and developing your own lessons that will meet your students' needs.

This lesson bank, from the CCSS-focused non-profit group Student Achievement Partners, offers a collection of nearly 300 free Common Core-aligned ELA/literacy lessons for grades 3-10. The lessons were collaboratively authored, edited, and reviewed by teams of educators with support from Student Achievement Partners. Click HERE to check it out!

Not an ELA instructor? Check out the rest of the website—here’s where to find the homepage—to find resources and ideas for school leaders and math educators as well.