For Middle and High School Teachers " I Have Way Too Many Kids and Too Much Content To Even Think About Teaching Reading in My Class!"

Do teachers of adolescents in both English and other content area classes believe this? Don’t some of us think that teaching reading is not our job? That the kids in our classrooms should have learned to read in the elementary years of school? Aren’t we frustrated with the number of failures in our classrooms? Tired from the daily grind of trying to push students to engage in learning?

I n our district, 68 % of our students in 8 th grade were achieving success on state assessments at the end of the 2008/2009 school year. So that means that about 32% of grade 9 students are struggling to read textbook or novels in your classes.

HOW could teaching students reading strategies within our 6-12 classrooms possibly make a difference???? less frustration confident readers reading with greater independence and more interest enthusiasm in subjects Disinvested and struggling students become functional as better reading skills can be a pathway toward academic engagement. You may even see greater success on assessments.

This Reading web site contains: links to all kinds of information that will help you to begin incorporating the teaching of reading in your classroom. It will help to define skills, strategies, and attitudes necessary for success. It will also identify the kinds of strategies that work best with older learners. Finally, it will illustrate teachers using best practices for adolescent literacy instructions in classrooms across the curriculum. "provide support for disinvested or struggling students to build new identities as readers and students." --Cindy Litman and Cynthia Greenleaf Hopefully, it will help to make your instruction rich, engaging, collaborative, meaningful and possibly transformative. -