Chapter 18: A Call to Action: What We Know About Adolescent Literacy Instruction (updated July 2018)

 This document provides research-based resources to assist in the acquisition of reading as "a complex, purposeful, social, and cognitive process." Readers must understand the written word and combine that with their background knowledge to construct meaning. Reading competence is a developmental process that continues to grow and students need literacy resources as they grow. Some key actions to consider in adolescent reading are below.

1. Incorporation of Disciplinary Literacy Instruction- in the middle grades and high school, reading becomes more academic. Students need teachers to help understand the more complex text.
2. Integration of Multiple and Social Literature- adolescents use literacy daily in their lives. They use this literacy to make sense of their world through digital text, classic literature, gaming, interactions with music and social media. They come to school with these literary resources. Teachers need to recognize the value of these literacies. 
3. Orchestration of Engagement and Motivation- In order for students to meet literacy challenges they need confidence. Once they become confident in their literacy abilities, they become more engaged readers. Students need to read not only texts required by the curriculum, but also text they are interested in. The more they read, even self-selected text, the more fluent they become. With fluency they will build vocabulary and gain knowledge of text structures.
4. Appreciation of Multicultural Perspectives and Authors- adolescent readers need opportunities to read diverse types of text that show multiple perspectives. As educators we need to give instructional support to adolescent readers. This can help them gain experience, build fluency, and develop range as readers.  

Some suggestions for teacher of reading are:

• Teachers should model how students access specific content area texts.
• Lesson in literacy need to connect with students' lives so they can see how it relates with life experiences.
• Teachers need to move students to deeper understandings and greater independence in constructing knowledge. 

Adolescent readers need:

• to think about their thinking when they engage with texts.
• to examine texts for text structure, inferences, questions and understanding of complex topics.
• opportunities to choose texts that interest them and be given time to read every day.

Teachers of adolescent readers need:

• materials that students are interested in
• to honor students' cultural backgrounds
• to recognize when students are struggling with meaning and need more assistance
• to converse about text in authentic, real-life ways
• to allow students the time and space to make meaning of text