Currents in Literacy

Helping Teens Reverse Reading Failure

By Mary E. Curtis and Ann Marie Longo

Older students with reading difficulties pose all sorts of challenges for a teacher. How do you motivate them? Where do you find appropriate methods and materials? What are the most important areas for them to work on? How much progress can you really expect them to make?

For the past several years we have worked on reading with teens who are socially and emotionally at risk because of factors such as school failure, chronic neglect and abuse, and illegal and antisocial behaviors. In this article, we share some of our experiences with those students, highlighting some of the methods and materials that we found to work best (Curtis & Longo, 1999).

Motivation

Make them feel safe. To make progress in reading, teens need to feel supported. A simple but powerful way for teachers to do this is to let students know beforehand what activities are planned for a class session and how long each activity will take. When teens have the knowledge they need to predict what will be happening, they have control over their learning environment. When they have control, they feel safe and they become more willing to take risks. In our experience, students will work on even the most difficult tasks if they know it will be for a short, pre-set period of time.

Teens also benefit from having clarity about the kinds of behavior you expect from them. If participation is a requirement, let them know that ahead of time. And make sure that you tell them why. We have found that most students will put some effort into any task they understand the value of and believe can improve their ability to read.

Define success as learning (not just performing). Many teens with reading problems are afraid to make a mistake. Unfortunately, we as teachers don't always do everything we can to eliminate that fear. Students need to know the value of errors in learning. When we measure success in terms of how much they learn, teens are willing to be challenged. As challenge leads to growth, motivation increases.

Provide evidence that learning is occurring. Teens appreciate being viewed as consumers. If you have evidence that your instruction works, share it with your students. You will be amazed at their interest and the kinds of questions they will ask.

Design ways for your students to recognize the progress they are making. Whether it be as simple as a pre-/post-test each week, or as sophisticated as portfolio assessment, frequent and regular demonstrations of growth are fundamental for motivating teens. When we have actually shown students how much they have learned (as opposed to just telling them), we have been much more successful in convincing them that further gains are possible. It also gives them the opportunity to see how their effort contributes to their success.

Methods and Materials

Make practice a part of every day. As teachers, we sometimes become so focused on how to present new knowledge and skills that we forget to give our students opportunities to apply what they have learned. We have found practice to be especially important when working with teens who have a history of reading failure. Practice builds both confidence and fluency- two areas in which nearly every older student with a reading difficulty has needs.

The best way to practice reading is, of course, to "just do it." For teens who are several grade levels behind, collaborative oral reading in small groups works especially well. To make it more interactive, we set it up so that students' turns at reading come at unexpected times (e.g., passing the turn during the middle of a sentence). Success with the procedure requires a classroom where students are comfortable with risk-taking, however, and respectful of each others' efforts.

Independent reading is something which teens with reading problems usually recognize the importance of, but rarely find time for. To assist them, we make reading outside of class a part of their course requirement. When teachers assist students in finding appropriate materials and check with them weekly about their progress, most students come to view 10-15 minutes a day of independent reading as a manageable assignment.

Games are another way to provide practice. Our students delight in playing versions of games like Jeopardy, and Taboo, that incorporate their course vocabulary. Once everyone has become familiar with the rules, students can work in small groups to design their own "rounds" of the games.

Software is still another excellent tool for providing practice. We have found that programs like Spell It, and Word Attack, (which teachers can customize) provide enjoyment for students who need practice on word-level skills. The Carmen Sandiego, series has also worked well with our students who need opportunities to apply study skills and expand their background knowledge.

Present reading as an opportunity "to try someone else's life on for size." We first learned about this approach several years ago, from a magazine called Voice of Youth Advocates. Rather than trying to find texts about topics that our students told us they were interested in (e.g., romance, basketball, the legal system), we decided to look for materials that would introduce them to new interests. This turned out not to be as difficult as it might sound. Historical fiction worked particularly well. Via novels, our students quickly became engaged in topics such as slave trading (Something Upstairs), civil rights (The Watsons Go To Birmingham), immigration (Land of Hope), the holocaust (Escape from Warsaw), the underground railroad (Freedom Crossing), child labor (Lyddie), and orphan trains (A Family Apart). Biographical material also worked well (especially Jamestown's Heroes and Eccentrics). Once students began to see reading as a vehicle for exploring the unknown- not just a way to confirm what they already knew- it was not difficult at all to find materials that would stimulate them.

Instructional Focus

Opt for depth rather than breadth. When teachers work with older readers who have needs in a variety of areas, they often feel obligated to provide instruction that addresses each and every need. The amount of growth that results from this kind of approach is usually negligible, however, since no one area ever receives the emphasis required.

Our students have experienced the most improvement when we have focused their instruction on the causes (not the consequences) of their reading difficulties. How do we make that decision? We take a developmental approach to understanding their reading problems (Chall, 1983; 1996). A developmental framework guides us in ensuring that our students are continuously engaged in tasks appropriate to their level of reading development, and that instruction is always focused on the knowledge and skills most critical for moving them to the next level. We have found that the time up front to establish their current level of reading is well worth the effort.

Support students' desire to learn in stages. As a general rule, teens with a history of academic failure do not like, nor are they likely to benefit from a "discovery approach" to improving their reading skills. They would have figured it out by now if intelligence alone was all that it took! Instead, older students tend to prefer teaching that proceeds in steps, beginning first with an explanation and/or modeling of what a particular task requires, followed by some time spent on guided practice in performing the task, and ending with some independent practice.

Making Progress

Aim for accelerated growth. When we first began our work with adolescent poor readers several years ago, we encountered a great deal of pessimism about how much growth we could expect them to make. Some experts counseled us to direct our energies toward designing ways for our students to cope with their reading problems. Others encouraged us to work instead with younger children, their argument being that for older youth, it was just too late.

Once we started to work with the teens, however, we were struck by the amount of progress that they were able to make. After one semester of instruction, students were making nearly a year's gain on standardized reading tests. Students with whom we were able to work for two years averaged about four years' growth.

This is not to say that improvement was easy for our students and their teachers. It wasn't! But with motivation, appropriate methods and materials, and instruction focused on the causes of students' reading difficulties, our results demonstrated that reading failure in teens can be reversed.

Conclusion

From our work with troubled youth, we know that how and why teens end up with reading problems is a complicated matter. More importantly, though, we also know that teachers need not fully understand the underlying sources of students' reading problems in order to help. What teachers do need are the following: (1) information about their students' current levels of reading development, and (2) a framework for identifying the best ways to accelerate students' progress toward higher levels of achievement.

References

Chall, J.S. (1983; 1996). Stages of Reading Development. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Curtis, M.E., & Longo, A.M. (1999). When Adolescents Can't Read: Methods and Materials That Work. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.

Mary E. Curtis, Ph.D. is the founding director of the Center for Special Education at Lesley University. Before coming to Lesley in 1999, Mary Beth directed the Boys Town Reading Center. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, and she has been Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University and Associate Director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory.

Ann Marie Longo is the director of the Boys Town Reading Center at Father Flanagan's Boys' Home. Ann Marie received her doctorate degree in Reading from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research and teaching experiences have included students at the University, secondary, and elementary levels.