Helping Older Struggling Readers

"Adolescent Literacy - Research Informing Practice" from the National Institutes for Literacy at www.nifl.gov.

Literacy Matters a comprehensive site where you can access, free-of-charge, outstanding information on literacy development, particularly for struggling adolescent readers.

The following quotes are from "When Older Students Can't Read", by Louisa Moats, Ph.D:

"Instruction must be cumulative, sequential, and systematic, so that students overcome the bad habit of relying on context and guessing to decode unknown words."

"Several principles drive effective instruction in reading and language. Such instruction is intensive enough to close the ever-widening gap between poor readers and their grade-level peers as quickly as possible. Reading intervention grounded in research imparts to older readers the skills they missed in primary grades and can bring them to grade level in one to two years. Students cannot and should not bypass any critical skills necessary for fluent and meaningful reading just because of their chronological age."

"Above all, students must read as much as possible in text that is not too difficult in order to make up the huge gap between themselves and other students."

"Beyond 3rd grade, poor readers can be taught if the program has all necessary components, the teacher is well prepared and supported, and the students are given time, sufficiently intensive instruction, and incentives to overcome their reading and language challenges. Given the right approach, students will buy in. In fact, they''l ask why they were allowed to go so far without being taught to read."