Reaching Older Readers
Kindling a Love of Reading
Q & A | Resources

Cover Story
Reaching Older Readers

Michigan Teacher Greg Kurek knows that for older students, reading means more than sounding out words. It requires an ability to comprehend text.

Anyone who's seen firefighter Kim Stoepker leap into action with a hook and ladder is convinced this 12th grader knows her stuff. Yet only a few years ago, Kim lacked the basic reading comprehension skills needed to succeed in Bridgman, Michigan's Reed Middle School, let alone understand the 594-page Essentials of Firefighting manual she uses today.

Then, in sixth grade, Michigan language arts teacher Greg Kurek set Kim's reading ablaze with meaning, using strategies aimed at helping older readers process and organize information.

While Kim's turnaround is remarkable, her challenges are not unique.

"Reading comprehension difficulty among older students is a pervasive problem," says Kurek, a member of NEA's Task Force on Reading. "There isn't a teacher alive who hasn't experienced following up on a reading assignment and finding you're talking to a vacant audience. Kids come into class knowing they haven't been successful readers in the past, so they ask themselves, 'Why bother?'"

Kurek's perceptions are backed by a 1998 survey from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that although virtually all adolescents are able to carry out simple reading tasks, only 40 percent can read well enough to comfortably manage standard high school texts. And only 6 percent of 17-year-olds read at levels necessary to synthesize specialized reading material.

The problem, simply put, is that while beginning readers must learn to read-that is, learn to decode the written word with speed and accuracy-secondary readers must read to learn. And knowing how to untangle specialized texts to construct meaning does not come automatically.

Kim, for example, had been part of a pull-out program for reading and language arts for years. She could decode text with even a certain degree of fluidity, but she needed help in processing text.

Reading experts note three distinct categories of struggling adolescent readers: students who cannot read; students who read, but not well; and students who read well, but do not study effectively.

The first two categories may require one-on-one or remedial instruction that's beyond the content teacher's ability to address alone. But the third-and largest-category of students, says Kurek, can improve markedly by reinforcing basic reading strategies that center around teaching kids to interact with text. These include:

1. Draw on background knowledge. Let students know your goals for reading right up front-where they're headed and why-so they can continually assess their roles as readers.

2. Talk about the reading process. Stress that reading is a three-step process of constructing meaning. As readers they need to know how to connect and focus, select and organize information, and integrate and apply what they've learned.

3. Remember K-W-L. Ask "What do you Know about the topic?"; "What do you Want to know?"; "What have you Learned?" Model this technique as a class on a blackboard or overhead. Then have students create a personal grid to record their answers as they read along in the text.

4. Read aloud-think aloud. Read aloud a difficult portion of text while they follow along. Think aloud in a way that models how to improve lagging comprehension: making predictions, describing mental images, drawing analogies, and verbalizing confusing points.

5. Organize notetaking. Get students thinking about how to take notes for any assignment. Promote the use of keywords, marginal symbols, note cards, learning logs, flow charts, sticky tags, and highlighters to mark materials as they read along. Tell them it's worth the effort because they won't have to reread the entire text to review.

6. Use QAR. Question, Answer, Relationship. Teach students to recognize how to find the answer by considering the type of question. Is the question very specific, something that can be answered by a single word or sentence? Will it take a paragraph? Or do I have to think about this on my own?

7. Use cooperative groups. Have students read silently in groups, then summarize each paragraph with a sentence. Next, have them discuss and compile a group summary. Discuss group summaries as a class. This technique slows students down to think about reading and ties in other skills such as reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

8. Get them moving. Do charting and mapping. Seat them on the floor. Cut apart diagrams and reassemble. Allow them to use the board or the overhead. Let them draw what they've read.

9. Allow reading from choice. Let students self-select books they want to read, and have them use a reading log to record them.

10. Keep it up. Tell students these strategies don't just pertain to kids. They're what successful readers do for a lifetime.

Taking time to share such strategies with older students has a noticeable payoff, says Kurek, now a district reading consultant and an International Reading Association board member.

"When you empower kids with ways for working in informational expository text, you really change the quality of what's going on in the classroom. You gain deeper content knowledge, build relationships, and help students acquire a quest for lifelong learning."

And of his former student Kim, who last year became the first female firefighter in Bridgman, Michigan, Kurek says, "When Kim gets to talking about her topic, it's really amazing what she knows. She found that reading didn't control her. She controlled reading."

--Michelle Y. Green

For more: E-mail Kurek at geogreg@wmol.com. Find more strategies at www.nea.org/readingmatters/class/.

Kindling a Love of Reading

Students at Natick High School in Massachusetts enjoy good books, good friends, and a cuppa cappuccino during the Read-A-Latte event for Read Across America.

Teaching kids to read is one thing. Getting them excited about reading is another. NEA members across the country have found ways to spark the interest of reluctant older readers with a variety of fun reading activities you can adapt for a Read Across America event on March 2 or throughout the year.

• In Massachusetts, the Natick High School library will again be transformed into a bookstore-caf? to celebrate Read Across America. "Read-A-Latte" invites students to browse book displays, listen to music, sip a cappuccino, and chat with their friends about books they've enjoyed. A steaming success with students last year, the project calls on the talents of the English, art, cooking, and music departments and parents who volunteer as servers for the two-day event.

• NEA and Youth Service America announce the Youth Leaders for Literacy program to encourage literacy service and honor youth involved in reading-related activities that benefit others. The seven-week program-which begins on Read Across America Day, March 2, and runs through National Youth Service Day, April 21-awards prizes to youth leaders who develop model literacy projects. To be eligible for prizes, service projects must have some kind of activity, such as a read-aloud session, a trip to the library, or book making, scheduled each week of the seven-week project period. Visit SERVEnet at www.servenet.org or NEA's Read Across America site, www.nea.org/readacross.

• Students in the Mt. Carmel School District in Pennsylvania will be showing off their knowledge of books read in a school-wide "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Reader?" event. Each grade level will conduct its own show, with winners being designated "Millionaire Readers." The district's TV crew will video the game show for airing on the local school station.

• Drama students from Kentucky's Madisonville North Hopkins, attired in appropriate Cat-gear constructed by the school's fashion design class, will board the big yellow bus to read in nearly every classroom in Hopkins County.

• Students at Forked River School, New Jersey, will compete in a Battle of the Books. Teams of students must answer student- and parent-generated questions about books they've read on their own. The three-round competition begins in February, with the final three teams going "book to book" on Read Across America Day.

• Eisenhower High School students in family and consumer sciences classes and Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America will plan, prepare, and present a wide assortment of Seussian activities for several Houston, Texas, community child care facilities.

More activities for older readers are being added to the Read Across America Web site every day. Visit www.nea.org/readacross

Q & A
On Reading To Learn

The reading wars of the last decade sparked intense debate on best methods for teaching beginning readers. But what about the particular needs of older students who have learned to read, but still struggle with reading to learn? Cathy Roller, Director of Research and Policy for the International Reading Association, discusses adolescent reading.

Why the sudden focus on adolescent literacy?
These things go in cycles. In the 1980s there was a focus on intermediate and upper grades and comprehension, but that followed an intensive period of beginning reading and reading methods discussions. What happens is that resources get shifted. Very often people underestimate the difficulty in moving from learning to read to reading to learn.

How is reading different for older students?
Students don't automatically understand what they're reading just because they know how to say all the words on the page. This is particularly true when they start reading complicated, expository formats they haven't encountered before. The more kids struggle, the more you begin to get a chorus rising, and that's what you're seeing now. The lesson we have to learn is that it really does take good reading instruction from Kindergarten through 12th grade to produce the kinds of sophisticated readers we need for an information society.

Are today's teachers prepared for that challenge?
The information is available, and most teachers going through preparation programs encounter it. But many don't get the depth of information they need, particularly those at the secondary level. Many educators are unaware of the reading demands that their fields place on children.

Does technology act as a disincentive to read for older students?
You can't really navigate with the Web without very sophisticated reading and search skills. While there may be some information in visual form, you can't get to it unless you have very developed literacy skills. To use technology, students need more literacy, not less.

What challenges do increased testing in schools place on struggling readers?
High-stakes tests exacerbate the issue because you're not testing students' content knowledge, you're testing their reading ability with these tests. Kids who struggle with reading already know they're not going to do well on these tests. Many kids end up just dropping out.

How can educators motivate reluctant readers?
If reading is always stressful and anxiety producing, if students are used to having an "academic regulator" sitting on their shoulder all the time, it takes all of the joy out of reading. There have to be places in school where adolescents can read things they want to read. If they never experience reading as a pleasurable and intrinsically rewarding activity, they won't have any reason for reading outside of school. Read-ing for fun has to be a sanctioned activity.

For more: Contact Cathy Roller at Pubinfo@reading.org. To learn more about the Inter-national Reading Association's adolescent reading initiatives, visit www.ira.org/focus/adolescent.html.