Middle Schools With Content Material Term Paper

There are some teaching strategies available that have been shown to generally improve student interest and motivation to improve their reading abilities and comprehension levels; however, because every student is unique, these strategies should be used as a guide rather than a cookbook in developing and fine-tuning teaching strategies for a given class. In this regard, Conley and Hinchman (2004) recommend that the following teaching strategies to help improve literary rates in middle school and beyond:

Continuous reading instruction with an emphasis on developing strategic knowledge for dealing with unknown words and comprehension; improving adolescent literacy rates requires reading instruction that continues in content areas across grades, especially as adolescents are required to read more demanding materials while responding to increasingly complex tasks and studies have confirmed the importance of direct and incidental vocabulary development (and teaching comprehension) through activating prior knowledge, determining importance, imagery, and summarization, across age groups.

Develop students' strategic understandings of how they read. "Not only do adolescents need to work on developing comprehension, but they must also understand where, when, and how to apply varied comprehension strategies" (42). The authors also emphasize the uniqueness of each student and the need for fine-tuning such strategies to the individual student and suggest that, "One of the joys of working with adolescents is that they can contribute immeasurably to diagnoses of their literacy-related needs. Recent work suggests that individual teenagers can recognize the sources of their difficulties and, from this recognition, can learn to strategize and move forward to the reading of increasingly complex texts" (43). This strategy has also been shown to help adolescent self-esteem and efficacy.

Conclusion

The research was consistent in emphasizing a growing need to address the problems related to adolescent literacy in America's schools today. Beyond the foregoing recommended teaching strategies, encouraging the active participating of parents and caregivers in these initiatives perhaps remains the most important component. In this regard, Conley and Hinchman emphasize that, "Providing an authentic role for parents in adolescent literacy. NCLB specifies a number of roles for parents in early literacy education, both in school and at home. Comparatively, parents are seldom seen in secondary schools, and very little research has been devoted in the area of adolescent literacy to parents and their role in schools" (43). If parents become more involved in their children's reading efforts, it will communicate a vital message concerning the importance of reading to these adolescents, and will likely help them achieve improved academic outcomes across the board.

Works Cited

AEE Fact Sheet. (2007). Alliance for Excellent Education. [Online]. Available: http://www.all4ed.org/publications/ReadingNext/AdolescentLiteracyFactSheet.pdf.

Conley, Mark W. And Kathleen a. Hinchman. (2004). "No Child Left Behind: What it Means for U.S. Adolescents and What We Can Do about it the No Child Left Behind Act Promises All Students a Better Chance to Learn, but Does That Promise Include Adolescents?" Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(1):42.

Jobs for the 21st Century. (2006). Alliance for Excellent Education.…