Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level

INTRODUCTION

BUILDING READING PROFICIENCY AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL A Guide to

Resources

Cynthia L. Peterson, Ph.D. David C. Caverly, Ph.D. Sheila A. Nicholson, M.S.Ed. Sharon O'Neal, Ph.D. Susen Cusenbary, M.Ed. Southwest Texas State University

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory 211 East 7th Street Austin, TX 78701

?Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2000. This guide is produced in whole or in part with funds from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract #RJ96006801. The content herein does not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education, any other agency of the U.S. Government or any other source.

You are welcome to reproduce Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level and may distribute copies at no cost to recipients; please credit the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory as publisher. SEDL is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer and is committed to affording equal employment opportunities to all individuals in all employment matters. Available in alternative formats.

INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

iv

INTRODUCTION

1

? How to Use the Guide

2

? How Resources Were Selected

3

PART I: PERSPECTIVES

6

? Struggling Secondary Readers: A Closer Look

6

? Informal Assessment

7

? Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level

9

? Principles of Effective Reading Instruction

17

? Principles of Effective Professional Development

19

PART II: RESOURCES

22

? Five Questions Organize the Programs and Strategies

22

? Programs

23

? Strategies

23

? Definitions of Terms

70

PART III: PROCEDURES FOR COMPILING THE GUIDE

133

BIBLIOGRAPHY

136

INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was sponsored by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory and prepared by a team of

? ?

Dr. Shernaz Garc?a, The University of Texas at Austin Dr. Wes Hoover, Southwest Educational

investigators in the College of Edu-

Development Laboratory

cation at Southwest Texas State University, ? Dr. Marty Hougen, Austin Independent

San Marcos, Texas.

School District, Austin, Texas

The following individuals provided assis- ? Tom Leyden, Texas Association of

tance in the development of this resource.

Secondary School Principals

? Dr. Ellen Bell, Texas Association of

? Brenda Jean Tyler, The University of

Supervision and Administration

Texas at Austin.

? Dian Cooper, Texas Association of

? Dr. Judy Walis, Spring Branch

Supervision and Administration

Independent School District, Spring

? Enrique Garcia, Seguin High School,

Branch, Texas

Seguin, Texas

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

We set out to document the resources available to educators who work with struggling secondary readers. These readers struggle in general education and reading classes, grades six through twelve. Some are students with mild disabilities, classified as learning disabled, for whom regular classroom teachers have instructional responsibility. Some are students whose culture or language differ from the culture of the classroom. Many are students who have become skilled evaders of reading, who know the stress of not being able to read successfully.

By the secondary grades, students are presumed to have acquired basic reading skill. Over the last decade, researchers and policymakers have all but abandoned attention to secondary-level remediation to focus on preventing the need for it. Unfortunately, the need remains. The need for a new look at adolescent literacy was the focus of a recent position statement of the International Read-

ing Association (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999). Our project, initiated by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), was prompted by requests from secondary educators for tools to support their students who struggle with print in the classroom. Its purpose is to establish what we know and to describe what is currently available.

With the goal of building a guide to resources, we reviewed the scholarly literature to determine: (a) current theoretical perspectives and research findings on building reading proficiency at the secondary level and (b) their implications for classroom instruction. Rather than reporting all the factors that can impact secondary-level reading proficiency, we present those for which a research base establishes essential importance and for which there are pedagogical implications. We identified and described programs and strategies that aligned with those findings.

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