Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy: Practical Ideas for Literacy Leaders

Improving student literacy is a daunting task and it is certainly not accomplished overnight. But as we all know, students success both in and out of school hinges on their literacy abilities. Therefore, secondary level educators will welcome this hands-on guide to starting and sustaining a schoolwide literacy initiative aimed at overcoming critical issues in adolescent literacy and improving student achievement.

This practical text is essential for principals, literacy coaches, teacher leaders, and others who are responsible for literacy programs. Each chapter addresses one of the critical issues that middle and high school literacy leaders across the United States have said get in the way of implementing a schoolwide plan to raising students literacy achievement. Such issues include

-Setting up effective language and literacy development for adolescents who are English-language learners
-Getting widespread, active support for a schoolwide literacy improvement effort
-Developing teachers as potential leaders and mentors to their colleagues
-Better understanding, valuing, and building upon contributions that families and communities make to students literacy development

Chapters are filled with concrete suggestions for implementing a plan, including using data, supporting teachers to improve instruction, building leadership capacity, and allocating resources to improve student literacy. For Discussion boxes provide statements and questions to generate discussion and to help you understand teachers beliefs and current practices. You also will find practical protocols, strategies and guidelines, and more than 25 diagnostic tools that specifically address each issue.

The International Reading Association is the world's premier organization of literacy professionals. Our titles promote reading by providing professional development to continuously advance the quality of literacy instruction and research.

Research-based, classroom-tested, and peer-reviewed, IRA titles are among the highest quality tools that help literacy professionals do their jobs better.

Some of the many areas we publish in include:

-Comprehension
-Response To Intervention/Struggling Readers
-Early Literacy
-Adolescent Literacy
-Assessment
-Literacy Coaching
-Research And Policy