What Content-Area Teachers Should Know About Adolescent Literacy

The goal of this report (click on the title for this post to download it), prepared by the National Institute for Literacy (part of the U.S. Department of Education) is to help address middle and high school classroom teachers’, administrators’, and parents’ immediate need for basic information about how to build adolescents’ reading and writing skills. The report summarizes some of the current literature on adolescent literacy research and practice. It is divided into two main sections. The first section describes five key components that are critical to the development of reading proficiency: decoding/phonemic awareness and phonics, morphology, vocabulary, fluency, and text comprehension. The second section discusses four other areas that are fundamental in helping adolescents achieve advanced levels of literacy: assessment, writing, motivation, and the needs of diverse learners.