Check these out! Teenreads is full of book reviews which really get teens interested. Teen Ink has things written by teenagers and all different genre. Great if you need sample articles, editorials, persuasive pieces, ect.
Literacy Matters and Adlit are great resources for teachers!
If you have not read this book you need to check it out: 7 Highly Strategies of Highly Effective Readers by Elain K. McEwan. She discusses the three prerequisites for comprehension instruction: readers must be fluent, have vocabulary already in place and background knowledge. Reading accurately is essential for comprehension but not adequate. So many struggling readers are so slow with problem solving at the word level that comprehension is greatly compromised. So often we work at the text level, but if students are having extreme difficulty with fluency, I suggest you check their letter/sound fluency and sight word vocabulary. They have to have automaticity with letters, sounds and words to decode in a fast and efficient way. Sometimes, we have to back up to the letter and word level, even with older students.
Some activities to increase fluency:
What other ideas do you have for increasing fluency? Send them to me and I will post them.
Check out an article that I have written at our website; www.cksec.org. Click on downloads and then click on Literacy. This article will be published in the Bulletin’s next edition, a publication put out by the Kentucky Teacher of English and Language Art! Yeah, me!
