Teen Literacy Tips

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How do you pick a book for your students to read as a whole class? I’m fortunate enough to work in a school where I have the flexibility to change titles each year if I want to. I know that many of you are in schools where certain novels are mandated, or where you [...]

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When I was in college, my summer job one year was restocking shelves for a grocery store in Billings, Montana. I worked the graveyard shift, from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., unloading pallets of groceries from the truck, wheeling them into the aisles on pallet-jacks, and placing the products in neat little rows on [...]

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What is teen literacy? What are we after when we say we want our adolescents to be more literate? What is the aim of teaching teens to read?
Literate teens are:
Fluent readers: Teen readers must know how to read. That seems obvious, but many teens still struggle with decoding words, and to some [...]

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How do you start the year in your literature class?  One of the first stories I have my eighth graders read is “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov.  It is a perfect story to start the year with for several important reasons:

It’s short.  I want to get students involved with literature quickly, so it’s important to [...]

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