Product Description

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This is the time to think boldly about adolescent literacy. So much of what we know about adolescents and their learning has changed in the last decade, and since then both the world of education and the world at large have become very different places. Adolescent Literacy convenes a conversation among today's most important educational thinkers and practitioners to address crucial advances in research on adolescent learning, to assess which of our current practices meets the challenges of the twenty-first century, and to discover transformative ideas and methods that turn the promise of education into instructional practice.

• English language learners
• struggling readers
• technology in the classroom
• multimodal literacy
• compelling writing instruction
• teaching in a “flat world”
• young adult literature.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34658 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
Kylene Beers, a former middle school teacher, is Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University. She is the author of When Kids Can't Read - What Teachers Can Do (Heinemann, 2002) and coeditor - with Robert Probst and Linda Rief - of Adolescent Literacy (Heinemann, 2007). A respected authority on struggling readers who works with elementary, middle school, and high school teachers across the nation, Kylene was recently elected Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English to assume the presidency in 2008.

Bob was first an English teacher in junior and senior high schools in Maryland and then English Supervisor for the Norfolk, Virginia schools before he moved on to Georgia State University as Professor of English Education. He spent much of his time during those years wondering why kids didn't enjoy reading literature quite as much as he did, and trying to figure out how to change that unhappy situation. His search led him to graduate school and the library, where he discovered Rosenblatt's work, and back into classrooms-both his own and those of his student teachers and other educators willing to experiment-where he developed strategies to bring kids and books together more happily. He designed those strategies to respect the interests of the students and their responses to what they read, but also to lead into thoughtful analysis of the texts. And he wanted the literature classroom to become a community of readers and writers who, by sharing their thinking about significant works, grow intellectually, aesthetically, and emotionally. That work led him ultimately to write Response and Analysis: Teaching Literature in the Secondary Schools and to serve as Senior Author of Elements of Literature (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), a literature, composition, and language program for grades 6-12. In addition, he has worked extensively with the National Council of Teacher of English and many state Councils and school systems, and has talked about the teaching of literature with groups in such far-flung places as Sweden, France, Costa Rica, and Guam. What he will offer teachers during this workshop has been developed and refined through many exchanges with these teachers and students in these diverse and challenging settings.

Linda Rief is the author or coeditor of five Heinemann titles, including Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007), The Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007), Adolescent Literacy (2007), Vision and Voice (1999), and Seeking Diversity (1992), as well as the author of 100 Quickwrites (2003). She is an eighth-grade teacher at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, New Hampshire, and an instructor in the University of New Hampshire 's Summer Literacy Institute. She is also a national and international consultant on issues of adolescent literacy. In 2000 she was the recipient of NCTE's Edwin A. Hoey Award for Outstanding Middle School Educator in the English/Language Arts. Her classroom was featured in the series Making Meaning in Literature produced by Maryland Public Television for Annenberg/CPB.

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Customer Reviews

Dinner Party with the Literacy Stars
ADOLESCENT LITERACY is rightfully compared to a dinner party attended by the brightest stars in literacy research. It is also similar to attending an NCTE Convention and meeting all those writers you love to read when it comes to books about teaching. Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, and Linda Rief (no lightweights themselves!) invited over 30 writer/researchers to contribute their latest thoughts on the conundrum of literacy in the 21st century. The result? Let's just say you'll be too satisfyingly full to bother with dessert.

The book offers neat features that enhanced its reading. Their are the usual sidebars highlighting key text, but also commentary by the editors, who lead you to other chapters where other writers tackle similar topics. Thus, if you have a key interest, you will be able to jump about the book with ease and compare the different takes offered by various writers. I also liked how each chapter provided a list of books written by the chapter's author; if you really liked a particular chapter, you could therefor seek out more complete information in the form of a book. Web sites are also provided in this text, and most of them are from established (and, for teachers, practical) sites. We all the know the dangers in publishing web site addresses -- they go dead in no time.

This is not just theory you'll be reading -- there are lots of practical ideas as well. Probst's chapter gives ideas on how to encourage meaningful discussion, and even grade it. Janet Allen shows you how to teach vocabulary effectively. Tom Romano gives tips on joining your students in the writing process. And Harvey Daniels writes a hilarious chapter on the brutal lessons learned from taking home 100 journals to respond to (sounded good in theory until the journals held his weekend hostage!). The whole gamut is covered -- working with emerging technologies, using the power of inquiry through key questions (provided), helping underachieving students, learning from assessment so your teaching can change and improve based on the data, etc. The dessert (I was only kidding -- I couldn't resist) comes in the form of an afterword by Nancie Atwell.

Overall, it's like a "Greatest Hits" book. Instead of buying 30 separate books that would take weeks and weeks to read, you get a chapter each from what these stars in the field of reading and writing literacy feel is MOST important for you to know. Add it to your "must have" list, read it, then share it with fellow teachers, English department heads, and your principal. As the book reminds us: "The times, they are a-changin'," and if you don't change with them, you'll be left in the proverbial dust.

Fantastic Reading
This book did not disappoint. Packed filled with engaging, persuasive and challenging arguments and current issues. Great to read over thirty literacy leaders share their views and philosophies. I could not put it down once I started reading. Essential for all reading teachers and reading coaches.

Perfect for a Professional Study Group
The literacy team at my high school chose this book to read together, and it's been insightful, informative reading. After reading countless how-to books on literacy, it's been refreshing to read a relaxed collection of the nation's best literacy teachers' experiences with students and literacy.

Our group has changed how we organize our study because of this book, too. Each week, we read a new chapter--the book is designed to be read at any point, and the team decides which chapter they want to read next-- and we apply a learning / discussion / writing strategy that we haven't used yet to the chapter. Last week it was table top discussion for "Flying Blind." This week it will be save the last word for me for "The Essence of Understanding," and the week after that, it we'll have a Socratic circle with Burke's "Teaching English Language Arts in a Flat World."

Reading a diverse collection of practicing literacy leaders has enlivened our thinking, our work, and our study. Teachers look forward to our study team, which is amazing because it's at the end of the day, toward the end of the week. They know, however, that the book's content will invite timely discussion, writing, listening, and thinking, and using the book to show teachers literacy strategies has made my work more effective, more interesting.