This document outlines strategies for engaging adolescent readers. It discusses 5 overarching needs of adolescent readers: relevance, choice, competence and autonomy, social interaction, and media integration. It provides examples of how to meet each of these needs in the classroom, such as allowing choice in assignments, using companion texts at varying levels, implementing discussion strategies, and incorporating media. The overall goal is to motivate teen readers by making content relevant, building their confidence and independence, encouraging social aspects, and relating classroom material to media.

1. Engaging Adolescent
Readers
Great Smokies Reading Council
Presented by Kenny McKee,
BCS High School Literacy Coach

2. Welcome

3. Walk-Around Reading Survey
 Fill in the first columns with your answers.
 Talk to someone else in the room to see how your
reading is alike and different.

4. Adolescents FIVE Overarching Needs
Related to Reading Engagement
 Relevance
 Choice
 Competence and Autonomy
 Social Interaction
 Media Integration

5. Relevance
Young people live in the present and are rarely concerned
about the future; as a result, they are generally not
concerned with how schoolwork relates to an unclear
future.
Classroom activities must have relevance to teens’ lives in
the present for them to be motivated to read.

6. Ideas for Meeting Students’ Needs
for Relevance
 Ask students about their interests and find ways to
integrate their interests into the curriculum.
 Monitor engagement through formative assessment.
 Use surveys to learn more about students.
 Have students create products and presentations for
their peers.
 Use drama.
 Develop inquiry units where students use research to
answer a big idea…”Does age really matter?”
 Link to background knowledge (Anticipation Guides)
 Other ideas?

7. Anticipation Guides

8. Choice

9. Conversation Roundtable

10. Let’s hear what these high school
seniors had to say!

11. Ideas for Meeting Students’ Needs
for Choice
Whenever appropriate, provide mini-choices that empower
students to increase their investment in learning:
•Select a text.
•Select a page to read.
•Select sentences to explain.
•Identify a goal for the lesson.
•Choose three of five questions to answer.
•Write questions for a partner exchange.
•Other ideas?

12. Self-Selected Reading Matters
 In the effort to improve reading, motivating students to
read more is ultimately more important that what they
are reading.

13. Booktalks
Booktalks help students learn more about books and
authors. They can entice them into “trying out” books.

14. Types of Booktalks
 Excerpt
 Discussion
 First-Person (Believe it or not, this is teenagers’
favorite!)

15. Book Trailers
Web-based “commercials” that function much the same as
traditional booktalks.

16. Competence/Autonomy
 Teens need to feel like they can accomplish a task in
order to even attempt it. Thus, goals must be perceived
as achievable in order for teens to feel competent
(Cleveland, 2011).
 Teens also “seek to establish independence firmly”, so
they feel comforted when they have the tools to
complete tasks autonomously (Anderson, 2004).

17. Companion Texts
Companion Texts are useful for introducing students to concepts in
your content area or for practicing thinking strategies out loud.
Songs
Picture Books
Book Excerpts
Articles
Art
Video Clips
Poems

18. Picture Books

19. Strategies for Building
Competence and Autonomy
 Shortened readings of difficult text.
 Reading about a similar topic in a less complex text.
 Reading with a partner
 Literacy Groups (and a choice in roles)
 Affirm students’ identities as readers.
 Teach self-monitoring and other literacy strategies.
 Use Learning Targets
 Others?

20. “Transactional” Reading Strategies
 “Readers who possess a set of strategies or processes
use them as needed to construct meaning when texts
are challenging” (Ogle & Lang, 2011).

21. “INSERT Note-taking and
Discussion”
1. Explain INSERT codes to students.
? = Questions, Confusing parts
- = Disagreements
! = Surprising ideas
+ = Important ideas
2. Have students read and make annotations.
3. Use the INSERT discussion form to have students
discuss their thoughts in small groups.
4. As time progresses, you can invite students to create
their own annotation codes.
(Ogle & Lang, 2011)

22. Social Interaction
Teens crave relationships.
Many teens (especially those living in poverty) need
opportunities to test and clarify ideas with a small group of
peers before presenting ideas to a whole class.

23. INSERT Note Discussion

24. “Say Something”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Model the strategy.
Explain the procedure to students (Give suggested times
to stop reading like every two lines, every three
paragraphs, etc. depending on difficulty of text.)
The partner’s job is to offer a response to what was said.
Dependent readers often need help in making their Say
Something comments.
Students first need to practice using Say Something on
very short texts.
As with all strategies, modeling will need to be frequent.
(Beers, 2003)

25. “Dramatic Enactments” or
“Instant Replays”
1. Divide the text into sections that
students can “re-create.”
2. Explain to students that they will be
“acting out” a segment of the text to
show their understanding. Model.
3. Students will read the text with
partners to decide how it will be
acted out.
4. After acting it out, students must
explain why how their “skit” relates
to the content they read.

26. Media as a Way for Students to Make
Connections

27. Media as a Way to Interact

28. Poll Everywhere

29. Let’s Set Some Goals!