YOU GOT MORE OF THESE?: Re-engaging Adolescent Readers and
Writers with Meaningful Texts
Our eyes were opened several years ago to
the power of meaningful texts when we were teaching a writing
class to a group of adolescents. You can imagine how excited these
32 ninth-grade students were to take this semester-long writing
course. For 90 minutes every day, our students were put through
their paces. Syntax, vocabulary, generative grammar—our
students averaged 600 written words per day. Yet the atmosphere
was not what you might expect: Despite the 7:30 a.m. starting
time for this first-period class, we enjoyed excellent attendance.
Behavioral challenges were minimal. We saw students who once defined
themselves by their lack of performance become expressive thinkers
and writers; one student, for example, used his writing to disclose
a physically abusive home environment, and many others wrote earnestly
of their struggles with personal relationships, with understanding
the war in Iraq, and with dealing with difficult teachers.
What disrupted the conventional wisdom about adolescents and their
lack of enthusiasm for school in general and for writing in particular?
We believe an important element was our use of the texts of popular
culture—graphic novels, anime, internet sources, and music—as
tools to motivate and inspire creativity (Frey and Fisher, 2004).
Although our class was focused on writing, our students engaged
every day with nontraditional texts selected to spark interest
and to serve as mentor texts for their writing. We debated content
and then analyzed the ways in which artists and writers conveyed
their points of view in powerful ways.
We knew we were on to something when Anthony, a struggling reader
with high social capital among his peers and a reputation as a
difficult student, strolled up to Doug one day. (“Strolled”
is the word for it, too. Anthony never moved anywhere quickly.
That would be so not cool.) We had introduced to the class the
work of Will Eisner, known as the man who gave graphic novels
their name. As the other students wrote dialogue for a wordless
panel from an Eisner story, Anthony casually asked, “You
got more of these?”
Much has been researched and written about
the unique qualities of the adolescent reader, that is, of students
between the ages of 11 and 18 who are enrolled in sixth through
twelfth grades. Not surprisingly, few of the findings are good
news for secondary educators. For example, reading interest and
motivation peak in first grade and decline steadily every year
after that, with the largest one-year drop occurring when students
move to middle school (McKenna et al., 1995). Difficulty with
reading usually begins in the elementary grades, when some students
fall behind and never catch up. Chall and colleagues (1990) described
the “fourth grade slump,” a time when some students,
especially those who live in poverty, exhibit a sudden decrease
in reading comprehension. Even more troubling is that students
who experience this decline in fourth grade are likely to
be in the lowest quartile in eleventh grade (Chall et al., 1996).
These secondary students are commonly labeled as “struggling
readers,” but they do not all struggle for the same reasons:
Approximately 7% of 13-year-olds have serious reading difficulties
that significantly limit their ability to understand written text
(Campbell et al., 2000). The majority of struggling readers, our
second category, are students who can decode efficiently but who
do not effectively use comprehension strategies to support their
understanding (Loranger, 1994; Paris et al., 1991). The vast majority
of struggling readers, therefore, will not improve with a
focus on phonics instruction alone. In fact, comprehension-strategy
instruction has been found to be effective for the adolescent
readers who are struggling most (Gersten et al., 2001). A third
category of students includes those who lack the motivation to
read. Motivation is an important factor in not only the volume
of reading, which is important in and of itself, but also in students’
ability to comprehend (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000).
There have been a variety of explanations for the progressive
disengagement of adolescent readers who struggle with reading.
Some of this disengagement may be traced to the developmental
factors that arise as young people navigate the middle ground
between childhood and adulthood. Students may lack the requisite
literacy skills and strategies that allow them to access the texts
that might otherwise interest them. In addition, a significant
group of adolescents is alliterate—that is, they can read,
but choose not to unless they are coerced. In the next sections,
we address each of these elements and provide suggestions for
the types of texts that may be used to re-engage adolescent learners
in literacy learning.
All readers are not created equal, and adolescent
readers certainly differ from their younger peers. Their need
for autonomy grows as these learners seek to try out the ideas
they have been formulating. Worthy and colleagues (2001) call
this the adolescent’s “quest for independence
and control,” a phrase that aptly describes the recalcitrant
teenager, determined to demonstrate his or her autonomy at all
costs (p. 8).
Educational theorist Kieran Egan (1997) describes the learning
of children and adolescents as a pursuit to find answers to three
kinds of questions.
First, very young children seek to answer questions about themselves
and are thus fascinated with the functions of the body and with
themselves in general. Hence, we see lots of “All About
Me” curricula in the earliest grades.
Second, as learners move into the middle grades, they take the
measure of the world, asking how big? How long? How small? How
wide? Children at this age are eager to soak up all the curious/amazing/gross
facts about the world. They are collectors, and they build their
collections of comics, video games, or obscure facts with a zeal
that can be breathtaking. Is it any wonder that texts like the
books in the Guinness World Records series [Guinness (2005, 2006)]
are such hot commodities with learners at this age?
Third, as they move through middle school, students shift their
focus to a third major pursuit that combines the knowledge they
have gained from the first two questions into a third question:
where do I fit into this world? Having gained a sense of themselves
and of the span of the world, adolescents strive to find the niche
that fits them best (Egan, 1997). Their eagerness to debate even
the smallest issues should be viewed as a means to understand
the details, contradictions, and shades of gray between positions
and ideas. The problem is that this need to challenge every assumption
can be exasperating for adults. At precisely the time when secondary
educators are feeling the pressure to pack as much information
as possible into courses, they are met with students who have
a developmental need to question everything. Hynds (1997) describes
“negotiating life with adolescents,” and the metaphor
fits (p. 2). Insight into the developmental needs of adolescents
should drive text selection in the classroom. Given the adolescent’s
need for negotiation, it is wise to incorporate texts that foster
Critical literacy is “an understanding
of how social contexts and power relations work together in and
through texts to produce unequal social practices” (Peyton,
2000, p. 312). In particular, critical literacy is the ability
of a reader to understand who and what is represented in a text,
what bias an author may possess, and how power influences the
production of ideas that may or may not represent all viewpoints.
McLaughlin and DeVoogd (2004) illustrate the principles of critical
literacy that focus on:
* Issues of power that promote reflection, transformation, and
* Problems and their complexity
* Disrupting the commonplace by examining it from multiple perspectives
Morrell and Duncan-Andrade (2002) described a unit in their English
class that juxtaposed hip-hop musical lyrics with selections from
the works of English poets such as Coleridge and Donne. For example,
they noted that students used the lyrics of Public Enemy’s
“Don’t Believe the Hype” as a way to understand
T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” The intent was
to move beyond literary analysis, and students in their class
discussed the role of the apocalyptic poet’s voice in a
society. The discussions with students focused not only on the
content of twelfth-grade English but also on discussions of current
issues and social action.
The contrastable natures of texts can spur meaningful discussions
about an author’s intent and about the representation of
cultures and ideas. For example, a critical-literacy unit that
is focused on Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick (1868/2005) and
Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father (2004) can encourage
dialogue about the expectations and challenges of finding and
defining success in American society. Alger’s morality tale
of hard work, honesty, and good fortune embodied the spirit of
the rags-to-riches promise of life in nineteenth century America.
Students can compare this influential work with Obama’s
recounting of his life in the late twentieth century as he sought
to accept his identity as the son of parents who divorced early
in his life and as he struggled to find success in communities
that did not always welcome him. The questions of identity and
success resonate with adolescents who are seeking similar pathways.
Additionally, these readers can be engaged through debate and
discussion about representations of young men in American society
as well as about the fairness of the expectations that an older
generation places on young people.
As discussed earlier, a significant number
of students read below grade level because they lack the ability
to apply comprehension strategies in order to create meaning.
This inability is exacerbated by a pattern of teaching in many
secondary classrooms that circumvents the lack of students’
comprehension through an “assigning and telling” model
of instruction: teachers assign outside reading, then lecture
on the content the next day (Smith and Feathers, 1983; Thomas,
1993). As a result, students implicitly learn that the content
of the reading assignments they failed to complete will be explained
in class, lessening their need to utilize their nascent comprehension
Merely holding students accountable for reading assignments is
not enough. All readers, not just those labeled as struggling,
benefit from purposeful instruction in strategies that aid in
comprehension of academic material (e.g., Alfassi, 2004; Dole
et al., 1991; Frey and Fisher, 2006). These comprehension strategies
* Activating background knowledge
* Making and revising predictions
* Forming mental images
* Determining importance
* Understanding the author’s purpose
Effective secondary school teachers use research-based instructional
strategies to teach these comprehension strategies, including
graphic organizers, vocabulary instruction, reciprocal teaching,
note taking, and examples of reading aloud (Fisher and Frey, 2004).
These instructional routines become habits of mind for adolescent
readers as they apply these comprehension strategies to their
own reading. These strategies are best taught when using texts
that are within the reader’s level of understanding, since
the use of texts that are too difficult will have limited effect.
It is wise, therefore, to choose texts that are accessible to
struggling readers while still possessing content that is meaningful
to those readers.
Self-efficacy plays an important role in the life of a reader
who struggles. Many students arrive at the secondary level already
possessing a belief that they are not good readers and a certainty
that they will never become good readers. Years of failure, often
formalized through in-grade retention, remediation, and permanent
membership in the “low” reading group, have provided
them with ample evidence for these conclusions, at least in their
own minds. A challenge of middle and high school educators is
to interrupt this cycle of thinking and to replace it with a series
of carefully constructed successes. Stahl (1998) points out that
“[p]art of teaching children with reading problems is convincing
them that they can learn to read, in spite of their experience
to the contrary” (p. 183). Two effective measures for accomplishing
these goals include using texts that match students’ instructional
levels and making use of their interests in order to provide authentic
reasons to read (Margolis and McCabe, 2001). To achieve these
ends, educators can look for ways to teach comprehension by using
materials other than the traditional texts identified for middle
and high school students.
We have had great success in using nontraditional
formats (such as graphic novels and audiobooks) as tools for engaging
students in the act of comprehension. Many of our students who
struggle to read have had little experience with the kinds of
understanding that their teachers and their more academically able peers discuss
so easily. Consequently, we look for opportunities to reduce the
amount of written text initially in order to create the experience
of understanding at a sophisticated level. Many of our students
have developed advanced comprehension skills for understanding
visual formats, such as comic books, television, movies, and role-playing
games. Graphic novels afford us with a technique that allows us
to use the language of artists to analyze how a story is told
in graphic form.
For instance, when using the graphic novel Fagin the Jew (Eisner,
2003) with our students, our discussions focus on how we come
to understand the story as told in graphic form. Many of our students
are surprised that the same cognitive strategies they use to understand
what happens between the panels of a strip are similar to those
used by readers to infer meaning from written words. Other comprehension
strategies we model in this way include:
* The use of symbols and metaphors
* The use of typeface and font as tools for describing the tone
of the speaker
* An emphasis on the importance of dialogue as a means for understanding
plot and character
* The use of tone and of mood in the piece
* The connections made (personal, textual, and experiential)
As students become more metacognitively aware of how they understand,
they are increasingly able to apply these strategies to more complex
prose novels. We have found that once students notice how they
comprehend, they are better able to monitor their understanding;
they notice when they have lost meaning, and they then retrace
their reading to regain comprehension. Such monitoring applies
to both narrative and informational texts.
Audiobooks offer another conduit for teaching comprehension strategies
while using meaningful texts. Books on tape provide struggling
readers with a model of fluent and expressive reading, especially
in the use of phrase boundaries, intonation, and punctuation.
As Rasinski and colleagues (2005) remind us, fluency is related
to comprehension and remains an instructional priority through
Often these audiobooks are paired with the written text, so that
the reader can follow along with the professional reader. For
example, a middle school student listening to The Chocolate War
[Cormier (1974, 2004)] is able to participate fully with his literature
circle group as they read and discuss the story. The student then
has the added benefit of associating fluent and prosodic reading
with the written word.
Cunningham (2000) notes an additional advantageous result of audiobooks
in the classroom: “[I]t will be impossible to continue to
exclude listening from literacy” (p. 64). The importance
of spoken word has always been acknowledged, at least for some
portions of the canon such as poetry and Shakespeare. The link
between oral and written literacies can further be strengthened
through experiences with audiobooks for all readers, not just
for those who struggle to read.
Not all secondary students who fail to read
do so because they cannot. A significant number of students choose
not to read even though they can. In particular, their motivation
and interest in reading appears to wane with each progressive
school year (McKenna et al., 1995). Motivation and interest in
reading both play a part in the reading lives of these students.
Motivation can be described as the individual’s impetus
to read when he or she is not compelled to do so by academic assignments.
For many secondary students, reading is not a habit of their daily
lives. There have been some efforts that have used various rewards-based
programs to encourage students to read daily, but these endeavors
fail to address the goal of reading as an independent choice outside
of the reward programs, owing to a fundamental flaw in the programs’
design. The choice to read independently must ultimately be intrinsically
motivated. As adolescents move into young adulthood, they have
an increasing amount of autonomy in determining how they will
spend their free time. Several decades’ worth of research
on intrinsic motivation shows that outside rewards do not increase
intrinsic motivation (Cameron and Pierce, 1994). While extrinsically
motivating programs can increase reading for the duration of the
program, they have less impact on developing lifelong reading
Closely related to the concept of intrinsic motivation is the
development of autonomy, defined as a sense of independence and
self-rule. Notably, adolescence is characterized by the drive
for autonomy. The need for autonomy is essential to learning as
well. A sense of autonomy has been found to be an important influence
on academic outcomes (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Further, autonomy
and intrinsic motivation work in tandem (Boggiano et al., 1992).
The teacher in a secondary school has a great deal of influence
in how autonomy will be fostered because he or she can determine
the extent to which students can exercise choice. Several studies
have found that teachers who exert high levels of control and
who limit student choice undermine learners’ autonomy and
intrinsic motivation to learn (e.g., Connell et al., 1994; Deci
et al., 1981). Thus, opportunities for choice and self-selection
play an important role in developing a self-regulated desire to
read outside of academic assignments.
Student interest is another factor in the choice to read. As adults,
we can certainly understand this perspective. After all, it is
unlikely that you would be reading this article unless you were
interested in the topic. The same can be said for our secondary
students. When it comes to voluntary reading, the subject of the
text is critical. A book or article that matches a student’s
interest is more likely to be read. In addition, interest plays
a role in comprehension, precisely because the reader is attending
to the text more closely. Wigfield et al. (1998) note that “interest
is more strongly related to indicators of deep-level learning,
such as recall of main ideas, responding to deeper comprehension
questions, and representation of meaning, than it is to surface-level
learning, such as responding to simple questions or verbatim representation
of texts” (p. 77). A book or article of interest is therefore
more likely not only to be read but also to be understood.
The survey by Ivey and Broaddus (2001) of
more than 1,700 sixth-grade students identified independent reading
as the favorite school activity. The opportunity to read during
the school day has other benefits as well: it is associated with
an increase in the volume of reading, which is a strong correlate
to reading achievement (Allington, 2001). In addition, the positive
effects are not confined only to the more effective readers. Adolescents
who were identified as struggling readers identified time spent
reading as a valuable activity that contributed positively to
their efforts to become better readers (Stewart et al., 1996).
Clearly, providing opportunities each day to read texts of their
own choosing can re-engage learners.
Free, voluntary reading has been re-energized at our high school
through daily and schoolwide sustained silent reading (SSR). Each
day, the school stops for 20 minutes as every student and adult
reads a text of his or her own choosing (Fisher, 2004). The availability
of a wide range of texts, varied in both difficulty and subject,
has been critical to the success of this program. Every classroom
at the school, from English to algebra to physical education to
woodshop, is outfitted with texts that have been selected for
their appeal. Pilgreen’s (2001) meta-analysis of the factors
associated with a successful SSR program identified appealing
texts as one element, along with the following:
* Access to reading materials
* A comfortable environment in which to read
* Encouragement through discussion about reading
* Staff training on principles of SSR
* Non-accountability of students (i.e., no book reports or other
* Follow-up activities through shared experiences
* Distributed time to read each day, not just once a week
Finding interesting texts has been a challenge, and our school
has formed a student SSR advisory committee to help identify materials
and practices that encourage reading. The students on this committee
have been integral to locating popular texts we might not have
considered, including magazines and comic books, as well as free
materials such as the driver-education manual from the state.
These students have also provided us with a glimpse into what
is perceived as interesting to males and females.
Much has been written of the differences in reading habits and
interests between adolescent boys and adolescent girls. To be
sure, there are differences, although the reasons for those variations
may be more complex than was once thought. For instance, there
has been great attention in the media about the decline in reading
interest among boys. In particular, we have heard teachers explain
that reading is perceived as a female activity and as such is
an activity that many boys avoid. This observation, however, appears
to be inaccurate. A recent survey of boys in Canada found that
the majority of them reported that they liked to read but that
they began to feel estranged from school reading as early as second
grade (O’Donnell, 2005). McFann (2004) reported in Reading
Today that a survey of 14-year-old boys designed to elicit their
reasons for not reading revealed that 39.3% of them described
reading as “boring” or “no fun.” Interestingly,
the second most common reason (given by 29.8% of the boys) was
that there was no time to read.
Research done by Smith and Wilhelm (2002) on reading and adolescent
boys provides a more nuanced look at the unique needs of these
learners. In particular, the boys’ interest in the type
of text is paramount. The investigators found that many boys enjoyed
reading texts that are less commonly sanctioned by the school,
such as comics and graphic novels, as well as books containing
humor. Appealing genres included science fiction and fantasy,
as well as informational texts. Popular books at our school include
Shadow Divers (Kurson, 2004), the story of the discovery of the
mystery behind the sinking of a submarine during World War II,
and The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury, 1954). In addition, we have
added to our growing collection of graphic novels and manga each
month, since these titles have proven to be among the most popular
in our SSR program.
Taking inspiration from Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia (1994),
a seminal work on adolescent girls, Sprague and Keeling (2001)
argue for a “library for Ophelia” where adolescent
girls have access to texts told from a female perspective that
challenge assumptions about the suppression of ideas (p. 45).
Of course, they are not referring to a building but rather to
the availability of texts that resonate with adolescent females
who are in the process of defining themselves and their place
in the world. At a time when the National Coalition for Literacy
reports that 85% of teenage mothers possess low levels of literacy,
it would seem that this is a wise investment (USA Today, 2000).
To make certain that female authors are represented in our SSR
collection, we have added titles such as Reading Lolita in Tehran
(Nafisi, 2003); The Devil Wears Prada (Weisberger, 2006); and
Dreamland (Dessen, 2002).
Improving the reading performance of our
youth is possible. Possible, yes, but no one promised it would
be easy. In particular, improvement demands that we look closely
at who our students really are and at why they struggle. Every
student who is reluctant to read resists for a variety of reasons.
A small but significant portion of the student population lacks
basic reading skills that would allow them to decode smoothly,
which then interferes with their ability to attend to the meaning
of the text. Many more adolescents have these skills in place,
but such students have not learned to employ comprehension strategies
that make texts come to life for readers. In both cases, these
students are not going to be drawn to reading if they are given
books designed for younger readers. Providing nontraditional texts
(such as graphic novels, music lyrics, and audiobooks), however,
can lower the barriers while engaging the students’ interest
in the subject. A third, silent category of students are those
who can read but do not read by choice. Again, paying attention
to their interests while providing opportunities to read texts
of their own choosing can foster a rediscovery of what reading
has to offer.
In addition to noting the positive results achieved by having
educators select excellent texts for students, Ivey and Fisher
(2006) found that having teachers use universal themes to organize
their instruction produced better results. In other words, teachers
who focused on ideas and then selected texts that spanned a range
of difficulty (rather than focusing on a specific book as the
de facto curriculum) saw increased engagement and achievement.
In addition, Ivey and Fisher noted that the traditional English
curriculum can be addressed in multiple text sets and with engaging
books that adolescents want to and can read. That’s the
big idea here as well. Matching students with books and providing
them with instruction, where they are, in reading those books
makes a difference.
Ultimately, the re-engagement of adolescent readers requires that
they discover how meaningful reading can be in their own lives.
Given their developmental need to define their place in the world,
it would seem that the accomplishment of this task might be only
a few good books, graphic novels, songs, or audiobooks away. When
a student discovers that the answers to some of his or her questions
might be found through reading, you’ll hear the words we
heard: “Got more of these?”
Frey, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Literacy in
the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University.
Her research interests include reading and literacy, nontraditional
texts, assessment, intervention, and curriculum design. She teaches
a variety of courses on literacy and on supporting students with
diverse learning needs.
Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is a Professor in the
Department of Teacher Education at San Diego State University
and is the Co-Director of the Center for the Advancement of Reading.
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Books cited in this article include:
Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Devil Wears Prada: A Novel by Lauren Weisberger
Also Available: Movie Tie-In edition
by Lauren Weisberger
Dick or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks by Horatio
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by
Audio Available: Read by Barack Obama
the Jew: A Graphic Novel by Will Eisner
World Records 2006 edited by Claire Folkard
Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Ophelia: Saving the Lives of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher
Audio Available: Read by Mary Pipher
Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything
to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert
Audio Available: Read by Campbell Scott