Adolescent strategies:

Explanation: These strategies can help older struggling readers to break down words & better understand the concepts at hand. These strategies are breaking words down into syllables and using common root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Strategy:

Multi-syllabic words: Show your child how to break multi-syllabic words into recognizable parts. When students come up to a long and unfamiliar word, they often sound out one syllable and then guess the rest. For example: “transition,” they might read “trans”…“um, trans-lation.” At that time, it is important to encourage them to slow down when reading these type of words, and model you own reading strategies, show them how you sound out each part of the word and then blend them together.

Root words/Affixes: Teach (or review, as these should be items your child has already learned in school) your child common root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Struggling readers often need to be shown, explicitly, that many of the words they read share common prefixes (such as pre-, pro-, and auto-), suffixes (such as -ology, -ous, and -ism), and roots (such as -ped, used in "pedal" and "pedestrian"). This can help them figure out unknown words by using the root words, prefixes, or suffixes. (heller, 2014)

Research Rationale:

Older students with reading difficulties benefit from improved knowledge of word meanings and concepts. These strategies of breaking the word down either into syllables or root words and affixes are helping your child to read unknown words and analyze their meanings. (Heller, 2014)

http://www.adlit.org/adlit_101/improving_literacy_instruction_in_your_school/give_struggling_readers_specific_support/

Explanation: Reading & discussion of what you child is reading is very important even as they grow older. Discussion can greatly help to increase their comprehension even in struggling readers.

Strategy: Talk through reading experiences with your child. Better yet, read a book together and discuss the content. Since your child is older, it may be appropriate to read the same book they are reading and go through the discussion in that way. If not, you can still go through the experience with them. Below are some strategies for questioning and discussion before, during, and after reading.

Before reading

• Help students tap into what they already know about the material.

It doesn't necessarily occur to students that their existing knowledge, experience, and preconceptions will have an impact on their reading. Before assigning them to begin a new book, chapter, or other text, give them a chance to review what they learned from previous assignments, write down any important questions or points of confusion related to the topic, and/or discuss any assumptions or opinions likely to influence their understanding of the material.

• Provide important background information.

For example, use vocabulary, specialized terminology, context, and content that students might not know, but which they'll need in order to make sense of the text.

Preview the text.

Encourage students to glance through the material before they read it, in order to get a sense of the overall length, tone, and direction of the piece. Point out any headings, subheadings, and other information that might be useful, or have them discuss or write down predictions as to what the text is likely to say.

During reading

Help students monitor their own comprehension.

Struggling readers often focus so intently on the mechanics of reading that they neglect to attend fully to the meaning of what they read. Some may even assume that it's more important to "get through" the text, so as to "complete" the assignment, than to understand it. And others may be unsure what to do when text becomes hard to follow. It might be obvious to skilled readers that they can stop and review paragraphs to make sure they understood them correctly, or re-read confusing passages, or look up an item in a dictionary or encyclopedia, or jot down questions as they go, but some students need to be taught such "fix-up" strategies.

Teach students to take notes and draw visual representations of what they read.

It may not occur to students that they can read with a pen in their hand, making notes on paper or, when appropriate, on the text itself. A great deal of research has shown that the use of "graphic organizers" — any kind of outline, annotation, mapping out of the text, or other visual representation of what the text means, how it connects to other material, what questions it raises, and so on — tend to be particularly helpful in boosting comprehension.

After reading

Teach students to summarize accurately.

Summarizing texts can help both to clear up any confusion about the meaning of a text and to secure it  more firmly in students' memories. However, it can take a lot of practice to become adept at writing concise, accurate summaries that focus on main points and skip extraneous information. Teachers may want to provide samples for their students and model their own work, showing how they would identify key points, paraphrase them, and condense them. Further, they may want to assign students to start with relatively short, simple passages before going on to summarize longer and more complicated texts.

Discuss the text.

Probably the most important comprehension strategy of all — but one that is surprisingly rare in the nation's secondary classrooms — is to give students frequent and extensive opportunities to discuss what they've read. As described in the 2008 IES report from the US Department of Education , it's neither easy nor straightforward to lead students in focused, informative, and engaging discussions of texts. Teachers need to come up with provocative questions, keep the conversation focused, guide it though lulls, and help students to learn and stick to important classroom norms and rules (having to do with turn-taking, respecting others' opinions, staying on point, and so on). However, when students do engage in high-quality text-based discussions, they tend to come away with much clearer and more nuanced understandings of course materials. (Hellar, 2014)

Research Rationale:

Students, especially struggling readers, often struggle with four comprehension problems: difficulty monitoring their own understanding while reading, difficulty making sense of unfamiliar content, difficulty making sense of specialized terms and concepts, and difficulty making sense of familiar words used in specialized or unusual ways. Educators have invented many comprehension strategies, or techniques that students can use before, during, and after reading to help them understand the text. Many research reports have found such activities to be effective, helping students to make significant and lasting gains in their ability to make sense of texts they read in and out of school. (Heller, 2014)

http://www.adlit.org/adlit_101/improving_literacy_instruction_in_your_school/reading_comprehension/

Interventions for Adolescent Struggling Readers by Center on Instruction

Click the icon on the right to download & read.

Some tips about motivation in adolescents:

Encourage students to make their own choices.

• Researchers strongly recommend that literacy instructors give older students plenty of opportunities to choose reading and writing topics that interest them, to choose from a number of possible projects and assignments (e.g., to write a research report, create a Web site, or do a Power Point presentation), and to choose whether to work alone or with specific reading and writing partners.

Help students to select their reading materials.

• Students may know what topics interest them, but they don't necessarily know how to pick books that are "just right" for their interests and reading level (i.e., books that are attractive and interesting, and that offer them some challenge but not so much that they'll become frustrated and give up.) It can be difficult to help struggling adolescent readers find the right books, though, since most beginning-level texts are written for much younger children. Fortunately, a number of commercial publishers have begun to create texts that are "high in interest and low in frustration," and new titles are being produced quickly.

Make sure that students have sufficient background knowledge.

• If students already know something about a given topic, they tend to feel more confident and motivated to read about it, and they tend to comprehend more of what they read. If the topic is a new one for them, then give them enough background information and vocabulary to get them started successfully.

Help students define good reasons to read and write.

• If the goal of an assignment is merely to gather facts for a test, or to check off a course requirement, students aren't likely to put much effort into it. Research backs up the common-sense idea that students try harder and become more engaged in their schoolwork when they have a more compelling purpose in mind, such as to figure out something that they've always wanted to know about a favorite topic, or to become knowledgeable about a topic so that they can make an impressive presentation to their classmates. Also, it's often useful to ask students to help define their own goals for the assignment and to give them feedback along the way, letting them know how much they've accomplished already and how much more work they still have to do to meet their goal.

Encourage discussion and other opportunities to work in groups.

• When assigning (or encouraging) students to work in groups, teachers shouldn't assume they can leave those students to their own devices. In order to be productive, discussions and group work have to be planned carefully and supervised over time. But when such interactions go well, they tend to pay off greatly not just in terms of increased comprehension but also in terms of student engagement, confidence, and interest in school work.

      (Hellar, 2014)

http://www.adlit.org/adlit_101/improving_literacy_instruction_in_your_school/motivation/