Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources
Five Questions Organize the Programs and Strategies
The resources are grouped into programs and strategies. Each resource's description is organized around five questions.
- What is it? How does it work?
This section begins with an overview and brief history of the resource. For programs, it describes major components and materials and lists developer or publisher contact information. For strategies, detailed instructional procedures may be sufficient for teachers to implement them in the classroom. Teachers can also refer to specific readings provided in the resource description. Additional readings that may be helpful to teachers are indicated by an asterisk in the bibliography section.
- What professional development is required? What is provided?
For programs, this section includes information about the model of professional development, the level of prerequisite teacher preparation, materials, training, and costs. For strategies, this section includes the level of prerequisite teacher expertise and the amount of time necessary to learn the strategy. In reading this section, keep in mind the principles of effective professional development for teachers (continuous and sustained, locally based initiatives, adaptation rather than adoption, teacher as researcher).
- How does it develop reading proficiency?
This section describes how the program or strategy builds reading proficiency along each of four major factors [motivation, decoding skill (including fluency), language comprehension (including linguistic knowledge, background knowledge, making inferences, and self-regulated comprehending), and transaction with text].
- Primary Outcome: A factor of reading proficiency for which a program or strategy, as designed, is likely to help build.
- Secondary Outcome: A factor of reading proficiency for which a program or strategy, as designed, is likely to help build, but it is not the most important reason to select it.
- Possible Outcome: A factor of reading proficiency for which a program or strategy, as designed, may help build, depending upon additional support from the teacher or the instructional context.
- How does it support effective reading instruction?
For programs and strategies, the principles of effective reading instruction are presented as materials, reading task, instructional approach, and student scaffolds, as well as the congruence of the intervention with the regular (non-remedial) classroom curriculum. In reading this section, keep in mind the principles of effective reading instruction (eight principles of effective reading instruction: recognition and honor of cultural and linguistic diversity; assessment during teaching; scaffolds before, during, and after reading; repertoires of strategies; explicit instruction of strategies; reading practice; student choice and authentic tasks; scaffolding across the classroom curriculum).
- How effective is it?
A rubric was used to rate a resource overall as well established, established, or promising. The resource was assigned the overall rating for which it met at least two of the corresponding component ratings within the four criteria (documentation, recency, effectiveness, and extent of implementation). Resources for which there was insufficient evidence in more than one category of the rubric were not included in the Guide. Click here to see the rubric "Rating of Resources for Building Secondary Reading Proficency Based on Level of Support and Implementation".
Terminology
To determine how terms are used, refer to the definitions of terms page.