High School Readers

High school students generally don’t enjoy reading assignments. Often they view these tasks as difficult and impersonal. If you were to examine a classroom throughout the day, the times that you would see students most engaged and involved would be when they get to work and collaborate with their peers and even with their teacher. It is necessary however for students to read a variety of different literary content in order for them to learn what they need to in school. So how can we make challenging texts more approachable for high school students? Hinchman discusses this in Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction.

One of the main problems, according to Hinchman, with texts that high school students are asked to read, is that they are not comparable to the types of literary material that they are accustomed to. “The texts of high school classrooms are not embedded in the social networks of most students’ daily lives (p. 209).” Teenagers emerge themselves in social media. The majority of students are comfortable with the literary caliber that is required in these situations, but the reading their teachers give them is not found on Facebook or Twitter. Some teachers try to appeal to their students’ interest in social networks by making connections in class to the formatting of these sites. The goal of these assignments is to adapt to the writing style that teenagers are used to. “One challenge to interest and motivation may be that although adolescent students may be highly interested in a topic, they are often less engaged with academic texts about the topic because of the writing style of the text (p. 219).” Even if students are motivated and interested about a certain subject, they may still be discouraged because of the difficulty with which the text is presented. The thing that social media often has that many academic texts don’t have is a clear voice. When reading a friend’s post, there is an evident voice. However, many high school reading material “lacks a voice” so students have trouble identifying with it and the general meaning of it all.

One aspect of reading that is often included in mathematical texts is the use of tables, charts, and graphs. We may think of this as a visual image, rather than a section of reading, but students are required to read them. We can refer to this as analytical knowledge and skill, and it is very important to the understanding of mathematics (along with other subjects). Oftentimes students give up on reading and interpreting tables before they even begin. A smart strategy in addressing these types of texts is to ask broad questions about the table to get students thinking about the meaning of the numbers and figures presented. Hinchman talks about definitional knowledge on page 211. One person could know the definition of a word, but that does not mean that they understand it in the context that is being used in. So not only should you make sure that your students know the definitions of important vocabulary terms, but you need to check up on them to make sure they understand the ways in which they are being used. 

Hinchman, K. A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. K. (2008). Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction. New York: Guilford Press.