Survival Reading Skills for Secondary Students

Survival Reading Skills for Secondary Students is your guide for working with struggling students in grades 5-12 no matter what their reading ability. This valuable resource is a down-to-earth guide that contains countless classroom-tested strategies that reading and content area teachers can use to reinforce skills that students must master to read effectively. In addition, the book offers ready-to-use activity sheets designed to improve competency in a number of relevant reading skills. Students will learn how to fill in a job application, read an airline schedule, apply for a driver's license, and practice many more useful real-life skills.

For quick access and easy use, the book is organized in seven sections and printed in a big 8 ½" X 11" lay-flat format for easy photocopying. The following is just a small sample of the many strategies, assessments, inventories, and activities featured in each section:

1. INFORMAL READING ASSESSMENT TOOLS FOR OLDER STUDENTS: Includes a Content Reading Inventory. . . lists of sample words from a range of content areas including English, social studies, science, and mathematics&an informal assessment to determine a student's approximate instructional reading level.

2. STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES FOR IMPROVING SKILLS TO IDENTIFY CONTENT SIGHT WORDS: Provides reproducible copies of words needed for computer literacy . . . strategies for improving students' ability to recognize and identify important content and daily-living words . . . activities that include a reversed crossword puzzle and a magic square from science.

3. STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES FOR IMPROVING BASIC PHONIC SKILLS: Contains the basic phonic elements in which older students should be competent . . . seven helpful phonic generalizations . . . activity sheets that challenge students to complete a shopping list and discover a secret code.

4. STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES FOR IMPROVING ABILITY IN WORD STRUCTURE: Includes an explanation of the usefulness of word roots, prefixes, and suffixes . . . comprehensive lists of the most useful elements of word structure that help students read and study content materials effectively . . . activity sheets that help students determine word etymologies and correct accents.

5. STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES FOR IMPROVING USE OF CONTEXT CLUES: Presents a useful classification scheme for context clues . . . method of teaching context clues, cryptology, and mutilated messages . . . activities that direct students to choose the correct word in sentence context.

6. STRATEGIES AND MATERIALS FOR IMPROVING COMPREHENSION SKILLS WHILE READING CONTENT MATERIAL: Contains an explanation of levels of reading comprehensiontextually explicit, textually implicit, and critical or evaluative . . . myriad classroom-tested strategies for improving comprehension . . . activity sheets that engage students to figure out which is the better invention and complete a job application form.

7. STRATEGIES AND MATERIALS FOR IMPROVING STUDY SKILLS IN THE CONTENT AREAS: Offers a description of the specialized study skills that students need to read specific content material . . . a multitude of classroom-tested strategies for improving study skills . . . activities that help students to use the Dewey Decimal System and read the newspaper more effectively.