STRUGGLING READERS

The Carnegie Corporation's Adolescent Literacy Development in Out-of-School Time

Practitioner's Handbook provides three categories of struggling adolescent readers and
describes the skills and knowledge they need extra support with in after-school literacy
programs. Which population of struggling readers are you serving? Do you have a
range? How does this inform the academic programming that you offer them?

Struggling readers "Basic" readers Readers who struggle

with reading across
disciplines

Characteristics Characteristics Characteristics

Have not mastered basic
processing despite being
in 4th grade or above
Are challenged by basic
vocabulary
Do not perform well with
long passages
Read slowly, with poor
fluency
Are reasonably able to struggle with the demands
decode words of specialized or
May struggle to read disciplinary texts
fluently
May not have broad,
deep vocabularies

Need to learn (best when Need to:

specific instruction is targeted
to individual student needs)
word knowledge
(decoding)
vocabulary knowledge
background knowledge
linguistic/textual
knowledge
strategy use
inference-making
Need to learn how to define technical terms and
set purposes for reading relate them to use in
monitor their everyday language
comprehension comprehend ideas in a
apply strategies when text by linking them with
making sense of or contrasting them to
problematic texts one's own ideas about a
background knowledge phenomenon
development learn how people in the
disciplines generate ideas
understand what counts
as warrant or evidence for
a claim
understand the various
means of communicating
that knowledge