Adolescent Literacy

I recently viewed a podcast on adolescent literacy. I was pleased to learn of one school's efforts to help their students reading in the content areas. As a teacher, I see my students struggling everyday with reading and even how to process information in the textbook. This school formulated a professional learning program that allowed teachers to take charge of their students' reading. I do realize now, upon reflection, that schools do in fact stop teaching reading to the students in elementary grades. This is very disturbing. When students matriculate to higher grades, the requirements for reading and comprehension change drastically. Children are initially faced with phonics, pronunciation, and basic comprehension in elementary school, and then when they arrive to the middle grades they are required to understand the layout and advanced content with in textbooks and other books without any assistance in how to approach this vastly different type of literature.
In this podcast the teachers were empowered to teach their students how to approach reading regardless of the content area. This was not a job given only to the english teachers. It was rather refreshing and I hope to assist my students a little more in how to approach their science textbook.