Survival Reading Skills for Secondary Students » (1ST)

Wilma H. Miller, Ed.D., is professor emerita of Reading Education at Illinois State University in Normal, where she taught for 30 years. Dr. Miller has written nearly 200 published journal articles dealing with various aspects of reading, and she is the author of numerous books including: The Reading Teachers Survival Kit, Phonics First!, Ready-to-Use Activities & Material for Improving Content Reading Skills and Reading Skills Problem Solver, all from Jossey-Bass.

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.