Reading Strategies for Middle and High School Students: A Review of Literature

This review targets “best practices” in adolescent reading instruction. While writing is inextricably related to reading, this review did not explicitly target studies of writing. However, where writing studies informed reading instruction, they were cited in this review. The first step in this search for empirical data was the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Science’s What Works Clearinghouse. From the reports listed there, I followed major references to identify other key and current publications that targeted educators and stakeholders at the classroom, school, system, and state levels. Though its findings are still emerging and we are still learning how to apply them to the “real world” of practice, the field of adolescent literacy research has produced an impressive volume of empirical and theoretical scholarship over the past decade. Due to time constraints, rather than attempt to review primary sources, I relied on the following 17 syntheses of studies. Collectively they summarize the findings from 37 experimental and quasi experimental studies (kamil et al., 2008) as well as hundreds of correlation studies and theoretical papers