Adolescent Literacy

Adolescent Literacy

The importance of teaching the adolescents in the right manner is very important for giving them optimum learning. This is the time when their mind is young having potential of absorbing a lot of content. The teachers being the center of learning source for them play a vital role. The way we think about the adolescents learning has been changed specially in the last decade. New technologies are now playing a greater role in teaching adolescents. Teaching them these methods and sources to get the maximum is the key to synchronize their learning with the fast pace world.

Adolescents' literacy is a topic which has been discussed among practitioners and educational thinkers, to assess and determine the best practices for imparting knowledge to adolescents. The books Adolescent Literacy by Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, and Linda Rief and Subjects Matter Every Teachers Guide to Content-Area Reading, by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman, are a part of this continuum. These books present the latest insight into the thoughts of central figures of the adolescent education today.

The book “Adolescent Literacy” revolves around, provocative issues of our time. This includes discussion on Struggling Learners, English Language Learners, technology in the class rooms, compelling Writing instructions, multimodal literacy, engagement, young adult literature, and teaching in a “flat world”. The most encouraging factor about this book is that it presents the ideas in a coherent manner, which doesn't let reader wander here and there. Each of the chapters keeps on increasing the data base and later chapters building on the previous ones. This book is meant to help the primary and middle level school teachers and administrators in teaching the adolescents. The effective ways of teaching the adolescents is much more important, since they rely solely on the teachers. This book presents the ideas to teachers regarding, how to keep up with the rapid pace dynamic environment. Also, how to bring the role of technology in learning to take the benefit from it. The adolescent literacy will be discussed in this paper form the view point of basically these two books.

The first chapter of Adolescent Literacy sets the tone for the topic, by presenting the current situation of the adolescent teaching, by contrasting it with the revolution in technology and teaching methodologies. This is a self-reflection arguing that the teaching methods have not evolved so fast as the technology has expanded. Kylene Beers says that, it is a disservice to students, if we, the teachers do not keep up with the latest technology in the teaching methodologies (p. 7). Literacy demands have been shifted in the recent past and teachers should keep up with that. He presents the idea of education as a whole by saying that literacy is actually a set of skills that reflect the needs of the time.

The present scenario is not very encouraging, as the teacher's try to teach how they were taught. But as said earlier, the new landscape of education is far more dynamic and challenging ...