Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy : Strategies for Learning

Winner: Association of Educational Publishers 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award
Finalist: Association of Educational Publishers 2009 Golden Lamp Award

Are there students in your classroom who have hit the reading wall? Studies indicate comprehension regresses in many students once they reach middle school. Teachers need the right resources in their classrooms for engaging students in reading. This book is a veritable encyclopedia of literacy strategies secondary teachers can apply to all content areas immediately. It integrates key strategies, research from top literacy experts, and proven intervention practices.

Benefits:

• Gain access to the most relevant research on literacy and its application in the classroom.
• Employ powerful tools to aid reflection and the implementation of new strategies.
• Discover over 50 strategies for engaging adolescent learners, empowering strategic learning, building comprehension, developing vocabulary, and writing to learn.
• Access over two dozen reproducibles for teachers and students.

Contents:
Introduction: Using Power Tools to Improve Adolescent Literacy
Chapter 1: Engaging the Adolescent Learner
Chapter 2: Empowering Strategic Learning
Chapter 3: Building Comprehension
Chapter 4: Developing Vocabulary
Chapter 5: Writing to Learn

Jan Rozzelle, EdD, is executive director of the School-University Research Network at the College of William & Mary, where she has developed leadership programs for superintendents, principals, and teachers. She has also provided professional development to several school districts and directs a statewide adolescent literacy project for instructional leadership teams.

Formerly an administrator for a large suburban school district in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Rozzelle coordinated K-12 reading and language arts curriculum and instruction as well as staff development for teachers and principals. She created the Instructional Assessment Tool, a research-based observation protocol used across the country to gather classroom instruction data for planning school-based professional development.

She is a frequent presenter at national conferences and coauthor of numerous publications including The Learning Communities Guide to Improving Reading Instruction.

Dr. Rozzelle was recognized as the Reading Teacher of the Year by the Virginia State Reading Association while serving as a district reading specialist. She is an alumnus of the Educational Policy Fellows Program sponsored by the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington, DC.

Dr. Rozzelle earned a doctorate from the College of William & Mary and a master's degree from Appalachian State University.

Carol Scearce has three major areas of focus: adolescent literacy, her most recent focus; effective teaching strategies; and team building for leadership and middle school teams. Through her work on an adolescent literacy grant project with the College of William & Mary, Carol became a firm believer in the power of reading comprehension. Since then, she has spent hundreds of hours designing training and working in middle and high school classrooms to model the information from her workshops.

Carol has also worked as a program manager for a federal grant, an instructor, and a classroom teacher. As staff development coordinator for Chesterfield County Public Schools in Richmond, Virginia, Carol designed all the programs and delivered most of them. She also worked with Virginia Tech to establish one of the first mentoring programs in the state and designed one of the first "trainer of trainer" models to be used in Virginia. Awards include the Kettering Foundation Distinguished Educators Award and Outstanding Special Educator of the Year. She was also awarded a fellowship for graduate work in special education.

An expert in team building, Carol has trained hundreds of teachers and administrators and wrote two books on the subject, 100 Ways to Build Teams and 122 Ways to Build Teams. She has worked with numerous school systems throughout the U.S., helping to build teams within these professional learning communities.

Carol received an endorsement in administration and supervision from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor of science in elementary education and early childhood and master of education in special education from Georgia Southern University.