lake fishing. I must be patient, I must
use the right bait, and I must always
have my line in the water. I tell the students to give it a chance and have a look
around. “See if there’s a comfortable
reading space you’d like to claim,” I
suggest.
Glancing around the room, students
see fewer desks than in their other
classes. Instead, there are comfortable
reading corners with shaggy bright rugs,
bookshelves filled with young adult
books, and a wall covered with inspira-
tional quotes, such as, “A room without
books is like a body without a soul” and
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
The questions start again:
“Do we get to pick what we read?”
“Who gets to sit in these comfortable
chairs?”
“How come this room looks so
different?”
The bait seems to be working.
In the 2008–09 school year, Eastview
embarked on a journey to meet the
needs of striving freshmen readers.
In that first year, the students in our
homegrown, research-based Academic
Literacy 9 class showed growth at three
to four times the rate of their peers
(McCarty Plucker, 2009). How did we
do it?
Hot Reads for 9th Graders
Time to Read
Research has shown that high-achieving
students read more than low achievers
(Allington, 2006; Guthrie, 2008). To
accelerate students’ achievement in
reading, literacy educators must ensure
that striving readers are reading at least
as much as their higher-achieving peers.
We decided to narrow the discrepancy
by providing a double dose of literacy
instruction in an academic literary class
that students must take in addition to
their 9th grade English class. In the
2008–09 and 2009–10 school years,
we had four class periods of the course,
each taught by one of three highly
trained and licensed reading teachers.
This year, because of budget cuts, we
have just three classes, two of them a
These are a few of the most popular books on my classroom shelves last year.
Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope by Jenna Bush (HarperCollins,
2007). Former first daughter Jenna Bush tells the remarkable
story of Ana, a young woman infected with HIV/AIDS whom
Bush met while interning with UNICEF in Latin America.
Compound by S. A. Bodeen (Feiwel and Friends, 2008). Eli,
his sisters, and his parents have been living in an underground
mansion since a nuclear war destroyed their home six years
ago. According to his father, they have nine years to go before
the air will be clean enough for them to emerge from their
compound, but Eli is beginning to question his father’s motives in this
suspenseful thriller.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, 2008). Each
year, the Capitol holds a lottery to choose one girl and one boy
from each of the 12 districts of Panem to participate in the
Hunger Games, a televised competition to the death that all
citizens are required to watch. Katniss chooses to replace her
younger sister in the games in this, the first of three books in a
series.
L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad (HarperCollins, 2009). Jane and
Scarlett move to Los Angeles and land on a reality TV show that
follows their “real lives” and tests their friendship. Based on the true life of
author Lauren Conrad, who starred on MTV’s The Hills.
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
(Little, Brown, 2005). Max, 98 percent human, 2 percent avian,
has escaped from the lab with her family but is being hunted
by the Erasers (part wolf, part human). This fast-paced science
fiction young adult novel is the first in a continuing series.
Street Pharm by Allison van Diepen (Simon Pulse, 2006). Ty
Johnson must use his intelligence and savvy nature to keep his
incarcerated father’s drug-dealing business successful. A tragedy
causes Ty to rethink his career choice.
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (Razorbill, 2007). Clay receives a package
in the mail containing cassette tapes recorded by a classmate who recently
committed suicide. Each person who receives a tape is one reason she chose
to die.
year long and one a semester long.
We keep the classes small (no more
than 10 students per teacher). Students
are selected on the basis of standardized
reading tests, informal reading assess-
ments in middle school, and recom-
mendations from the middle school
reading specialist. Typically, we are
working with students whose scores on
standardized state assessments are in the
10th–30th percentile.
