Teaching Reading with YA Literature

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>Jennifer Buehler knows young adult literature. A teacher educator former high school teacher and host of ReadWriteThink.org's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>Text Messages </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>podcast she has shared her enthusiasm for this vibrant literature with thousands of teachers and adolescents. She knows that middle and high school students run the gamut as readers from nonreaders to struggling readers to reluctant readers to dutiful readers to enthusiastic readers. And in a culture where technological distractions are constant finding a way to engage all of these different kinds of readers is challenging no matter the form of delivery. More and more literacy educators are turning to YA lit as a way to transform all teens into enthusiastic readers. If we want to meet the needs of all students as readers we have to offer books they can-and want to-read. Today's YA lit provides the books that speak to the world of teens even as they draw them out into the larger world.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>But we have to do more than put YA titles in front of students and teach these books as we've traditionally taught more canonical works. Instead we can implement a YA pedagogy-one that revolves around student motivation while upholding the goals of rigor and complexity. Buehler explores the three core elements of a YA pedagogy with proven success in practice: (1) a classroom that cultivates a reading community; (2) a teacher who serves as book matchmaker and guide; and (3) tasks that foster complexity agency and autonomy in teen readers.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>With a supporting explication of NCTE's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)>Policy Research Brief Reading Instruction for All Students</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(29 31 37 1)> and lively vignettes of teachers and students reading with passion and purpose this book is designed to help teachers develop their own version of YA pedagogy and a vision for teaching YA lit in the middle and secondary classroom.</span></p>