Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers

by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Sarah Ortega

Recharge Adolescent Strategies to Foster Joyful and Proficient Readers


There are many adolescent readers who, for a variety of reasons, find it difficult to connect with written words and have fallen behind on their foundational reading skills. Thankfully, it’s never too late to give these necessary skills a boost and help students find joy in reading and learning. Armed with equity, empathy, evidence-based research, and practical application, Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers provides classroom practices teachers can use with the whole class or with small groups to integrate reading support seamlessly with grade-level content learning.


Bestselling authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, along with Sarah Ortega, Kierstan Barbee, and Aida Allen-Rotell, creatively organize the book around a adolescent literacy is a battery—when all the parts are connected, working together, and fully charged—literacy can thrive. Throughout the book, the following features will guide your



Plug Into the Research – an overview of the evidence-based research supporting each section of the literacy model
Power Up Classroom Practice – connecting the dots on the research, classroom practice and human aspects of learning
Voices from the Field – classroom examples of application and strategies from other secondary educators
Take Charge – key takeaways and reflection questions
Tips on building and organizing your classroom library to incorporate tools, technology, and media available to maximize lesson effectiveness
Dozens of videos to model time-efficient strategies and key concepts

By focusing on research, classroom practices, and the human aspects of learning, this book is an essential tool to recharge reading practices for adolescent readers and help educators increase foundational reading skills in the classroom.

208 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2025

About the author

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is an educator and Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College.

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Reviews

[Valerie Biggam · Rating 4 out of 5]

📚Liked the focus on mostly Tier 1 instructional practices that support literacy learning.
📚The best new tool for me were the student self- assessments.
📚Rare that I pick up a new tool in the fluency area, but I had never heard of the “phrase progression” strategy before, and I will definitely be using it soon!
📚I also see myself using the chart will suggestions for using generative sentences. This is a familiar concept, but the presentation was excellent and makes it simple to work into lesson.

🫥 Wish the intervention chapter had been a bit more fleshed out, but it was a relief to see suggestions that were research based.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book introduces adolescence reading, especially when there are struggles, as a battery where background knowledge is the plug (the most crucial piece and links the other components together) and the core of the battery is word recognition, word knowledge/vocabulary, sentence analysis and verbal reasoning. It is an interesting premise and I learned a lot while in this book study.

[Dakota Hartford · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Rating:
Writing: 3 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars
Instruction: 3 Stars
My Personal Enjoyment/Usefulness: 3 Stars
(All Out of 5 Stars)
Total: 3 Stars