“Okay, Miss, I want to talk it out”: Metacognitive Dialogue Supporting Adolescent Literacy Success
Keywords:
Comprehension Strategies, adolescent literacy, secondary school, dialogue, Literacy InterventionsAbstract
Teachers in Texas are now required to provide accelerated instruction for students who were not successful on the STAAR Reading Test. This article considers the types of intervention teachers and schools provide for adolescent readers. This article examines one adolescent student's behaviors while reading challenging texts. Robert (pseudonym) was found to increasingly rely on strategic behaviors using dialogue with self and others to support reading comprehension. Over the course of 11 weeks, Robert improved his success rate on an online reading intervention program from 3 successful attempts mid-year to 31 successful attempts by the end of the academic year. Using a comprehension-as-sense-making theoretical frame, findings suggest that providing at-risk adolescents opportunities to engage in dialogic strategic behaviors could encourage successful problem solving when working with challenging texts, an asset-oriented approach to intervention.
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