New federal testing data shows that reading scores of teens in the U.S. are lower than they have been in decades.
Lisa Von Drasek, curator of the Kerlan Collection of Children’s Literature at the University of Minnesota Libraries and Abigail Rombalski, a lecturer in the College of Education and Human Development, answer questions about how to support your teen’s reading journey inside and outside the classroom.
Q: What tasks — academically, personally and professionally — become challenging for teens with low reading comprehension skills?
Rombalski: So much. Teens with low reading comprehension skills often halt their own greatness before struggling to try. For example, they may not attempt a driver’s permit knowledge test or a college application. They may not ask for support, and people around them may attribute their decisions to factors outside of reading. This builds on top of anxiety, stressors and unknowns that many young people already face. It leaks into every sector in life; people end up making decisions that negatively impact them, like paying too much rent because they believe a landlord’s word over reading a lease. Too often, these teenagers develop a negative self-view about their own intelligence and knowledge, sometimes even their families and cultures, which limits their groundedness, their hope and their futures.
Q: What do teens gain when they spend time reading for fun?
Von Drasek: One of the best things an adult in a teen's life can do is to encourage their reading for pleasure. Research in education, psychology and neurology shows evidence of the positive impact on the young adult's academic performance, intellectual development, emotional well-being and social skills. Literature can instill empathy and help teens better understand people with different life experiences. Reading is an opportunity to travel the world and experience other cultures even when you can’t leave home yet. It can also be a joyful experience and a communal one too! You’re probably used to reading aloud to younger kids, but you might be surprised to learn that many teens still enjoy being read to. Reading to your teen can be a great way to transition them into adult literature. It can also be an opportunity to experience the surprises of the plot together and have fun sharing the experience of the story unfolding.
Q: What can educators do to support students reading difficult texts?
Rombalski: Reading comprehension, like any learning, can be both an independent and a social activity. Re-reading is an underused strategy for accelerating reading growth. Teachers across disciplines should select chunks of diverse texts for re-reading and check for understanding while engaging in social learning. For instance, round robin retells can uncover misconceptions of a text and allow students to ask their own questions. Too many students are left on their own to read, and they miss the beautiful opportunity to talk, write or create with others about what is relevant to them and their communities. And finally, both educators and students can do hard things in a community of care. Use difficult and diverse texts — including with student choice — that are interesting to youth and that reflect identities, cultures, assets and issues in their lives.
Q: How can families help teens improve their reading skills at home?
Von Drasek: The most important factors are free reading and self selection. Encourage and validate all forms of reading and literacy! That includes comics, zines, audio books and re-reading Lord of the Rings for the 27th time. Teens can follow book-toks, librarian book talks and poetry slams. Don’t forget to visit your public and school librarians who are ready and eager to make suggestions and provide programming. Intergenerational book clubs or a family read is an engaging support for reading at home. If the adults in a teen's life "don't have time" to read, this lack of modeling translates to "reading is not important."
Q: How does your work at the University of Minnesota help support literacy across the state?
Rombalski: I support the development of adolescent literacies by teaching pre-service teachers across disciplines, partnering with schools and sharing research from youth-engaged projects and participating in organizations such as the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English. It is important to hold high expectations for young people across contexts and to value their knowledge, literacy and ideas for creating change in their communities. They deserve relevant texts and want to be educated and consulted in this quickly changing world. Connecting with educators, youth and families is necessary and incomplete work.
Von Drasek: Access. Every Minnesotan has the ability to access e-books electronically through Ebooks Minnesota at elibrarymn.org. Ebooks Minnesota is an online ebook collection that supports readers of all ages by providing access to more than 10,000 titles for free. Ebooks Minnesota also has a diverse and expertly curated selection of titles for teens to explore, ranging from classics to graphic novels to early financial literacy, no library card or sign-in required.
My personal passion is connecting reading and writing to support literacy in children and young adults. The University of Minnesota Libraries provides free access to high-interest writing activities connected to high interest themes like comic making, cooking and poetry through Writing Boxes: The Reading Writing Connection. It's a free download.
Abigail Rombalski is a lecturer in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education and Human Development and director of YoUthROC. Her research aims to increase culturally sustaining adolescent literacies, which includes working with youth towards educational justice, often in school-based leadership opportunities. Other areas of practice and research include community engagement, youth participatory action research (yPAR), anti-racist education organizing, critical pedagogy, urban education, and curriculum development. Abby has two teenagers who are giant library fans. One loves e-books that she can access on her phone and the other devours print books, fiction and non-fiction. Abby leads workshops to strengthen youth-adult partnerships and school improvement centering youth-engaged research.
Lisa Von Drasek is the curator of the Kerlan Collection of Children’s Literature. The Kerlan, an internationally recognized resource in the field of children’s literature, contains six core collections and several smaller collections. Von Drasek has lectured on the topics of the reading/writing connection in libraries, emergent literacy, diversity in children’s literature, comics and literacy, the new adult, what makes an award winning book, and children’s choice awards. She also conducts community workshops on creative writing, reading aloud and selecting books for children and young adults.
About the University of Minnesota Libraries
The University Libraries is a strategic resource of the Twin Cities campus and also provides integral information system support for the University’s four campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester. Composed of 12 library facilities with collections of more than 8.1 million volumes — and with special collections valued at nearly $1 billion — the Libraries has a history of strength in research collections and a longstanding record of contribution to resource sharing within the state and beyond. Learn more at lib.umn.edu.
About the College of Education and Human Development
The University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development strives to teach, advance research and engage with the community to increase opportunities for all individuals. As the third largest college on the Twin Cities campus, CEHD research and specialties focus on a range of challenges, including: educational equity, teaching and learning innovations, children’s mental health and development, family resilience, and healthy aging. Learn more at cehd.umn.edu.
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