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Journal > Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
Engaging the Disengaged: Using Learning Clubs to Motivate Struggling Adolescent Readers and Writers
by Heather Casey, Ph.D.
|Grades||6 – 12|
This article describes a seventh grade teacher's use of learning clubs to motivate struggling students to engage in literacy events and foster literacy development. The data suggests the evolution of these learning clubs in this teacher's classroom is organic, emerging in response to the unique literacy needs of the students in this urban setting. This teacher motivates the struggling students in this heterogeneous class towards success by balancing a strong awareness of content, context, discourse, and pedagogy. The findings suggest learning clubs offer a useful framework for supporting adolescents who struggle with literacy and offers potential for work with all students across the content areas.
Casey, H.K. (2008, December). Engaging the Disengaged: Using Learning Clubs to Motivate Struggling Adolescent Readers and Writers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(4), 284–294. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.52.4.2
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students participate in learning clubs, select content area topics, and draw on textsincluding websites, printed material, video, and musicto investigate their topics, and share their learning using similar media.