Supporting students to access and use the language and thinking skills necessary for reading success

Marcus sits in the back of his 8th-grade classroom, shoulders hunched, eyes carefully avoiding his teacher’s gaze whenever reading aloud is mentioned. His teachers have observed since 5th and 6th grades that he seems to be underperforming in school as his reading skills have not kept pace with his oral language skills. His teachers describe his foundational reading skills as “shaky” at best—he can decode simple words but stumbles over multisyllabic vocabulary crucial for middle school content. As the academic demands increase, Marcus has begun to disengage not just from reading but from school altogether.

Stories like Marcus’s are increasingly common. According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress only about 30% of students nationally are proficient readers—a statistic that weighs heavily on educators trying to prepare these students for high school and beyond. Additionally, data from the Education Recovery Scorecard revealed in February 2025 that students from high-income districts are four times more likely to recover COVID-era learning losses than from poorer districts. The continuing language development and critical thinking skills required for success in high school and beyond are dependent on solid reading comprehension.

The Middle School Reading Challenge

By the time students reach middle school, the instructional focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. The curriculum assumes students have mastered foundational skills and can now apply them to increasingly complex texts across subject areas. For students like Marcus, this creates a perfect storm:

• Gaps in decoding skills that were never fully resolved in elementary school
• Difficulties transferring skills from isolated practice to connected text
• Lack of automatic word recognition that impedes fluency
• Declining motivation to engage in reading in general, but especially in intervention that feels “baby-ish” or elementary

The challenge is compounded by developmental and social factors unique to adolescence. As one veteran reading interventionist shared, “These students are going through significant developmental changes. They’re hyper-aware of peer perceptions and often refuse to engage in activities that might reveal their struggles.”

Even teachers trained in the science of reading often lack strategies tailored to adolescents. Packed schedules limit intervention time. Available tools can feel infantilizing or fail to address teen-specific needs. Meanwhile, students unable to access grade-level texts fall further behind in content knowledge, vocabulary, and academic language.

As one experienced interventionist put it: “It’s not enough to simply apply elementary school approaches to these students. They need something different—something that honors their age and preserves their dignity while still addressing those foundational gaps.”

Creating the Conditions for Success with Adolescent Readers

Effective middle school reading intervention must address skill deficits and the social-emotional realities of long-term struggle. A few core principles:

1. Put learners at the center—not curriculum, standards, or assessments. Each intervention must begin with understanding the specific gaps and strengths of the individual student. Each learner must be engaged and motivated to participate.
2. Make the journey visible. Middle schoolers need to visualize where they are in their reading development—what they’ve mastered and what specific skills they need to develop next. They need to understand what is missing and how to get on track. This awareness is critical for engagement and motivation.
3. Incorporate meaningful variation. Rather than repetitive drills driven by mastery-based progression, vary tasks, content, and difficulty levels. For example, have students work with multisyllabic words from science texts one day and narrative fiction the next, applying the same decoding strategies in different contexts.
4. Create “desirable difficulties.” Challenge students just enough to strengthen neural pathways without overwhelming them. This builds resilience and improves long-term retention.
5. Celebrate incremental progress. Middle schoolers need to experience success daily—even small wins help rebuild confidence and motivation.

The Teacher as the Catalyst for Change

Over the past four years, we’ve followed several middle school reading interventionists as they tackled these overwhelming challenges. Their experiences highlight the critical role teachers play in this journey.

One particularly effective interventionist, who could have retired but chose instead to work in an urban middle school where more than 50% of students read below grade level, transformed her approach. Rather than focusing solely on direct instruction of foundational skills, she created an environment where students became active participants in their learning journey.

“The magic happens,” she explains, “when students recognize how deeply you care, and they’re willing to show their vulnerabilities and take risks. They need to be directly engaged in the process—learning by doing, not watching from the outside.”

Under her guidance, students began to see reading improvement as a journey they could understand and articulate. They developed metacognitive awareness of their specific challenges and celebrated their progress toward automaticity and fluency.

Practical Approaches That Work

For educators working with struggling middle school readers, consider these strategies:

• Diagnostic assessment beyond grade level measures. Identify specific foundational gaps, particularly in automatic word recognition and multisyllabic word decoding.
• Age-appropriate practice materials. Use content that reflects middle school interests and curriculum while targeting foundational skills. Incorporate diverse vocabulary and varying levels of grammatical complexity within the content learned.
• Structured variation in practice. Mix up tasks, content, and difficulty levels to promote generalization and automaticity of word-level skills.
• Metacognitive conversations. Help students understand their specific reading challenges and the brain science behind effective practice.
• Strategic scheduling. Create intervention times that minimize social stigma and maximize engagement.
• Connect to content-area learning. Show students how improved reading skills directly benefit their work in science, history, and other subjects.

Why It Matters

When middle schoolers disengage from reading, they lose more than fluency. They lose access to the knowledge, vocabulary, and disciplinary thinking embedded in complex texts. That loss compounds over time. But with the right blend of practices—from the science of reading and cognitive science about how learning sticks—students like Marcus can bridge the gap between basic decoding and fluent reading for comprehension.
Ultimately, this work is about dignity and opportunity. Visible learning journeys, targeted skill building, and teacher-led cultures of care help adolescents reclaim confidence and agency. As decoding becomes more automatic, comprehension expands, knowledge grows, and critical thinking accelerates—setting students up for success in high school and beyond.

What challenges are you experiencing with your middle school struggling readers? What approaches have you found effective? Write to me at Carolyn@WordFlight.com.