High school students are qualitatively different from younger students. You can certainly “teach an old dog new tricks” by understanding the cognitive and social characteristics of high school students. Using the right instructional strategies to maximize the learning benefits and address the learning challenges of high school students can make all the difference in their success.

Secondary School Cognitive Development

Most high school students have reached the formal operational stage, as described by Piaget. These students can think abstractly and need fewer concrete examples to understand complex thought patterns. Generally speaking, most students share the following characteristics:

• Need to understand the purpose and relevance of instructional activities.
• They are motivated both internally and externally
• He has self-imposed cognitive barriers due to years of academic failure and lack of self-confidence.
• You may have “locked in” in certain cognitive areas and will need to learn how to learn and overcome these barriers to learning.
• You want to set immediate and long-term personal goals.
• Wants to take individual responsibility for learning and progress toward goals

High School Social Development

High school students are experimenting with adult relationships. Generally speaking, most students share the following characteristics:

• Interested in mixed activities.
• Desire adult leadership roles and autonomy in planning
• They want adults to take a primarily supportive role in their education
• Develop a Community Awareness
• Need opportunities for self-expression

high school Instructional Strategies

To address the special learning needs of students of this age, Teaching reading strategies utilizes student goal setting and record keeping. Students take responsibility for their own monitoring of progress. For example, the high interest animal fluency passages provide opportunities for students to keep records and monitor progress.

High school students are still concerned about the labeling that occurs when one identifies as a retrieval reader. Labels and stereotypes are imposed externally (by other students and sometimes by their parents), but mostly they are imposed internally (by the students themselves). Years of academic failure, due to lack of reading proficiency, have damaged students’ self-esteem. Many students have lost confidence in their ability to learn. Students have developed coping mechanisms, such as reading survival skills, eg, audio books or peer/parent readers, or problem behaviors, or “Whatever…I don’t care” attitudes to avoid the hard work learning to read well. . Secondary school teachers need to be extremely aware of students’ self-perceptions. Some talking points may be helpful:

• “Unfortunately, some of your previous reading instruction was lacking; it’s not your fault that you have some skills to work on.” aka “blame someone else”
• “You can learn in this class. If you come to class willing to try every day, you will improve your reading significantly, I promise.”
• “I know you’ve tried this before, but this time it’s different.”
• “You’ll be able to chart your own progress and see what you’re learning in this class.”
• “Some of my previous students were like some of you. For example, ___________ and he passed the high school exit exam after finishing this class. For example, ___________ reached his grade level in reading and is now in college”. Personal anecdotes provide role models and hope for recovering high school readers. Any successful alumni will provide “street credibility” to the teacher and class.
• “You’re not in this class forever. As soon as you master the skills you’re missing, you’re out.”