Author Description

The aim of this book is to teach basic science concepts along with remedial reading skills, using high interest stories geared to city teens and pre-teens. The ability to decode difficult words is essential to the comprehension of any science text. Reading words in word families and spelling these words is an effective technique for improving decoding skills. If a student can spell a word, he or she can read the word. the stories run like a teenage soap opera, with boy/girl relationships, adolescent humor, and conflict resolution. Story lines continue from one story into the next, often ending in cliffhangers that entice the student into wanting to read more. Mixed into each story is significant science content that is related to the lives of the characters. In addition, care has been taken to teach health consciousness, social skills, and values. The Application of scientific knowledge to everyday situations will become apparent to each student.At the same time, the stories are designed to teach linguistic decoding skills. A list of words for decoding, spelling, and vocabulary building introduces each story. These word lists target fourth through six grade reading levels. The word lists are not meant to be all-inclusive, but to remediate gaps in the secondary student's decoding ability. Each word list covers a few basic word patterns based on the science words needed for the content. Other words having the same linguistic pattern are added to the list. The word lists should be read aloud with help from the teacher. If the students have difficulty reading the word lists, the teacher should dictate words from the list for the students to write, including short sentences. If the student succeeds in spelling a word, he will have far less difficulty decoding the word when he or she sees it in the story. Spelling the words in word families makes spelling success more likely. If the student can transfer sounds to letters and spell a word, he or she will be able to read th