From: Marla Wallace <mwallace_at_mail.ccri.cc.ri.us>
Original question:
Hello,
I imagine this question applies more to community colleges than to
4-year institutions, but I'd be grateful for anybody's input:
Can you recommend a source of high-interest, low-level books
appropriate for remedial students? I know that Brodart offers some
through its McNaughton lease program, but many of those are of the
romance novel/extraterrestrial genres. I am seeking something more
appropriate to college-age students.
==========
Responses
Many thanks to those who responded to my request for sources
of high-interest, low reading-level books appropriate for adult
learners.
As promised, here is a summary of the information I received
through email:
We use Pearson for their Penguin Readers. These readers are
on various reading levels. Please search our catalog
www.bergen.edu/library
We purchase high interest, low level books for our curriculum
library and ESL students. We just get them from
Baker & Taylor. If you use the B&T database, Title Source
II, you can search with keywords "High interest low
vocabulary" or "reluctant reader" and get thousands of hits.
Baker & Taylor reviews collection development lists
like "Hi-lo titles" or "High interest low vocabulary and reluctant
readers", so those titles come up. They also
provide the best discounts.
http://www.btol.com
I spoke recently with our Recorded Books sales rep who mentioned a new
series of read-along titles for adults. Popular titles in spoken word,
with the print format included as a reading skills improvement tool.
Good
for adult remedial readers, and ESL. It's a short list of titles right
now, but it could be useful for your purposes. I'll provide contact info
if that would help.
You can visit our catalog online via WebPac at:
http://catalog.westminster.lib.co.us/ or via telnet at
telnet://libris.westminster.co.us
If you do a Subject search using: high low
you'll see the the holdings, series names, and publishers. The titles
include fiction, nonfiction, and biography, which provide our adult
students
with lots of choices. Even though these titles are owned by the public
library, they are available for use by our students--one of the many
benefits of a joint use library.
We also found a great application for our Novelist database. Novelist
uses
"lexiles", a way of measuring reading levels. By exploring the lexiles
links, you can establish numbers for the reading levels (e.g. a lexile
range
that corresponds to reading at grade levels 3-6, 6-9, etc.). As we
conduct
library instruction sessions for these classes, we simply tell them the
lexile numbers to use. They do the rest in terms of interest, genre,
etc.
That helps prevent anybody feeling awkward about a reading level and
spurs a
new interest in reading.
Several years ago our college invested in reading software through a
company
called Renaissance Learning (www.renlearn.com). They provide sets of
computerized quizzes for specially formatted versions of books from all
genres. Their site describes the "Accelerated Readers" quiz sets and
provides the ISBN for these specially formatted versions (remedial) of
the
books. So if you go to their site and click on the "Quiz Store" tab you
can
put together a list using their selection of recommended book lists or
look
up the quizzes and find out which books are included in each set. This
may
be a slightly convoluted way to go about it, but if you don't get a
better
suggestion you might consider it. There are about two dozen providers of
the
titles: Baker & Taylor, Demco-Media, Sagebrush, Brodart, Bookman,
Perma-Bound, Follet, are just a few.
We bought several hundred small paperbacks for ESL last summer. They
came from Delta Systems Co., Inc., 1400 Miller Parkway, McHenry,
Illinois 60050-7030 800-323-8270
We bought in two series: Heinemann ELT Guided Readers, and Oxford
Bookworms Library from Oxford University Press. I'm holding Oxford's
The Picture of Dorian Gray (in 57 pages + study questions and
exercises). The cover blurb: Bookworms provide enjoyable reading in
English at six language stages, and offer a wide range of fiction, both
classic and modern.
Our ESL folks knew abnout the series and the jobber. The books come in
a variety of graded "interpretations" of well-known fiction. The books
use limited vocabularies of 400, 600 words, for example.
Give the jobber a call and they'll send a catalog.
One thing I also did to meet student needs was to purchase some
book/audio book sets. They didn't come as sets, of course,
but I bought audio books from Recorded Books that I could find a
matching title in my collection for, or could purchase new.
So for example, a new edition of "West with the Night" came out and
Recorded Books had the audio book - unabridged, I
thought that was important - so I got those.
I was able to match up titles in History, Biography, and some Business,
I recall. Our biggest use of them was supposed to be
for the History class that required a single book read and reported on
for the semester, with students who were really struggling
to do the reading (yes, we have some with 4th grade skills), in
conjunction with our learning assistance people.
my favorite--New Readers Press
http://www.newreaderspress.com/index_h.html
I remember how much I loved the hi-lo books in the school library when I
was
younger. There are plenty that would be of intereste to adults.
http://www.resourceroom.net/Surfin/index2.asp#hilow
We've been using Penguin readers with our American Language Program
(ESL) students with great success. www.penguinreaders.com
Not quite what you're looking for since they are for people for whom
English is a 2nd language, but they may be useful - it's the "Ladder
Series." See quote below from the website:
http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/pubs/AmLnC/0480TomTOC_nof.htm
"The Ladder Series of books are specially prepared editions of
well-known
American books. They have been made easier to read for the enjoyment of
readers for whom English is a second language.
The series is built on a "ladder" of five
steps from 1,000 to 5,000 different English words. The books have been
shortened, but they keep the ideas, facts, and pleasures found in them
by
American readers.
The publisher hopes the reader will enjoy
this series while going up the ladder to more difficult reading."
Marla
Marla Wallace
Associate Professor/
Coordinator, Reference and Collection Development
Community College of Rhode Island
Flanagan Campus LRC
Lincoln, RI 02865
mwallace_at_ccri.cc.ri.us
Marla Wallace
Associate Professor/
Coordinator, Reference and Collection Development
Community College of Rhode Island
Flanagan Campus LRC
Lincoln, RI 02865
mwallace_at_ccri
Received on Sun Nov 24 2002 - 05:19:38 EST