Reading Ladders ─ Leading Students from Where They Are to Where We'd Like Them to Be

Many of us are searching continually for that just-right book for each and every one of our students. It is my hope to help you find those books. More importantly, I hope to help you guide students to the next great book and the one after that. That is the purpose of Reading Ladders. Because it is not sufficient to find just one book for each reader. -Teri Lesesne

"I finished the Twilight Series-now what?"

With Reading Ladders, the answer to a question like this can become the first rung on a student's climb to greater engagement with books, to full independence, and beyond to a lifetime of passionate reading.

"The goal of reading ladders," writes Teri Lesesne, "is to slowly move students from where they are to where we would like them to be." With reading ladders you start with the authors, genres, or subjects your readers like then connect them to book after book-each a little more complex or challenging than the last. Teri not only shares ready-to-go ladders, but her suggestions will help you:


select books to create your own reading ladders build a classroom library that supports every student's needs use reading ladders to bolster content-area knowledge and build independence assess where students are at and how far they've climbed.
"If we are about creating lifetime readers and not just readers who can utilize phonological awareness and context clues to bubble in answers on a state test," writes Teri Lesesne, "then we need to help our students form lasting relationships with books and authors and genres and formats." Use Reading Ladders, help your students start their climb, and guide them to new heights in reading.

Teri Lesesne is the author of the Heinemann title Reading Ladders. Kylene Beers calls Teri, "the Book Woman" for her unparalleled knowledge of young adult literature. She is respected by teachers across the country both for the passion she brings to connecting tweens and teens with excellent age- and reading level - appropriate literature and for her professional books Making the Match and Naked Reading. She takes her passion directly to teachers with in-person workshops and at her website, professornana.livejournal.com, where she keeps the field up to date on the best and most helpful literature for teaching adolescents. In recognition of her significant contributions to the field, Teri received the 2007 ALAN Award. A former middle school teacher, she is Professor in the Department of Library Science at Sam Houston State University, where she teaches classes in literature for children and young adults.