Adolescent Engagement Strategies: How To Boost Literacy Districtwide

By the time they reach middle and high school, many students are already behind in reading. According to the 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31% of eighth grade students are reading proficiently. In the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” students who struggle remain unsupported, and their language and literacy instruction fails to meet their needs or accelerate their growth.

For district administrators, having a cultural and instructional response to adolescent literacy needs is crucial. The good news is there are proven adolescent engagement strategies for motivating adolescent learners in ways that provide both insight and profound mutual understanding. By combining timely data with meaningful human interaction and instruction grounded in the science of reading, district leaders can intervene early, support tweens and teens where they are, and make a real difference in their learning journey.

Understanding the Adolescent Literacy Challenge

For many students, adolescence represents a dynamic and vulnerable time in their reading journey. After spending their elementary years building phonics, fluency, and comprehension through structured support, they begin taking on longer texts and conducting more sophisticated analyses. 

Adolescence is also accompanied by a new self-consciousness and a desire to fit in. Students who struggle often feel shame and embarrassment, which can lead to disengaging or acting out. Ultimately, students who have been failed by previous reading instruction face a number of obstacles: they’ve built coping strategies that may or may not serve them, they’ve experienced failure that leaves them unable to trust educators, and they may even believe they’re incapable of reading (which, of course, is almost never true).

It’s difficult to identify reading struggles in a web of other challenges, in part because secondary assessments often are not granular enough to accurately diagnose the instructional need. Gaps in early foundational reading skills compound throughout time if not identified and addressed—and it becomes harder to catch up. With 85% of a public school curriculum delivered through reading text, literacy has a profound effect on student performance across all subjects.

Administrators play a crucial role in implementing adolescent engagement strategies districtwide and ensuring students stay on track. Their actions can provide just-in-time interventions and personalized support, creating an enduring culture of literacy.

Visibility That Inspires Action

When administrators have access to real-time, reliable, and nuanced student performance data, they gain real insight into their students’ experiences. This insight enables them to make informed strategic and tactical decisions, intervene at the right moment, and ensure every effort to support learners is both purposeful and effective. Without it, even the best-intentioned initiatives can fall short.

Data also helps administrators measure the impact of specific strategies, instructional approaches, and school culture initiatives. By tracking and comparing results throughout time, they can identify what drives engagement, pinpoint areas needing adjustment, and replicate what works.

But visibility goes beyond data gleaned from behind a computer. It means connecting on a human level—in classroom visits, impromptu hallway conversations, and school events—and ensuring leaders are visible to those who will be inspired by their engagement.

Visibility doesn’t just inform decisions. It empowers administrators to create an environment where students feel supported, connected, and ready to succeed.

Adolescent Engagement Strategies To Motivate Readers Districtwide

Engaging adolescent readers means harnessing the power of a school district and directing literacy resources toward the students who need them most. Administrators have plentiful opportunities to demonstrate leadership of this kind—and create exponentially positive results for the community. 

These adolescent engagement strategies help district leaders support literacy growth and student motivation: 

Be Visible

By being present in schools and at events, administrators send a powerful message: They’re invested. Visits to classrooms, school activities, and community events not only elevate visibility but also offer opportunities to observe instruction firsthand, celebrate successes, and build relationships across the community. By reinforcing a culture of engagement, administrators demonstrate to adolescent learners that their participation will be met with meaningful support.

Build Relationships

By taking the time to get to know students and families, administrators open lines of communication that facilitate learning. Sharing personal stories around literacy can help normalize struggles, model resilience, and demonstrate that growth is possible. Administrators can help students feel seen, understood, and motivated to persevere, while families gain insight into how they can partner in supporting their child’s reading development.

Shape the Culture

Incorporating literacy into the school and community culture can be achieved in many ways. Here are some ideas:

• Implement schoolwide initiatives celebrating reading and growth (not just achievement)

• Provide access to high-interest, age-appropriate reading materials that match student interests

• Offer book clubs, reading challenges, or mentorship programs to make reading social and engaging

• Set up judgment-free support for students by partnering with libraries, local organizations, or volunteers to provide additional reading opportunities

• Create literacy nights or workshops that encourage community involvement.

Empower Teachers

By leveraging the science of reading, administrators can empower teachers with professional development and in-class resources that help students fill gaps:

• By providing effective professional learning solutions like Lexia Aspire® Professional Learning, secondary educators learn to weave literacy skills and strategies into content-area instruction. Backed by the science of reading, they effectively support learners in building comprehension, writing, and reasoning skills. Aspire is flexible, self-paced, and not just for ELA teachers—it’s for teachers of all subject areas, helping them improve outcomes in every subject through literacy.

• Similarly, adaptive reading programs like Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® can be implemented as an in-class resource to support all students while providing insights into which students are at risk—and what to do about it. Covering a wide range of skills, from foundational reading skills typically covered in early elementary school to more advanced comprehension and analytical skills taught in early high school, PowerUp enables educators to support the wide range and diverse needs of struggling readers in a single program.

Celebrate Growth

Recognizing progress helps build motivation for continued learning and sends a powerful message that effort and improvement matter just as much as achievement. Offering incentives for reaching literacy goals, whether through recognition, events, or classroom celebrations, underscores the importance and fun of reading. It also helps build momentum for students who crave recognition, providing the inspiration and motivation they need to move forward.

Built-In Data for Literacy Growth

So how will you collect, organize, and analyze the data you need?

Programs like Aspire and PowerUp provide dashboards that help administrators quickly gain insights and make informed decisions daily.

Aspire

Aspire gives administrators a view into educator progress in learning about the science of reading and how to weave it into their subject area. It also allows them to:

• Transparently check district, school, and educator engagement for an up-to-the-minute status check

• Discover educators’ interests and the specific needs of their classrooms, so they know what’s needed and what would be motivating

• Observe educator growth through the program and personalize follow-up sessions

• Implement the program with fidelity, using Professional Learning Community (PLC) guides and companion tools to motivate, support, and celebrate educators

100% Trained: How a Successful Implementation Brought the Science of Reading to Secondary Schools: Learn how one district with eight middle schools implemented professional development training using Aspire for 100% of their educators.

“I love that Lexia Aspire is based on the science of reading and is specifically designed for educators working with adolescent students. The training has helped my educators weave in literacy skills in their classrooms and equipped them with the right skills to fill in the learning gaps that students had.” 
— Katherine Y. Leonard, Executive Director of Innovation for Special Education, Hartford Public Schools, Connecticut

PowerUp

PowerUp’s Assessment Without Testing® (AWT) technology provides teachers and administrators with real-time, progress-monitoring data without stopping instruction to give a test. In just minutes, administrators can get quick answers to questions like, “What percentage of students are meeting usage targets in each building?” AWT also helps both teachers and administrators:

• Identify student risk levels

• Prescribe instructional intensity

• Analyze daily, weekly, and monthly progress-monitoring data

• Present action plans to provide “next steps” for instruction

“We’ve witnessed remarkable literacy progress by integrating Lexia PowerUp into our daily curriculum, fostering a culture of focused intervention and personalized learning by committing at least 20 minutes of daily Lexia use for all students. Our approach is multifaceted: Students receive targeted PowerUp Lessons during intervention time, guided by teachers and academic aides. To boost engagement, we launched two successful challenges: “Cookie & Cocoa” before winter break, rewarding students for mastering key literacy strands, and “Are We Yeti for Lexia?” after the break, sparking healthy competition among classes to achieve unit goals. The results speak for themselves: 67% of students moved up one zone, and 35% moved up two or more zones. Lexia’s ‘Assessment Without Testing’ provides real-time data, allowing us to tailor instruction. We’re thrilled to share our success and inspire other schools to leverage Lexia for impactful literacy gains.” 
— Heidi Johnson, Reading Specialist, Bristol Virginia Public Schools, Virginia

From Insight To Impact

With actionable data, meaningful human connections, and evidence-based instructional strategies, district administrators have everything they need to boost literacy gains in their district. They’ll create a culture of literacy in an environment where adolescents feel supported, motivated, and capable of achieving their full potential. 

District leaders can make a tangible difference in students’ literacy journeys—and set them up for success across a lifetime of learning.

Curious about Lexia’s districtwide solutions? Explore our solutions for district administrators.