Books for teenagers at reading age of a six year old?

[mystery]

Yes that's very true. Also, although it is very time-consuming, it is in some ways cheaper. If you are making rapid headway with a child (which is definitely possible if you get the right "key in") you can quickly not need the reading scheme books you just ordered by the time they are delivered. Unless your school has a good selection of stuff for helping secondary age children learn to read it's quite hard to start from scratch. I don't think many secondary schools do have much stuff for teaching reading though. It is a puzzle to me what they do do with the reasonably numerous group of children who turn up in year 7 with a reading age which is too poor to benefit from the secondary curriculum. Certainly my children's primary sends them a few children like this most years and we can't be on our own. I do hope they come out at 16 reading but I'm not so sure they do.

With some kids it is quite hard to find something they are interested in ... ....... or you find it, but that doesn't mean they want to read about it - they might want to play football all day but reading about it is just no-go. I find they are all mostly interested in themselves, and writing something about them can be good. They want to find out what you say about them!

[Tinkers]

Have you looked at these?

http://www.risingstars-uk.com/categories/sen/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[yoyo123]

Some of the materials and resources aimed at adult literacy and numeracy can be good. Certainly there are lots of games and activities if you search online.

You might also try some of those books that have alternative endings , you get to teh end of the page and decide what you are going to do and then it tells you which page to read. I know goosebumps do some ( although the level may be too high atm, you could read them together) IIRC there are also some where you roll a dice which decides your next steps, I know my colleague used these to great effect with a 20 year old who had told her she would never f....teach him to read! He persevered because of these books despite himself

any use?
http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/12418" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ourmaminhavana]

Thanks very much everyone for some really useful suggestions. Amber, you're so dedicated! It's a great idea to produce my own based on his interests but I just don't have the time, hence my very late reply to my own post!!
Mystery, all I know is his reading age... He's in my Year 8 group for three hours a week, along with many other severely limited pupils. Lots of the kids at my school have reading mentors, but parental help is very unlikely. Ideally, I'd like the school to run adult literacy classes.

[mystery]

Ah well, if you mean a daily voluntary reading mentor, maybe that's your way in? Maybe the piece of paper is wrong - amazing after all those years of schooling and this is all you are presented with in year 8 for one poor child who as yet has barely learned to read.

To learn to read in a reasonably short space of time without getting further disillusioned he needs some serious daily one to one input. No wonder loads of young people don't get to learn to read until they end up in prison and another prisoner teaches them using Toe by Toe. Sometimes schools here make me want to cry.

I am just starting a new season of volunteer work at my local primary. I have written to several secondary schools several time offering free one to one reading tutoring. They don't reply, or if they do, they say they can't accept it because children can't be taken out of class for very long. Just how much is a child like this one with such a low reading age going to learn in class? When I taught secondary science to kids who couldn't read I just couldn't see the point. I couldn't see why someone wasn't just teaching them to read. I didn't know that the same schools who were too "busy" with this, that and the other, and too short of budget might have been turning down some good free help.