http://www.reading.org/resources/tools/lessons/390.html
This website had a great reading guide for teacher’s that have struggling readers in the secondary grades. The Bully is a high interest novel for students in 6th grade or higher. It includes session by session activities that focus on literary elements while reading the book, such as character analysis along with the graphic organizer to go along with the activity. I think my students would love reading this book and participating in the activities.

http://www.reading.org/Library/Retrieve.cfm?D=10.1598/JAAL.51.3.6&F=JAAL-51-3_YAC_2.html
This website has an extensive list of books that adolescents picked to read. This is great if you need to add to your classroom library. A brief synopsis of each book is included starting on page 2 of the site. This really helps with picking out the books I’d like to add.

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=943
This is a good lesson plan for poetry. It is based around the poem “Ex-Basketball Player” that would get boys interested. It gets students thinking about the future and reflecting on their own experiences. I think it is a fun lesson about poetry that would get students interested, not groaning.