Educators increasingly recognize the importance of disciplinary literacy for student success, beginning as early as the primary grades. This cutting-edge volume examines ways to help K-12 students develop the literacy skills and inquiry practices needed for high-level work in different academic domains. Chapters interweave research, theory, and…

This guidance report aims to help secondary schools improve literacy in all subject areas. It provides seven recommendations related to reading, writing, talk, vocabulary development and supporting struggling students. Throughout the report, recommendations emphasise the importance of disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is an approach to…

This volume in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Learners series was designed to deepen teacher's knowledge and provides instructional approaches and practices for supporting grades 6-12 ELLs as they meet the ambitious expectations of the CCSS for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. This…

The year-long case study described in this article examined the transactions between a sixth-grade social studies teacher, Mrs. O'Reilly, and a struggling reader within her classroom, Sarah, in relation to the reading-task demands of their classroom. Findings indicated that Mrs. O'Reilly's transactions with Sarah were influenced by a cognitive,…

Introduction: A correspondence has been seen between the level at which one can read scientific texts and his/her performance in writing this type of texts. Besides being able to read at the most complex levels, formulating research problems requires explicit training in writing. The objective of the present study was to evaluate whether…

In this concise, thought-provoking book, prominent researchers analyze existing knowledge on adolescent literacy, examine the implications for classroom instruction, and offer specific goals for future research. The volume reviews cutting-edge approaches to understanding the unique features of teaching and learning in secondary schools. Particular…

Provides an overview of techniques an instructional designer can use to examine printed subject matter materials when conceptualizing unfamiliar content. Highlights include a discussion of conceptualizing versus learning, interactions between designers and subject experts, and interacting with print materials based on content area reading…

Eighty high school students enrolled in social studies classrooms participated in a study exploring the hypothesis that field dependence-independence is a perceptual dimension of cognitive style influencing text structure variables and the quality of free recall. Based on results of a test of field dependence/independence, 10 subjects served in…

The purpose of this study was to quantitatively analyze the Latin American content of contemporary world geography textbooks published for United States secondary schools. A preliminary review of the literature indicated that Latin America was generally omitted from world geography texts, Central America was given minimal attention, and…

Intended for elementary school teachers, researchers, and materials developers, this book presents a cluster approach to vocabulary instruction, in which words are taught in semantically related groups. Over 7,000 words from elementary school textbooks have been organized into 61 instructional clusters, each containing two levels of subclusters…

Assuming that the ability to interpret punctuation is basic to reading comprehension, a study was conducted to assess the junior high school reader's ability to interpret internal punctuation in a written passage. From an examination of texts, reference and research materials used at the junior high school level, six uses of three punctuation…

Designed to assess the attitudes toward and perceptions of competency in teaching reading in the content areas held by preservice and inservice teachers of elementary and secondary school content area subjects, this inventory contains specific skill statements on a five-point Likert-type scale. Each statement represents and illustrates the…

The major purpose of this study was to identify effective methods or procedures that high school biology teachers would recommend to help their students master the skills needed for reading and understanding their biology textbooks, workbooks, laboratory manuals, and other printed materials used in biology classes. It was hypothesized that…

The effect of graphic organizers on 14 learning-disabled students' (grades 5 and 6) recall of science content was compared with that of students taught identical content without the graphic organizer condition. Evaluation two weeks later found no statistically significant differences between the groups on production or choice response tasks. (DB)

A study examined students' ability to comprehend consistent or inconsistent text when activating relevant or irrelevant background knowledge. Fifty-five grade six students reading at or above grade level were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: activated/consistent, nonactivated/consistent, activated/inconsistent, and…