This book is about widening life and career options for students in the middle and upper grades through literacy. The book's one overarching assertion is that teachers of all subjects can create engaging learning environments where readers and learners use literacy for personal pleasure and as a tool of mind expansion. It seeks to empower teachers with the confidence to make their own best decisions about the learning that goes on in their classrooms. The book presents even more actual teaching scenarios than in the first and second editions, including additional examples from content areas such as math, science, art, music, and kinesiology. Each of the scenarios demonstrates valuable lessons to be learned from content-area teachers struggling and triumphing as they implement stimulating reading, writing, and learning strategies. The book is divided into the following chapters: (1) Readers, Teachers, Learners: An Introduction; (2) Active Learning in Language-Based Classrooms; (3) Comprehension Strategies: The Tools of Literacy; (4) Classroom Assessment of Literacy Growth and Content Learning; (5) Initiating Students to New Learning; (6) Expanding Vocabulary and Developing Concepts; (7) Writing as a Tool for Active Learning; (8) Literature across the Curriculum and throughout Life; (9) Strategic Learning across the Content Areas; (10) Expanding Literacy and Content Learning through Computer Technology; (11) Meeting the Literacy Needs of Special Students; and (12) Becoming an Effective Literacy Professional. (Contains an approximately 125-item bibliography of literature in and for students who speak "Other Englishes.") (NKA)