Secondary teachers benefit from ongoing coaching to support their implementation of evidence-based literacy practices across content areas. However, several factors may facilitate or impede literacy coaching at the secondary level. We conducted an exploratory survey study to investigate 141 middle school teachers' and 64 instructional coaches'…

This unique special issue features five articles that provide guidance for middle school special education and general education content-area co-teachers on how to implement enhanced co-teaching models including specialized literacy instruction and best practices for co-teachers (e.g., co-planning; using station teaching to differentiate…

It is essential for middle school leaders to develop and promote school-wide literacy models, organizational structures that have a significant impact on the learning environment for all students in their building. However, school-wide literacy models can be difficult to implement and sustain over time. Drawing from an Office of Special Education…

Secondary school administrators increasingly include students with disabilities in general education classrooms with coteaching models. Theoretically, coteaching enables two educators to attend to the learning needs of students with disabilities while exposing them to grade-level content area instruction. However, our study on teachers'…

General and special education teachers need to have an understanding of effective practices for providing vocabulary instruction to students with and without disabilities across grade levels and content areas. Preservice teachers in this study (N = 121) received training in evidence-based practices for vocabulary instruction via a series of three…

When students read more, vocabulary knowledge increases (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003; Krashen, 2004). Out of every 100 unknown words that students encounter while reading, they learn an average of 15 of them from text alone (Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999). In addition, as students age, they are more likely to infer word meanings, indicating…

This article describes the importance of vocabulary knowledge in adolescents' reading comprehension, particularly for students with disabilities. Students with stronger vocabularies tend to have better background knowledge and improved understanding of content-area texts. We describe evidence-based vocabulary instructional practices that…