Intended to provide guidance for secondary school mathematics teachers who desire to maximize the reading abilities of their students and thus maximize students' performance, this report attempts to make the secondary school teacher aware of some of the difficulties encountered in reading mathematics and offers some techniques, activities, and…

Recommends teaching both mental imagery (an unobtrusive, natural text processing strategy) and summarizing (an efficient text reorganization strategy) to students who do not spontaneously use them. (NKA)

Notes that in the fourth grade, readers begin a transitional period where emphasis shifts from experiential reading to include informational and expository material. Discusses reading in the different content areas--English, history, mathematics, and science--and asserts that teachers should spend more time preparing students to read in these…

Science activities which help children look at the natural world can also help them gain skills for reading. Examples illustrating this link (verbal expression, vocabulary, finding main points, following directions, and writing laboratory reports) are given along with guidelines for teachers interested in building up and building on reading…

Reports on a study using teaching strategies for content reading material that focus on the difference between literal and inferential questions. Results indicated that the strategy helped to improve students' responses to questions. (SRT)

Examines some recent ERIC materials on comprehension processes and on how teachers can improve students' awareness of comprehension or metacomprehension. (HOD)

Compares Charles Peters's Content Processing Model with another content area reading model and argues that critics have overlooked a substantial flexibility within the models. (HOD)

Discusses how content area reading strategies are particularly well-suited to developing cross-cultural understanding in both minority and mainstream culture students. Presents and compares strategies devised by secondary school teachers in rural Alaska to demonstrate how some teachers are already promoting cross-cultural understanding in their…

Based on the idea that word knowledge has particular importance in literate societies, this Digest finds that most people feel that there is a common sense relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension, i.e., messages are composed of ideas, and ideas are expressed in words. The Digest considers several viewpoints on teaching…

Students' mastery of subject matter rests heavily upon their ability to read proficiently. Likewise, a teacher's capacity to cover all the material in a course and cultivate successful learners depends largely on the students' reading skills, as these skills are inextricably linked to problem solving, critical thinking, writing, researching,…

The popular mantra "Every teacher is a teacher of reading" and several decades of emphasis on content-area literacy have not resulted in major changes in reading and writing across the curriculum in secondary schools. In this article, we argue that reading and writing strategy instruction has not focused on what really matters to content-area…

The popular mantra "Every teacher is a teacher of reading" and several decades of emphasis on content-area literacy have not resulted in major changes in reading and writing across the curriculum in secondary schools. In this article, we argue that reading and writing strategy instruction has not focused on what really matters to content-area…

Today, less than one-third of America's high school students read or write at grade level. Literacy skills are alarmingly low even among those students who plan to go to college. Clearly, vast numbers of middle and high school students need help with their reading and writing skills. The question is: Whose job should it be to teach them? Among…

Targeted primarily for students in grades 4-8, this document presents a variety of structured overview, mapping, and story frames strategies for integrating writing across the curriculum and to help students gain and retain information from texts. The paper includes a rationale for content area reading lessons, a list of reading lessons to bridge…

A study compared test scores of students instructed to use graphic organizers while reading social studies content material with those of students not using the strategy. Subjects, students in two fourth-grade classes in a primarily middle class, suburban community, studied two chapters from a social studies textbook and completed chapter tests…