Suggests ways to teach college students basic skills in reading, presentation/oral communication, and writing/publication skills in the context of content courses. Suggestions include guiding and monitoring reading, encouraging frequent student presentations, assigning a variety of writing tasks, and requiring graduate students to write term…

Describes "assigned conversations," a technique for inducing focused study of reading assignments outside of class by using them to structure cooperative learning in class. Individual students take responsibility for leading a class conversation about a portion of text. Application with both large and small classes indicated the method increases…

Describes four guidelines (needs assessment, focusing on strengths, organizing for the learning task, and modeling strategies for teaching and learning) which help content area teachers in inservice education programs develop skills to enhance students' content area learning. Includes a lesson plan using direct instruction. (RS)

Prescribes readiness, vocabulary, and comprehension activities for teaching reading and study skills simultaneously with content area reading materials. (RL)

Collaborative learning strategies can improve the learning of subject matter in content area classrooms, but they are only one aspect among many that influence how much learning will take place in a class period. The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) is an effective teaching/learning strategy to use with content area material. Much of the…

This handbook presents course information, reading materials, and application research projects for a distance education course that focuses on helping inservice teachers of all grades and subject areas develop a useful set of concepts for fostering their students' critical reading and reasoning abilities. The course described in the handbook is…

Two studies were conducted to determine the effects of specific reading strategies on content area comprehension and reading skills. The strategies tested were a specific study guide, directed reading questions, cognitive organizer, and structured overview. In the first study, 225 students enrolled in a community college history course were…

After describing the development of a listening component in a university study skills curriculum, this paper presents ten assignments on effective listening skills for use as college study skills. The listening assignments are presented in a sequence beginning with focusing attention and following oral instructions precisely and ending with…

Describes a student-centered reading comprehension course for advanced English-as-a-Foreign-Language students of science and technology. In the course, student interest in and knowledge of content-area subjects are used to create: (1) motivation to read; and (2) an authentic task to accomplish (the preparation and presentation of an oral report).…

Adapting the implications of schema theory to the practical endeavors of the community college literature classroom can be readily accomplished within the framework of guided reading activities that prepare students for critical reading and analysis of short stories. Guided readings focus on what prior knowledge/experience and what aspects of…

To determine if integrating course content with reading study skills would (1) increase student learning of course content and (2) improve students' general reading achievement, one section of a reading education course for preservice teachers was taught reading study skills along with course content; two sections were given no classroom…

A content-area reading course for preservice teachers challenges them to engage in the kinds of activities that "real" teachers do or should be doing, demonstrating how teachers can work across disciplines and foster collaborative relationships, while at the same time assisting their students in making connections from one classroom to…

Describes preservice teachers' selection and use of specific vocabulary and comprehension teaching strategies for a microteaching session in a field-based practicum attached to a required content area literacy course. Data from interviews showed that preservice teachers were clear on the sociocultural context of their practicum settings and the…

A qualitative investigation was undertaken of the impact of a yearlong secondary reading course and practicum on two preservice teachers' beliefs about reading instruction and their actual classroom practices. Course-related data included transcribed interviews with the course instructor, narratives of course observations, and copies of course…

A high-school department chair and English teacher switched jobs with a university-based teacher educator. In this paper, they define their shared vision of student-centered learning, describe how to create a student-centered environment, explain how to implement student-centered activities, provide an example involving the colonial period in…