Supporting the reading comprehension and content knowledge acquisition of English language learners (ELs) requires instructional practices that continue beyond developing the foundational skills of reading. In particular, the challenges ELs face highlight the importance of teaching reading comprehension practices in the middle grades through…

Supporting the reading comprehension and content knowledge acquisition of English language learners (ELs) requires instructional practices that continue beyond developing the foundational skills of reading. In particular, the challenges ELs face highlight the importance of teaching reading comprehension practices in the middle grades through…

Read-aloud accommodations have been proposed as a way to help remove barriers faced by students with disabilities in reading comprehension. Many empirical studies have examined the effects of read-aloud accommodations; however, the results are mixed. With a variance-known hierarchical linear modeling approach, based on 114 effect sizes from 23…

We have incorporated an active-learning assignment, Reading Papers Using Key Sentences, in an upper-level Introduction to Chemical Research course. Although key sentences are typically used to help authors write with clarity and organization, we have found that this assignment helps students improve upon and practice reading journal articles for…

This article reports on an intervention study of reading comprehension among young learners of English as a third language (L3) in a multilingual (Spanish-Basque-English) context in the Basque Country. The study involves a pre-test post-test design, with an intervention of 7 weeks using two intact groups of participants that served as experimental…

Scores on national and international tests for students in the United States indicated that students are not performing proficiently in reading. Furthermore, students are not able to comprehend complex reading tasks, which resulted in an adolescent literacy crisis (NGA & CCSO, 2010). In this collective case study, I explored ways four fifth…

This article presents two innovative tools--the Mathematics-Literacy Planning Framework and Mathematics-Literacy Implementation Checklist--which are designed to help instructional coaches and specialists support teachers to meet the challenges of the mathematics-literacy integration goals of the Common Core. Developed with teacher input, these…

Each disciplinary community has its own criteria for determining what counts as evidence of knowledge in their academic field. The criteria influence the ways that a community's knowledge is created, communicated, and evaluated. Situating reading, writing, and language instruction within the content areas enables teachers to explicitly…

Presented here is a practical tool called the Active Reading Document (ARD) that can give students the necessary incentive to engage with the text/readings. By designing the tool to incrementally develop student understanding of the material through reading using Marzano's Taxonomy as a framework, the ARD offers support through scaffolding as they…

This study examines student reading engagement with children's science books in elementary classrooms. "Reading engagement" in science is conceived in terms of a Transmission-Transaction continuum. When centered on transmission, science reading entails passive reception of a textually encoded scientific message. By contrast, when science…

Content area reading comprehension and writing have been a challenge for children in the U.S. schools for many years as evidenced by state and national assessments. One promising solution to the problem is text structure based instruction that promotes strategic selection, encoding, retrieval, and use of information for myriads of activities…

The law requires that juvenile justice facilities must provide education to all school-age students, and these facilities often do so despite challenges that would baffle most high school administrators and teachers. This "Adolescent Literacy Guide" provides guidance to both administrators and teachers who want to increase opportunities…

The Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework was developed by WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) two decades ago to help teachers provide the literacy support students need to be successful readers in the content areas. It has since reached over 100,000 teachers in schools across the country, at the middle school, high school, and…

The number of middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) taught social studies in general education classes continues to rise. Providing general education teachers with additional ways to support students with LD as they navigate social studies reading materials could help planning and teaching for all students. In middle school, when…

This document was prepared to assist literacy specialists in the national Regional Comprehensive Center network as they work with states to improve educational policy and practice in the area of adolescent literacy. It comprises three major parts: Part One: "Improving academic literacy instruction for students in grades 4-12." Based on…