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)

Reviews literature related to content area teachers' attitudes toward teaching reading. Suggests that content area teachers need to know more about reading skills in their content areas, that they are willing to enroll in content area reading courses, and that such coursework results in an application of techniques learned. (MG)

It is generally agreed that the ability to read mathematics is an important skill--one that few of our students possess. A number of people have published some suggestions for helping students learn to read their mathematics textbooks. What these have in common is suggestions for getting students more active while reading. Using these resources as…

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…

The major purpose of this study was to identify effective methods or procedures that high school biology teachers would recommend to help their students master the skills needed for reading and understanding their biology textbooks, workbooks, laboratory manuals, and other printed materials used in biology classes. It was hypothesized that…

Helping to build a bridge between classroom lessons and the world outside the classroom door, this book suggests specific strategies for using the newspaper across the school curriculum. The introduction to the book answers the question: Why use newspapers in the reading curriculum? Chapters in the book are entitled: (1) Teaching How to Read the…

Noting that students often have difficulty reading texts for information, this book offers practical, classroom-tested techniques that focus on content while encouraging students to take control of their own learning by expanding their repertoire of reading strategies. The book defines "infotexts" as the books, textbooks, journals,…

Aimed at entering college students whose skills are at a precollege level, this book focuses on reading comprehension and explores reading as a form of the thinking process. The primary focus of the book is on helping students grasp the main ideas and supporting details of material they are assigned to read in their college textbooks. Chapters…

Teachers were advised on methods of developing reading skills for students who are disabled readers and a reading checklist of content areas was added as a beginning in teaching reading. (Author/RK)

The Effective Reading in Content Areas (ERICA) teaching model comprises four stages: preparing for reading, thinking through information, extracting and organizing information, and translating information. Aspects to consider in the first stage include the preparation of ideas, text, and vocabulary. Two strategies can be used to promote reflection…

This document addresses new insights into the complex cognitive processes involved in reading and their effects on programs and teachers in social studies. Indices are examined that consider: (1) students' reading performance; (2) teacher behavior; (3) textbook readability; and (4) structure for explanation of textual material. Research indicates…

This article discusses three major reasons why children who can decode the stories in their basal readers may still have problems reading content area textbooks. The reasons include: (1) lack of prerequisite knowledge (including content, discourse, and strategic knowledge); (2) poorly written textbooks; and (3) negative classroom experiences in…

A detailed teaching model designed to develop effective reading skills in content areas (ERICA) is presented in this document. The paper begins with a discussion of the four stages of the ERICA model: (1) preparing for reading, (2) thinking through information, (3) extracting and organizing information, and (4) translating information. The paper…

Two instructional strategies stress effective reading during science instruction at the middle grade level. One uses print material for enrichment, while the second uses print as the primary instructional medium. Teachers can help students get ready to read in content areas by stimulating their interest in a variety of ways: capitalizing on chance…

Whereas an earlier report summarized six phases of the Learning from Text Project, including expansion and organization, this final report consists of five parts: (1) explanation of a model for learning from text in a classroom situation, (2) application of the learning from text model to analysis of data for eight California campuses, (3)…