The importance of a literacy-based approach to content learning, especially within elementary school grades, is not a new idea. During the past quarter-century, the use of children's literature as an effective teaching tool has gained popularity across all content areas (Thiessen 2004). The definition of literacy has expanded not only to include…

Learning to read and understand research articles (primary literature) is an important step in the enculturation of higher education students into the scientific community. We presume, based on ideas from the field of genre analysis, that it is important for the development of reading skills to become conscious of the rhetorical structures in…

Vocabulary knowledge is important because it is highly correlated with content area learning. Strategies for vocabulary instruction recommend using new words in multiple contexts as key to learning. To date, the term "multiple contexts" emphasizes written contexts, not three-dimensional concrete material contexts. This article describes the…

This column explores how literacy practices similarly enacted across disciplines served as a platform for considering collaborative professional development contexts. With current educational policy, content area teachers are expected to include relevant literacy practices within their disciplinary instruction. Based on research across science and…

The Effective Instructional Strategies Series is a collection of six booklets based on the components used in Pacific Communities with High-performance In Literacy Development (Pacific CHILD), a principles-based professional development program consisting of research-based teaching and learning strategies proven to help improve students' reading…

"Reading maturity" is a construct that looks broadly at reading development encompassing not only basic reading skills but reading habits, attitudes, and dispositions. It has a rich history and this article calls for a need to make reading maturity a necessary part of the literacy curriculum. It offers a working description and reviews…

It is essential to support bilingual learners' language and academic development; however, teaching second language learners English has taken precedence over teaching content area knowledge and vocabulary, specifically for language arts. The focus has shifted from content area instruction to primarily second language instruction due to an…

Graphic novels (book-length fiction or nonfiction narratives told using the conventions of a comic book) bring together text and image in a way that seems to capture students' imaginations. Right now, there is little more than anecdotal research about how graphic novels can be used within specific middle school and high school disciplines. As…

Although literacy has become a multi-faceted aspect of education essential to students' future success, studies have found that many secondary students lack basic literacy skills. In the past, much of the blame for adolescents' literacy problems has been placed on elementary teachers, but recent research suggests that secondary teachers must share…

A widely accepted theoretical premise in second language acquisition holds that learners must notice language form in order to learn it. This premise provides support for language instruction that integrates attention to language form with attention to content. Empirical research has shown this combination to be effective; however, little research…

Despite Minnesota's investment in professional development in content area literacy, secondary students are not showing expected literacy gains. A lack of literacy proficiency limits future options for students. The purpose of this study was to examine content-area literacy strategy inclusion and its relationship to professional development in the…

It is essential to support bilingual learners' language and academic development; however, teaching second language learners English has taken precedence over teaching content area knowledge and vocabulary, specifically for language arts. The focus has shifted from content area instruction to primarily second language instruction due to an…

This article reports on a large scale randomized controlled trial to study the efficacy of a web-based intelligent tutoring system for the structure strategy designed to improve content area reading comprehension. The research was conducted with 128 fifth-grade classrooms within 12 school districts in rural and suburban settings. Classrooms within…

With No Child Left Behind, schools are cutting extracurricular activities, doing away with aides, and even getting rid of art and physical education so that reading specialists and writing tutors can be hired. But what can the art teachers do to assist in teaching reading and writing skills? The author believes they need to provide their students…

National reports reveal one third of American fourth graders read below basic level on measures of comprehension. One critical component of comprehension is fluency: rapid, accurate, expressive reading with automaticity and prosody. Many fluency studies and classroom interventions focus only on reading rate, but this alone is not sufficient. This…