According to a 2010 report by ACT, "Only 31 percent of students are performing at a college-and-career reading level with respect to successfully understanding complex text" (p. 5). This statistic demonstrates what educators know: Middle and high school students face numerous challenges in reading, understanding, connecting to, and remembering information in textbooks and literature. Content-area teachers need a toolbox of strategies to support them. ACT researchers recommend that schools strengthen the reading instruction capacity of content-area specialists. But in a world of high-stakes testing, grade-level expectations, and district scope and sequence, how can classroom teachers add reading instruction to their responsibilities? In the authors' district, secondary teachers haven't had to face this question alone. In 2010, their district, which is in St. Louis, Missouri, received a grant to create a "best-practices reading cadre." Twenty-eight 6th through 12th grade teachers--representing five content areas--met as a professional learning community throughout the 2010-11 school year and supported one another in implementing reading strategies in their classrooms. Kim was one of this cadre, and Joanne recruited teachers for the group and advised the group along the way. They focused on six strategies designed to strengthen vocabulary development, deepen reading comprehension, and increase students' memory of what they read: (1) direct, explicit instruction in vocabulary; (2) note taking; (3) interactive lecture techniques; (4) compare and contrast methods; (5) formative and summative assessments; and (6) inductive reasoning and inferential skills. The group created a time line for implementing each strategy at the same time within their classrooms, switching to a different strategy every six weeks. This plan enabled them to coordinate data collection on the effectiveness of each practice and to periodically report back to the group. This article examines how their cadre tried three practices: vocabulary instruction, note taking, and inductive reasoning. (Contains 2 endnotes.)