Content Area Reading and Writing : Fostering Literacies in Middle and High School Cultures

This theory-based, strategy-driven approach to teaching content area and secondary reading keeps an eye on the cultural issues affecting secondary students while emphasizing reflective practice to promote the most effective teaching. Chapters on assessment, motivation, struggling readers, aligning standards with strategies and assessment, and a constant focus on diversity set this text apart. Frequent opportunities for readers to apply the concepts they are learning help to make this a truly informative text. SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE: bull; bull;Step-by-Step features, which precisely explain a strategy's implementation. bull;Plenty of simple and effective strategies for assessing and addressing students' reading capabilities. bull;A strong focus on standards that shows beginning teachers how to integrate literacy goals with content standards. bull;An abundance of student work samples to fully illustrate chapter concepts, strategies, and effective teaching. bull;A Companion Wesite, available at www.prenhall.com/unrau, containing self-assessments, web links, and classroom video footage to round out content comprehension.

HOW CAN TODAY'S CONTENT AREA TEACHERS FACILITATE THEIR STUDENTS' LEARNING, LITERACY DEVELOPMENT, AND ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNINGAt the beginning of the school year, Ms. Wakefield asked her tenth-grade world history class to read a section of their textbook about classical Greek art and draw a diagram representing its content. Carlos, always drawing something, read the section with fascination, understood it in detail, and did a splendid job of representing it graphically. He knew a lot about art and could use what he knew to construct further knowledge. In contrast, Jaime struggled from sentence to sentence, making little sense of the three pages he read, paid little attention to his confusion, and wrote a few unconnected wards in a circle. Knowing little about art, Jaime found the section "full of hard words."Discovering Jaime's struggles, Ms. Wakefield knew she would have to learn more about her struggling student and find ways to support his literacy and learning.Teachers, like those you know and others you will meet in this book, work in middle and high schools every day to help their students acquire literacy strategies that make test materials accessible and promote learning in their content area classrooms. Some teachers approach this task with a strong understanding of reading and writing processes. Others know how to discover their students' literacy strengths and needs. Many have a multitude of strategies to teach their students at all levels to become more effective readers, writers, and learners. Some have discovered ways to heighten their students' engagement in learning. Yet others collaborate with colleagues and reflect on their practice so that content area instruction and literacy both improve.When more teachers in our middle and high schools engage their students in learning with literacy's tools, more students will gain content knowledge and skills while acquiring strategies for lifelong learning. WHAT ARE THIS BOOK'S PURPOSES? Understanding Culture's EffectsHelping beginning teachers understand how cultures shape language, literacy, and learning is one main purpose for this book. Every community, whether family, ethnicity, school, or peer group-related, has a culture. This culture shares traditions, rules, ethics, values, and a social order, through which it shapes minds. When teachers understand how cultures merge and emerge in school settings, they can better understand how cultures contribute to students' literacy development. Teachers can also grasp how they contribute to culture creation and literacy growth in their own classrooms. Understanding the Reading ProcessReading is fundamental to every student's learning in the content areas, and helping teachers understand the reading process forms a fundamental purpose for this book. The model of reading presented shows teachers how their students read, what contributes to good reading, and how reading for learning may falter. Knowing where reading may break down and how to detect those breakdowns enables teachers to see what steps they can take to improve reading and learning for all students. Developing Literacy StrategiesTo develop student reading, writing, and learning skills, content area teachers can apply research-based strategies. Another purpose for this book is to present literacy-enhancing strategies to integrate with daily instruction and to use with small groups and whole classrooms. These strategies will promote literacy and learning when teachers work with an entire class, provide opportunities for cooperative learning in small groups, or arrange for pairs of students to collaborate. While critical reading strategies explained in this book develop students' reasoning and thinking skills, writing strategies help teachers observe, evaluate, and promote their students' learning. Exploring Student Engagement and MotivationDisengaged, unmotivated studen