A contemporary thematic reader, Joining a Community of Readers offers a holistic approach to developing reading skills and building schema. Joining a Community of Readers maintains a constant focus on key skills while providing ample practice with shorter and longer readings. The real-life context for skill instruction engages students as they are able to stay with a single theme throughout each instructive unit. The authors' PRO reading strategy (Prepare to Read, Read Actively and Reflect, and Organize to learn) places an emphasis on pre-reading, active reading, and post-reading activities throughout the text and gets students applying the skills in the context of the reading process. Significant attention is especially given to vocabulary skills and finding the main idea and support.