Integrating content-area and literacy instruction in primary-grade classrooms creates authentic and engaging opportunities for students to build background knowledge and literacy skills. Furthermore, when students engage in meaningful dialogue about content-area topics they can discuss complex ideas and use content-specific vocabulary. These…

Designed to help instructional leaders deliver effective training to teachers, this guide provides one of four evidence-based recommendations for supporting literacy among English learner students in grades 4-8. It includes practical application ideas and examples, as well as resources for immediate implementation. This guide is based on…

Content area teachers are now being tasked with incorporating reading and writing instruction, but what works? In this essential book from Routledge and AMLE, author Lori G. Wilfong describes ten best practices for content area literacy and how to implement them in the middle-level classroom. She also points out practices that should be avoided,…

This guidance report aims to help secondary schools improve literacy in all subject areas. It provides seven recommendations related to reading, writing, talk, vocabulary development and supporting struggling students. Throughout the report, recommendations emphasise the importance of disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is an approach to…

Teaching intermediate grade children how to write means teaching them how to write the alphabetical letters, words, lists, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, narrative text, expository text, and writing mechanics (punctuation & grammar). Teaching writing for meaning is teaching children how to express their thoughts in writing, this is the…

Science vocabulary can be abstract (e.g., "photosynthesis," "ecosystem") and have different meanings than in daily life (e.g., "class," "work," "power"). For this reason, understanding individual vocabulary words isn't enough for learners to be successful. The meaning is embedded in basic syntax,…

The goal of the nine family and caregiver activity sheets is to provide families and caregivers with simple, fun activities they can use with their children to strengthen their language. The activities were designed using recommendations from the 2014 What Works Clearinghouse practice guide, "Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English…

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue discusses planning and using interactive word walls to support science and reading instruction. Many classrooms have word walls displaying vocabulary that students have learned in class. Word walls serve as visual scaffolds to support instruction. To…

The law requires that juvenile justice facilities must provide education to all school-age students, and these facilities often do so despite challenges that would baffle most high school administrators and teachers. This "Adolescent Literacy Guide" provides guidance to both administrators and teachers who want to increase opportunities…

A critical issue in education today is that many middle and high school students are not able to read on grade level (Alvermann & Rush, 2004; Biancarosa & Snow, 2010; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Houge, Geier, & Peyton, 2008). In an effort to deal with the problem, many schools encourage all teachers, regardless of their subject area,…

Teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and academic language and learning advisors have long recognised the importance of developing students' academic vocabulary for successful writing and learning at university. There is little, however, in the EAP literature on the place of teaching and learning discipline specific vocabulary, despite…

Like educators around the country, staff in juvenile justice facilities recognize the serious academic challenges that many of their students face because of low levels of literacy achievement. This "Adolescent Literacy Guide" provides guidance to administrators and teachers who want to increase opportunities for students in juvenile…

Based on the understanding that writing should not be confined to the language arts classroom, this book provides over 200 examples of how 12 different strategies can be used in kindergarten through high school classrooms. The writing strategies in the book demonstrate how writing can also be employed as a powerful tool for processing new…

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans focuses on reading and writing activities for use in the high school science and math classroom. The 43 lesson plans in this book cover writing about science, reading about science, the vocabulary of science, short scientific…

Provides suggestions for teaching multisyllable words to remedial readers, incorporating romantic fiction into a reading program, and using content writing activities in a biology class. (HOD)