Reading and understanding scientific literature is an essential skill for any scientist to learn. While students' scientific literacy can be improved by reading research articles, an article's technical language and structure can hinder students' understanding of the scientific material. Furthermore, many students struggle with interpreting graphs…

Face-to-face time with students in the early childhood college setting is at a premium and often flies by before we begin to scratch the surface of active learning. Building a community of learners is one of our main goals as instructors; therefore, we strive to set up active learning environments optimal for all students. This reflection on…

Reading is an "invisible" skill, making it challenging to address in a college classroom. Yet, it is fundamental to disciplinary thought. Inspired by the "signature pedagogies" conversation, I wanted to find ways to make more visible in my classroom what I do when I work with readings. This gave rise to several questions: How…

Learning to read and write starts at a very young age. It is expected that by the time students enter high school, they have developed certain reading and writing skills. However, research has proven many students still struggle with reading and writing skills in high school. Some of these students graduate high school ill-prepared to enter…

We have incorporated an active-learning assignment, Reading Papers Using Key Sentences, in an upper-level Introduction to Chemical Research course. Although key sentences are typically used to help authors write with clarity and organization, we have found that this assignment helps students improve upon and practice reading journal articles for…

To promote content literacy, students have to be actively involved. This article focuses on strategies that stimulate student interest by involving them with the content during pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities. These processes provide students with optimal opportunities for comprehension. The authors recommend the use of a…

An easily-implemented instructional innovation that improved reading comprehension for students including striving readers, average readers, and advanced readers is described in this article. START (Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text) was developed to improve reading comprehension instruction and achievement. This innovative instructional…

For the past few years the authors have worked in urban public elementary schools to implement literacy instruction that emphasizes higher-level reading, writing, and thinking, while also maintaining instructional focus on the skills of decoding, word recognition, and fluency. Their efforts have involved implementing an initiative called In2Books.…

Discusses how educators are increasingly recognizing the value of instruction that focuses on developing metacognitive skills, or comprehensive strategies for thinking and independent learning. Summarizes research on metacognitive reading skills and then describes two sample classroom exercises to teach these skills to developmental college…

This article examines the use of the TARRGET model (Tasks, Autonomy, Recognition, Resources, Grouping, Evaluation, and Time) in restructuring middle school literacy instruction in urban schools. By changing the scheduling of reading and writing instruction, using literature as a basis for reading instruction, and emphasizing comprehension…

Many students have difficulty in science because they are passive readers, readers who receive information without understanding. Passive readers begin reading assignments without thinking about the subject. Their counterparts, known as active readers, interact with text to construct meaning. They make predictions, ask questions, generate…