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…

We learn by doing. This simple philosophy is at the heart of project-based learning in the 21st-century classroom. It is grounded in the belief that the stand and lecture approach to teaching, worksheets and rote memorization are not enough to move students down a path to the deep learning necessary for success in college and careers. Essential…

As teachers struggle to balance the needs of their students with the requirements of commercial reading materials, educators need to consider how teachers will create space for children's literature in today's classrooms. In this article, 10 practical recommendations for incorporating children's literature in the reading instructional framework…

The Striving Readers program aims to support literacy interventions for adolescent readers in middle and high school. In 2006, Springfield Public Schools and Chicopee Public Schools were awarded $16,655,483 over five years for the Springfield/Chicopee Striving Readers Project. Both districts are located in southwestern Massachusetts and have a…

In 2006, Memphis City Schools was awarded $16,074,687 for a five-year period (2006-11) for the Memphis Striving Readers Project, in collaboration with the University of Memphis and Bellarmine University (Kentucky). It employs the Memphis Content Literacy Academy model as a schoolwide strategy and Scholastic's READ 180 for targeted intervention.…

This newsletter of best practices in implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW), Making Middle Grades Work (MMGW) and Technology Centers That Work (TCTW) school improvement models is based on presentations at the 27th Annual HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the summer of 2013. The newsletter is divided up into…

A school-wide reading campaign emphasized the joy of reading. (MKM)

Describes an instructional development team approach designed to make secondary reading programs more effective. (Author/JM)

Describes a humane Education program designed to build upon itself in each of the elementary grades. It involves seven years of exposure to humane education. Students receive a personal library of 14 animal stories by the time they complete grade 6. Teachers receive training at the local level. (Author/MDH)

The ability to determine what a main idea is and to identify supporting details are two concerns which are effectively integrated in a high school reading/writing program that aims at improved communication, increased skills use, and preparation for survival. (Author/KC)

An ongoing, interdisciplinary reading program for students in grades 7-10 in Perris Union High School District (California) is described. Initiated in 1979 as a result of low reading scores, the program divides all incoming seventh grade students into homogeneous groups. In the first 6 weeks of school these new groups meet once a day for 50…

Building partnerships to improve students' performance (Fitzgibbons 2004, Small 2002) is not a new concept to the education profession. Borrowing tenets from the business world and universities, schools have come to realize that interdisciplinary collaborations enhance the cohesiveness and achievement of the particular school and district as a…

The public is deeply concerned that students in urban settings are not achieving at high levels. Over the past twenty years, large urban districts have attempted to restructure massive school systems using educational policymaking processes that have focused on school structures, standards-driven curriculum, and test-based accountability measures.…

This booklet contains a description of Reading Improvement Through the Arts, a prototype program funded by the Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I that was developed and implemented in the state of New York. The Reading Improvement Through the Arts (RITA) program is described as an alternative way to reach previously unreachable pupils. The…

An educational program that provides small group living experiences for 450 to 500 young Hungarian students annually and that emphasizes the importance of reading and of an appreciation for the arts and sciences is described in this booklet. An explanation of the "camp for young readers" concept is presented in the first section,…