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…

This qualitative study investigated high school reading programs and participants focusing on the insider perspectives of teachers and their students. The study occurred in two sites, one in a Southern state and the other in an Eastern state. The participants, five high school reading teachers and two to three students in each of their reading…

This paper reviews best practices for effective adolescent literacy programs. A focus is placed on five areas of literacy instruction including word study, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation. Each of these areas is discussed as well as how each area is relevant to reading and understanding narrative and content-area text at high…

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…

A mixed-methods study was conducted to determine if extra reading practice incorporated into fifth-and sixth-grade social studies and science content classes would have a positive impact on reading assessments for readers at risk. At-risk readers' independent reading levels were assessed using Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy Skills or…

This report presents the results from an evaluation of the fourth year of the Memphis Striving Readers Project (MSRP) conducted by Research for Better Schools (RBS). MSRP, funded for five years by the United States Department of Education, comprises two interventions aimed at improving adolescent literacy and the quality of literacy instruction…

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education issued a request for proposals (RFP) for programs to improve adolescent literacy. The Department's stated goal was to improve the performance of struggling adolescent readers and help build a strong scientific research base around specific strategies to help…

This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on…

This report summarizes the results of the Newark, New Jersey, Striving Readers program for project Years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This report updates one analysis (3 years); the remainder of the impacts and implementation findings are for Year 4. The Striving Readers Grant addresses the unmet needs of middle school students reading 2 or more years below…

The Louisiana Striving Readers evaluation assessed the implementation and effectiveness of the Voyager "Passport Reading Journeys" (PRJ), a widely used supplemental literacy intervention for struggling adolescent readers that reflects the research-based practices recommended by the National Reading Panel (2000) and other more recent…

Describes a high school where reading is taught in every content area, including in marine biology, health, and United States History. (RB)

Notes several documents in the ERIC data base which describe successful content area reading programs and methods. (MKM)

In the computer age, challenges have gained a new quality, and teachers, especially with their pedagogic responsibilities, have gained a new role to play. To familiarize themselves with the new technology and to become aware of its value in language education, the potentials of this new technology can be utilized to enhance the basic language…

Describes how one school system designed a flexible training program for teaching reading in the content areas. (RB)

A 14-item inventory was designed to determine the attitudes of secondary teachers toward the teaching of reading by checking their perceptions of their personal role in content area reading instruction, their personal preparation and ability to teach reading, the actual task of teaching reading skills, and the role of reading specialists at the…