Reading and comprehending content area texts is important for academic and professional success as well as life skills necessary to maintain good health and quality lifestyle. Spanish speaking English language learners have shown poor performance on high-stakes assessments in reading comprehension. The number of Spanish speaking English learners…

Historically, reforms designed to transform teaching from rote, teacher-centered instruction to progressive student-centered instruction have had varied levels of success. Plentiful research juxtaposes teachers' enacted instruction with the instructional ideals of reform efforts to determine the extent to which teachers' instruction aligns with…

This study presents the results of an investigation into L2 reading anxiety among eight Chinese exchange students who participate in a one-year program at an American University. Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) is used as a measurement of reading anxiety. Data are also collected from semi-structured interviews, syllabus of all six…

Students with intellectual disability (ID) often have limited access to general education science content. The current study evaluated the effects of a content area literacy intervention designed to improve the comprehension of high school students with moderate intellectual disability on adapted expository science text. The multicomponent…

While teacher candidates take courses that prepare them to deliver content in secondary content area classrooms, they often lack the knowledge necessary to help their future students learn discipline-specific information through the use of literacy strategies. In many cases, content area teacher candidates do not view themselves as literacy…

What happens when students become better readers? Cultivating deep reading habits in students to help them navigate disciplinary cultures respects student autonomy. Scholarly literature predicts that three linked practices improve student reading: practice with feedback, explicit in-class work on reading strategies, and disciplinary norm…

With the advent of the Next Generation Science Standards in engineering (NGSS, 2013), teachers of multiple subject areas are being asked to do more than ever before--not only to teach engineering content in the K-12 classroom but also to engage students in authentic disciplinary reading and writing as part of content learning. These standards…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which preservice elementary teacher candidates designed integrated reading and science lessons that evoked the use of similar cognitive skills in both subjects, such as sequencing, predicting, classifying, or noting cause and effect. The authors provided the candidates with a lesson plan…

The current discussion among adolescent literacy researchers describes two positions at either end of a continuum: a generalist content area reading approach and a disciplinary literacy approach. Within the field, there are misunderstandings about the disciplinary literacy approach and claims that adolescents are ill suited to the kinds of…

This article reports on the development of an online dynamic approach for assessing and improving students' reading comprehension of science texts--the dynamic assessment for reading comprehension of science text (DARCST). The DARCST blended assessment and response-specific instruction into a holistic learning task for grades 5 and 6 students. The…

Many students, particularly underprepared students, struggle to identify the essential information in empirical articles. We describe a set of assignments for instructing general psychology students to dissect the structure of such articles. Students in General Psychology I read empirical articles and answered a set of general, factual questions…

High school social studies teachers face unique challenges in helping their students learn independently from text in their discipline. In this article, a set of research-based practices that couple independent student reading with high-quality instruction proven to improve content learning for high school nonnative English speakers is provided.…

This study was a narrative inquiry that explored the experience of one science teacher as he utilized a science fiction novel in his secondary physical science classroom. With the recent implementation of the Common Core literacy standards in Alabama, science teachers are now required to address literacy and reading along with teaching science…

Recent research on disciplinary literacy has called for a paradigm shift among secondary content teachers from perceiving themselves as disciplinary content transmitters to disciplinary literacy teachers who model and engage students in reading, writing, inquiring, and doing like experts within each discipline. How do content teachers incorporate…

In this article, a social studies teacher and a literacy teacher describe a vision for social studies that highlights reading practices that foster disciplinary literacy in elementary geography. Their purpose is to share a practical approach for enriching elementary social studies lessons and activities with a geographic lens. During the…