Content Area Reading and Writing : Fostering Literacies in Middle and High School Cultures / Edition 1

HOW CAN TODAY'S CONTENT AREA TEACHERS FACILITATE THEIR STUDENTS' LEARNING, LITERACY DEVELOPMENT, AND ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING

At the beginning of the school year, Ms. Wakefield asked her tenth-grade world history class to read a section of their textbook about classical Greek art and draw a diagram representing its content. Carlos, always drawing something, read the section with fascination, understood it in detail, and did a splendid job of representing it graphically. He knew a lot about art and could use what he knew to construct further knowledge. In contrast, Jaime struggled from sentence to sentence, making little sense of the three pages he read, paid little attention to his confusion, and wrote a few unconnected wards in a circle. Knowing little about art, Jaime found the section "full of hard words." Discovering Jaime's struggles, Ms. Wakefield knew she would have to learn more about her struggling student and find ways to support his literacy and learning.

Teachers, like those you know and others you will meet in this book, work in middle and high schools every day to help their students acquire literacy strategies that make test materials accessible and promote learning in their content area classrooms. Some teachers approach this task with a strong understanding of reading and writing processes. Others know how to discover their students' literacy strengths and needs. Many have a multitude of strategies to teach their students at all levels to become more effective readers, writers, and learners. Some have discovered ways to heighten their students' engagement in learning. Yet others collaborate with colleagues and reflect on their practice so thatcontent area instruction and literacy both improve. When more teachers in our middle and high schools engage their students in learning with literacy's tools, more students will gain content knowledge and skills while acquiring strategies for lifelong learning. WHAT ARE THIS BOOK'S PURPOSES? Understanding Culture's Effects

Helping beginning teachers understand how cultures shape language, literacy, and learning is one main purpose for this book. Every community, whether family, ethnicity, school, or peer group-related, has a culture. This culture shares traditions, rules, ethics, values, and a social order, through which it shapes minds. When teachers understand how cultures merge and emerge in school settings, they can better understand how cultures contribute to students' literacy development. Teachers can also grasp how they contribute to culture creation and literacy growth in their own classrooms. Understanding the Reading Process

Reading is fundamental to every student's learning in the content areas, and helping teachers understand the reading process forms a fundamental purpose for this book. The model of reading presented shows teachers how their students read, what contributes to good reading, and how reading for learning may falter. Knowing where reading may break down and how to detect those breakdowns enables teachers to see what steps they can take to improve reading and learning for all students. Developing Literacy Strategies

To develop student reading, writing, and learning skills, content area teachers can apply research-based strategies. Another purpose for this book is to present literacy-enhancing strategies to integrate with daily instruction and to use with small groups and whole classrooms. These strategies will promote literacy and learning when teachers work with an entire class, provide opportunities for cooperative learning in small groups, or arrange for pairs of students to collaborate. While critical reading strategies explained in this book develop students' reasoning and thinking skills, writing strategies help teachers observe, evaluate, and promote their students' learning. Exploring Student Engagement and Motivation

Disengaged, unmotivated students who rarely complete reading or any other homework assignment often puzzle beginning teachers in every content area. They are not only perplexed but also dismayed by the disengagement. Thus, another purpose for this book is to help you understand what factors affect literacy engagement and what you can do to heighten it. Fitting It All In

New teachers often wonder how they can possibly fit all they have learned about teaching, including strategies to enhance literacy for all students, into their instructional day. Addressing state standards, where they apply, has contributed to many beginning teachers' bewilderment. This book was designed to help you align state standards with instruction and assessment practices in your content area classrooms. Reflecting and Collaborating for Professional Growth

Finally, teachers must help each other teach and learn to reflect on teaching. Those goals for teacher collaboration and reflection guided this book's creation. Several methods for growing collaborative, reflective cultures in your classrooms and schools appear in this book along with examples of teachers who have taken that path. HOW IS THIS BOOK ORGANIZED

Chapter 1 shows how cultures shape the minds of middle and high school students; explores the influence of culture on students' school, community, and personal literacies; identifies the challenges of literacy development and learning in classroom communities; and reviews research-based practices and resources for teachers to meet those challenges, especially in schools and classrooms with struggling readers and disengaged learners.

Chapter 2 looks inside a reader's meaning construction zone to gain a better understanding of how a student reads and negotiates meanings in classroom contexts. In fact, the model of reading may serve as a model for cognition, skill acquisition, and problem solving in general. What follows as instructional recommendations in subsequent chapters is rooted in that model of reading.

Chapter 3 provides a step-by-step approach to diagnostic teaching. Building on the model of reading presented in Chapter 2, this chapter introduces you to a range of formal and informal methods to assess students' reading as represented in the model, shows you how to assess your own content area students, and provides methods for evaluating texts used in your instructional program.

Chapter 4 focuses on vocabulary, its connection with word recognition in the model of reading, and methods you can use to help your students learn unfamiliar words, including those that help them build a bridge to competence in your instructional field and those related to it.

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 offer a wide range of strategies you can teach students to develop their reading comprehension, methods to link collaborative classroom activity with literacy growth, and procedures to enhance your students' critical reading of texts and the cultures from which they arise.

Chapter 8 explores how you can use writing to assess, promote, and observe your students' learning. It includes methods for examining student work so that you can make decisions to improve student performance. You can then extend their understanding of concepts and their application to your field.

Chapter 9 addresses instructional programs and strategies for struggling readers and English learners.

Chapter 10 focuses on student engagement with reading and learning, examining dimensions of motivation that affect engagement and providing you with suggestions for deepening student engagement in your classrooms.

Chapter 11 shows you how literacy-enhancing strategies presented in earlier chapters can be integrated into lesson, unit, and yearlong planning for differentiated instruction. It demonstrates how state standards or learning goals, integrated strategy instruction, and assessment can be aligned. The chapter also presents ways to identify central concepts you want all students, even in highly diverse classrooms, to master and methods to develop criteria and rubrics with students to measure the degree to which they have mastered those concepts. These methods are designed to help students grasp how they are progressing and to see clearly what next steps they need to take to approach targets demonstrating mastery.

Finally, Chapter 12 focuses on teacher-to-teacher connections that foster literacy and reflective practice. It presents several approaches for teachers to look deeper into classroom teaching and learning and to move toward more collaborative cultures within schools that, through teachers' growth, contribute to students' literacies and learning. WHAT SPECIAL FEATURES FACILITATE THIS TEXT'S EFFECTIVENESS

• Purpose-setting Questions at the beginning of each chapter to guide reading and frame inquiry.
• Double-Entry Journal prompt at the beginning and end of each chapter to heighten reader's engagement and to encourage the integration of new knowledge.
• Graphic Summaries at the end of each chapter to capture essential features and interconnections.
• Step-by-Step "How To" format with hints to execute strategies to effectively facilitate learning.
• Some chapters include Activity Boxes, Teacher Tips, and Diagnostic Peepholes to help teachers envision how well their students are reading by using formal or informal assessment instruments.