One way of helping learners to develop knowledge, skills, and predispositions essential for independent learning is by teaching reading in content areas to help learners acquire the necessary strategies to use reading and writing to gain new knowledge. Conent area texts pose differing demands because each body of knowledge has its own framework which requires different interpretive strategies. The teacher's job is to ensure that the learners can develop in themselves the knowledge, skills, and predisposition to interact with text at a higher level of understanding through judicious use of reading and learning strategies. The teacher should make sure that the learning process occurs in the way relevant to learners' inclination and preference. Teachers' instructional supports in the forms of the activation and fine-tuning of prior knowledge before reading, provision of guiding questions to help readers get focused during the act of reading, and postreading activities to synthesize and consolidate what has been encountered in the text should facilitate learners' learning from content area texts. (Contains 30 references.) (RS)