Content area literacy strategies, which support students in developing literacy skills and better understanding disciplinary concepts, are a promising approach to teaching science at the college level. In this study, we examined the effects of incorporating literacy strategies with laboratory sections in a General Biology course. In particular, we focused on the role of literacy strategies in learning course content and linking lecture topics and readings to laboratory investigations. Laboratory sections in which literacy strategies were used had a larger increase between pretest and posttest scores, higher semester grade averages, and a lower dropout rate than did sections that did not use literacy strategies. This study suggests that restructuring laboratory sections to incorporate literacy strategies can be an effective way to further the learning of students in the classroom. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)