Explains that a Middle School Literacy Teacher Expert supports and guides teachers with innovative strategies to help students master basic literacy skills to become lifelong learners. Explains the A.C.T.I.V.E. strategy to encourage students to ask, comment, track down, infer, visualize, and Eureka! (synthesize). (PM)

Describes how many students expect reading to be about answering literal-level questions, taking true-false tests, and figuring out what a teacher wants to know. Explains the Six Traits of Reading from Northwest Regional Educational Labs: decoding; building context; comprehending; interpreting; synthesizing; and evaluating. Notes that these sorts…

Explains the process of focusing on one critical reading strategy--questioning. Notes that the teacher first modeled questioning while reading a book aloud. Concludes that as students become full participants in questioning, they understand new vocabulary, enjoy reading, and solve their problems. (PM)

Contends that second language learners need to have a strong grasp of the reading process for school success. Explains how three intervention strategies (t-charts, sticky notes, and key words) were employed to give students an understanding of the reading process. Concludes that using t-charts helped students organize their thoughts, and using…

Explains that plot and structure, character, setting, point of view, style and language, symbol, and theme are the building blocks of fiction. Contends that these elements of literature provide readers with the tools they need for navigating difficult texts. Concludes that when teachers determine that a novel's setting is too foreign or the point…

Paints a portrait of a students' varied experiences with literature, and explains how the teacher brings the reading process to a conscious level with students and parents to help them appreciate readers' strengths. Intertwines several case studies of students and their awareness (or lack of awareness) of their own reading strategies. (RS)

Discusses "textual intelligence": knowledge of how texts of all kinds work. Describes how the author uses grammar in his classroom to help students understand how to read and write better and how to think with greater clarity. Describes activities used before and after students read or write. Argues that grammar is a process that helps students…

Discusses what it means to struggle as a reader, lacking competence with reading strategies and lacking confidence in oneself to make meaning with texts. Argues that balance can be found in adolescent reading programs by seeking equilibrium between the visible and invisible aspects of instruction in the development and use of reading strategies.…

Describes Reading Apprenticeship, an approach to adolescent reading improvement in which teachers apprentice students into the strategies skilled readers use. Demonstrates the program at work in one seventh and eighth grade classroom. Discusses four key dimensions of classroom life: social (building community); personal (connecting to reading);…

Argues that schools and teachers underestimate the demands that particular texts place on readers, especially as students reach middle school. Describes how the author uses think-alouds as one particular technique to actively give contextualized strategic knowledge over to students. Shows how this helps readers overcome their struggles to develop…

Discusses research, and strategies and activities for vocabulary development, grouped into five areas: knowing words, morphology, the use of context, the role of definitions in understanding words, and the size and growth of vocabulary. Outlines questions for metalinguistic awareness that can help engage students in word learning. Offers 10…

Argues that media literacy activities in the English language arts classroom can promote the strategies of reflective thinking, self-monitoring, close observation, and visualization. Shows how one seventh-grade teacher develops students' understanding of character development by using a film excerpt, a graphic organizer for developing…

Presents the "Structured Reading Lesson" as one simple way to structure reading activities so that the before, during, and after phases of the reading experience are all touched upon. Considers how reading strategies that students have developed to comprehend fictional narratives do not always help them with textbooks. Presents…