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Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work, 5th edition

Published by Pearson (January 30, 2019) © 2020

  • Douglas Fisher San Diego State University
  • Nancy Frey San Diego State University

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For courses in Content Area Reading (Middle and Secondary), Reading and Writing Methods in Middle School (Reading and Literacy), and Alternative Certification (Curriculum and Instruction).

Real-world instructional strategies and practical procedures to promote success in literacy and content area learning

Improving Adolescent Literacy provides instructional routines that will enable middle and secondary school teachers to bolster students' content literacy skills. Vignettes from actual classrooms depict the chapter's instructional approach in action.

The 5th Edition includes new chapters on background knowledge, group work, and formative and summative assessments.

Hallmark features of this title

  • The authors present 10 major teaching strategies to help educators learn to develop their students' disciplinary literacy and content area literacy. Strategies include anticipatory activities, read-alouds/shared reading, questioning, graphic organizers, vocabulary instruction, making and taking notes, writing to learn and reciprocal teaching.
  • Examples illustrate each teaching strategy being used in specific content areas to help teachers determine which strategies will work most effectively for their course. The content areas discussed include English, science, social studies, mathematics and elective courses.
  • Tech Tools help teachers understand how to use different technologies to enhance teaching.

New and updated features of this title

  • NEW: Chapter 2 highlights building and activating background knowledge. This new chapter introduces a learning model that focusses on creation, modification and use of knowledge.
  • NEW: Chapter 6 covers group work, focusing on collaborative conversations, peer-to-peer learning and productive group work across content areas
  • NEW: Chapter 10 explores formative and summative assessments in depth. This new chapter present a wide range of strategies for checking students' understanding, as well as information about what to do with the assessment data, to help teachers learn to adapt their instruction to meet the needs of their class.
  • UPDATED: Chapter 1 now includesan enhanced discussion about the differences between content area literacy and disciplinary literacy.
  • UPDATED: Chapter 5 has been updated with new text-dependent questions that require students to draw information from the texts they have read.
  • NEW: Chapter 9 offers new information about the types of texts students must understand in order to be successful in college and the workplace.
  1. Ensuring All Students Read, Write, Think, and Learn
  2. Setting the Stage: Building and Activating Background Knowledge
  3. Word for Word: Vocabulary Development Across the Curriculum
  4. Well Read: Promoting Comprehension Through Read-Alouds, Shared Readings, and Close Reading
  5. Why Ask? Questioning Strategies that Prompt Thinking
  6. Speaking Volumes: Using Collaborative Conversations to Build Students’ Content Knowledge
  7. Picture This: Graphic Organizers in the Classroom
  8. Getting it Down: Making and Taking Notes Across the Curriculum
  9. Powerful Pens: Writing to Learn Content
  10. Taking Stock: Formative and Summative Assessments

About our authors

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College having been an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is the recipient of an International Reading Association Celebrate Literacy Award, the Farmer award for excellence in writing from the National Council of Teachers of English, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction and curriculum design as well as books, such as Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, Rigorous Reading and Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading.

Nancy Frey, Ph.D., is a Professor of Literacy in the Department of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. She is the recipient of the 2008 Early Career Achievement Award from the National Reading Conference. Nancy has published in The Reading Teacher, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Journal, Voices in the Middle, Middle School Journal, Remedial and Special Education, TESOL Journal, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Early Childhood Education Journal and Educational Leadership. She has co-authored (with Doug Fisher) books on formative assessment (Checking for Understanding and Formative Assessment Action Plan), instructional design (Better Learning for Structured Teaching), data-driven instruction (Using Data to Focus Instructional Improvement) and brain-based learning (In a Reading State of Mind.) Nancy is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist and administrator in California, and has taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels for 2 decades. She is a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College, where she learns from her colleagues and students every day.

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