Professional Development

The following are articles and additional resources to help you integrate literacy into your content area.

Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy

This article discusses how teachers can use various literacy ideas and strategies to integrate literacy into content area subjects. It takes a second look at how literacy has changed.

Teaching for Critical Literacy in Social Studies

This article discusses how crucial it is for social studies teachers incorporate critical literacy in their lessons.

10 Content-Area Literacy Strategies for Art, Mathematics, Music, and Physical Education

Through this author’s teaching experiences, she (Ming) learned about literacy strategies that are useful in art, mathematics, music, and physical education. Thus, in this article, she discusses the importance of using literacy in content-area instruction. Specifically, she talks about how literacy strengthens students’ language arts skills, shares 10 content-area literacy strategies that can be integrated into the four content areas, and provides specific examples of what they would look like in each area.

Using Picture Books in High School Math

This article discusses the why using picture books with high school students is beneficial and how to use them properly. It also includes several examples of picture books that math teachers can use.

Moving Beyond the Page in Content Area Literacy: Comprehension Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science

This article gives you various ways to incorporate science into your daily lessons. With a focus on biology, teachers can easily adapt lessons using these multimodal approaches.

Scientific Literacy: New Minds for a Changing World

This article is about how literacy and science must be taught in unison to benefit the students. It explains ways secondary teachers can fuse the two subjects together to help students become literate in science.

Science Books + Reader's Theater

In this article, author Melissa Stewart provides an overview of reader's theater and discusses how to select and adapt science-themed children’s books for scripts. She offers a sample script based on her book When Rain Falls. Her website also includes a page devoted to readers theater and scripts.

Using Young Adult Literature to Enhance Comprehension in the Content Areas

This work goes over why it is important to use young adult literature in content teaching. It offers great strategies to guide discussion and increase comprehension.

Do teacher attitudes impact literacy strategy implementation in content area classrooms?

This study explored the effect that content area teachers' attitudes have on the implementation and success of a literacy based lesson.

Teachers' Enactment of Content Literacy Strategies in Secondary Science and Mathematics Classes

This study highlights the importance of attending to the various ways that teachers enact content literacy strategies and the influences of goals, previous practices, and local contexts on their enactment.

Math

Science

Social

Studies

Literacy and Science Connections in the Classroom

This article gives you a background into why it is important to incorporate literacy into science lessons. Specific strategies are mapped out with steps for how you can do it in your classroom.

Meeting the Reading Comprehension Demands of Each Content Area

This article gives an overview of the importance of integration between content areas, and the necessity for it. Hands on examples and ideas are also included.