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Loranger discusses how one first-year middle school science teacher met the challenge of an innovative program for teaching content area literacy--the ability to use reading, writing, and study strategies to learn subject matter across the curriculum. This teacher successfully bridged the gap between the theory he learned in his teacher education program and its application to the classroom.

It's twelve-thirty in John's sixth-grade classroom. The students quietly enter the room and go to their desks. Without a prompt from the teacher, they each take a book out and begin to read. This reading period continues for ten minutes. Then the students take out their response journals and begin to write. What's so unusual about this? Well, it's science class. John Hodsdon is a science teacher at the Charles Dunn Middle School in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he and his students participate in an innovative reading program: All content teachers at his school assume responsibility for teaching content area literacy-that is, the ability to use reading, writing, and study strategies to learn subject matter across the curriculum (Vacca and Vacca 1996). Charles Dunn Middle School, in fact, was selected as the state's winner of the 1996-1997 International Reading Association Exemplary Reading Program Award, which recognizes outstanding reading and language arts programs in schools throughout North America.

In this article, I show how John, a first-year teacher, met the challenge of this innovative program and how he successfully bridged the gap between the theory he had learned in his teacher education program and its application to the classroom.

Background

Studies suggest that, as our economy changes from an industrial and manufacturing base to a technological base, students will need a high proficiency in reading and writing. Reading in the content areas is seen as a viable way to address that literacy crisis (Chall 1996; Barton 1997). Prompted by average and below-average reading scores of sixth graders on a statewide assessment test, this middle school decided to make reading a daily part of every student's school diet. The school did not have the funds to add a reading teacher to the staff, so several key administrators "held the vision" that content area teachers could teach reading in their own classrooms. In concert with the entire team of sixth-grade teachers, who agreed that students did need reading skills to function more competently in their content areas, the administrators launched the pilot program. A creative scheduling plan provided for the addition of one period for a Reading in the Content Area (RCA) class for all sixth graders, which would be taught by each of four content teachers-English, social studies, science, and math. The individual sixth-grade teams were divided into four groups for the RCA class. Each content area teacher had one group of about twenty-four, heterogeneously grouped students for one quarter. At the end of the marking period, the groups rotated. By the end of the year, each group of students had had an RCA class in each of the four subject areas.

The director of language arts and the superintendent of schools, a former director of reading, conducted the training for the pilot program and centered on an essential question, "How can reading in the content areas be taught effectively in the middle school?" To address this question, the trainers identified the following elements for instruction: teaching students to differentiate between learning from narrative and expository texts, teaching students strategies for activating prior knowledge, helping students understand how they learn (metacognition), and teaching various study strategies, such as detecting organizational patterns, using graphic organizers, and concept development.

As a concluding experience for his master's degree in education, John had designed a curriculum project based on the lessons he developed to integrate reading, writing, and study strategies into his content area of science. The purpose of this case study is to highlight several lessons presented in John's curriculum project as examples of successful content practices. I visited John's classroom to validate the data. I observed and participated in activities, and I talked to students about the work in the program. I also conducted a personal interview with John

Context for Study

Although instruction in literacy strategies, such as vocabulary, comprehension, and study skills, is emphasized in content area literacy courses as preparation for teaching, Bean (1997) found that their actual application at the preservice level may be minimized due to such factors as the culture of the classroom, the cooperating teacher's style during field practica and student teaching, and the students' own experiences and personal beliefs. Is that the case when these students become teachers in their own classrooms?

I first met John when, as a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, he was enrolled in a required secondary education course that I teach, Teaching Reading through the Content Areas. Because of this connection, John later came back to tell me about his experiences in teaching reading in science as part of the RCA program. As an educator of teaching candidates and a supervisor of student interns, I was quite excited when John invited me to visit his classroom to observe the program in action.

John is a very special young man who is a natural in the classroom. Influenced by his father who is also a science teacher, he feels that he was "called" to teach from a very young age and models his approach to teaching on his father whose love for teaching and learning was contagious: "Much like my father, my enthusiasm stems from a love for students, an appreciation for science, and an ability to create a classroom environment where students are excited about learning."

Research suggests that one's value orientation strongly influences decisions made related to curriculum and instruction (Ennis, Cothran, and Loftus 1997). John sees science as a means to help students make connections with life experiences and to provide a thought-provoking environment for learning. When the RCA program gave him the opportunity to teach reading in science, he saw how the program aligned with his educational belief that students need to be taught how to learn:

Although reading in the content area has been a great challenge for me as an educator, I believe that content teachers are in a strategic position to show students how to use reading and writing strategies that are actually needed to acquire content knowledge. Our students will grow up in an age where all the information that they need will be easily accessible to them. The advent of the information superhighway has made traditional methods of memorizing a series of facts obsolete. Students of today are much better served by gaining the skills needed to access information and to comprehend the knowledge that they have read in media from books to cyberspace.

John revisited the curriculum of the content area literacy course that he had taken with me as a source of reading and learning strategies appropriate for teaching science. What follows are examples of how Adam planned his science lessons to include reading, writing, and study skills.

Strategies for Reading and Learning in Content Area Instruction

Ten to fifteen minutes of daily Sustained Silent Reading and bi-quarter book shares (figure 1) were part of the RCA program. The students also kept reading logs (figure 2), wrote in journals, and kept portfolios of all their work. The following is a list of learning strategies taught by John and his colleagues and students' reactions to them via their portfolios.

HEART

Students first learned a system of reading and studying called HEART (Santeusanio 1990). John used the method to help students comprehend the science text. It involves taking the following steps: Asking How much I already know about the topic, Establishing a purpose for studying, Asking questions as I study, Recording answers to my questions, and Testing myself. Student comments included the following:

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The HEART system helped me to learn and to remember.

I picked this because it was a good way to organize information for a test.

Compare and Contrast

To promote higher-level thinking, John involved his students in many compare-and-contrast activities. For example, using a Venn diagram (Vacca and Vacca 1996), students compared and contrasted two classroom pets, Iggy, the iguana, and Skittles, the hamster. He found it easier to teach those activities if he started with familiar objects and then moved to more difficult concepts, such as chemical and physical changes that occur, for example, when ice cubes melt and paper burns. In the spring, when the topic was ecosystems, he brought the students to a nearby field and forest to compare those two ecosystems. Students commented as follows:

I liked doing this because it was fun looking at the iguana and hamster, then comparing and contrasting them.

I chose this as the project I learned the most from because it gave me a better understanding of what I had learned.

Sequencing Activities

John found that in areas such as life cycles or procedures in a lab report students often had a difficult time correctly conceptualizing a sequence. They also had trouble taking an event or a task and breaking it down into a complete procedure or cycle. He found it effective to first teach students to identify the object, procedure, or initiating event; then describe the stages, steps, or series that follow, showing how one leads to the other; and, finally, describe the outcome. Sample activities included retracing the steps of a lost hamster, imagining a frog's thoughts as it goes through a metamorphosis, and considering what would happen were earthworms set free. Students completed these activities with a creative writing piece and had the following to say:

I liked writing stories about frog patterns.

The earthworm was creative and fun to do.

Cause and Effect

John was most successful teaching cause and effect in his unit on food chains-in particular, when the class considered the effects that disruptions in the food chain might have on a community. To encourage the students to think critically, he presented them with written "effects" and asked them to come up with the causes-for example, ". . . thus the number of fish caught every year on George's Bank decreases" and ". . . which has caused the number of oak trees in the Danvers school yard to increase." A typical student response to this activity was

The selection where I learned the most from was doing the food chains, because I learned how to tell what everything eats.

Opinion/Proof

Opinion/proof is a system designed to help students organize their thoughts and information to provide evidence for their opinions. John led his class in a town meeting scenario that involved building a resort on a California beach that served as a nesting area for grunions. Students assumed the following roles: local business owners, prospective owners of the resort, local middle school students, townspeople, environmental activists, people in the town who fished commercially, politicians, and surfers. Students had to form an opinion from the individual perspectives and make an argument for their point of view. Students reacted very positively to this activity:

I liked the Floating Fantasy Hotel meeting because I felt like an important adult.

It was fun playing the role of another character and arguing.

Study Skills

John found that his sixth-grade students needed considerable help with learning how to study. He focused his study skills instruction in three areas: vocabulary/concept development, textbook organization, and graphic organizers. One particularly effective vocabulary strategy is called "definition starfish." Students draw a starfish and on the end of each leg write a process cue associated with the word. Process cues include the following: most important word in definition, descriptive phrase, describing words, antonym, word shapes, color association, examples, nonexamples, sketch or a symbol, and synonym. Figure 3 contains a sample illustration. Students' reactions were favorable:

The hardest piece, the starfish vocab, was also fun because you got to draw and write.

I learned the most from the starfish because it helped me learn the vocabulary.

RAFT

John found that a technique called RAFT is excellent for activating higher-thinking skills. The teacher asks the students to assume the role of a living or a nonliving thing and then to think from the perspective of that thing. The steps are as follows: Role: What role does the student take ona scientist, a maple tree, the element hydrogen, a piece of quartz? Audience: To whom is this written-a mouse, a company, a drop of water? Format: What is the format-a letter, a comic strip, a poem, a diary entry, a telephone call, a skit? Topic: What is the topic of discussion-a letter to the class demanding that you be set free, a telephone conversation describing your greatest invention, a letter to a predator asking why it needs to prey on you, a journal entry describing a day in the life of an element? John says that this is one of the students' favorite activities, as these student comments attest:

I thought my RAFT came out very well and I enjoyed writing it.

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I chose my earthworm RAFT as my free pick because it was fun. I made a telephone conversation.

Assessment

Students are assessed in the RCA program through a portfolio and are given a passing grade after mastering a specific list of skills, some of which have been discussed. The portfolio contains all the student's work for the quarter. At the end of the quarter, each student meets with the content teacher to go over the contents of the portfolio. If both the student and the teacher find evidence of mastery, both sign a portfolio rubric (figure 4) and the student takes the portfolio and the rubric into the next content area. At the end of sixth grade, students choose five pieces from their portfolios-a "free pick" and an example of their best work, of their worst work, of an assignment where they learned the most, and of their most difficult assignment. The students then prepare a written rationale for each choice. They place the assignments and rationales in a pocket folder and take it with them to seventh grade.

Conclusion

As a teacher educator and the instructor of a content area literacy course whose purpose is to prepare teaching candidates for the experiences in real classrooms, I see John and his middle-school team members as practitioners who are truly bridging the gap between theory and practice. It is important to note that both university course work and inservice training contributed to John's success in the classroom, as evidenced by the specific strategies that worked for him and his students. This case study should help in the development of university course work and preservice and inservice training that better prepare teachers to promote literacy and independent learning in all content areas.

The qualitative data gleaned from this study indicate that an integrated approach to reading can be implemented in a middle school environment. Further research should examine the impact of the approach on student learning through both quantitative and qualitative measures.

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