ABSTRACT
If your college professors taught you additional studying and reading strategies or activities, jot down what they were.
Content area reading, the process of guiding students’ comprehension of challenging texts and supplemental materials in history, English, science, and other subject areas, continues to evolve. Initially, educators were concerned with improving students’ reading of print material, with determining and improving the readability of textbooks, and with developing effective strategies for content area subjects. These three concerns remain important, but contemporary times have brought greater diversity and complexity to our notions of reading, text, and student. For example, while traditional texts may continue to play a prominent role in students’ concept learning, electronic texts and other forms of media support and, in some cases, supplant traditional textbooks. Moreover, students may be more fluid and sophisticated users of these new forms than their teachers. At the same time, we know that many students continue to struggle with their reading of print material (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 2004). Indeed, statistics show that more than half of the students entering high school in the largest 35 cities in the United States read at the sixth-grade level (Vacca, 2002). Content area reading has responded to both these conditions and to ongoing educational research and scholarship. In this chapter, as a means of more fully understanding the current state of the field, we will (a) briefly trace the historical development of content area reading; (b) address a number of key issues and
Think back to your h igh school c lasses. Were textbooks used extens ive ly in your c lasses? What st rategies or act iv i t ies , i f any, d id your teachers use to he lp you read and understand your textbooks?
