The Challenge of Content Area Literacy: A Middle School Case Study

Abstract

t'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 Read-