Content Area Reading and Writing: Fostering Literacies in Middle and High School Cultures

Norman Unrau

Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2004 - Education - 458 pages

Through this strategy-driven, theory-based book, content-area teachers gain a thorough understanding of the fundamental role that reading and writing play in content-area learning. Unique to this book is the attention paid to helping teachers understand how the high school cultures students belong to affect their view of literacy and learning. This book presents a diagnostic perspective on teaching--encourages future teachers to examine students' performance/work on an individual basis--helps teachers see how each student's culture, background, personality, and prior knowledge inform his or her learning and suggests "best practice" for that particular learner. The author offers step-by-step approaches to gauge student literacy, build vocabulary, and implement instruction that improves comprehension, encourages critical reading, supports writing for learning, and facilitates collaboration for literacy development. Content includes research-based review of writing and numerous writing strategies; research-based overview of motivation for literacy in the content areas; and features a full range of plans to get beginning teachers off to a "good start" by showing how to create a cohesive methodology that aligns state standards with integrated strategy instruction and authentic assessment. For future middle and high school educators.

Contents

• Engaging Cultures and Literacies for Learning: 2
• School Cultures Shaping Students Minds: 8
• Is There an Adolescent Literacy Crisis?: 15

About the author

Norman Unrau is a Professor at California State University, Los Angeles, in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction, where he teaches a course to beginning teachers that addresses literacy and learning in content classrooms. He also serves as Coordinator of the MA in Education with a focus on middle and high school curriculum and instruction and facilitates MA candidates' pursuit of certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He served as editor of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, a publication of the International Reading Association for educators interested in the development of students' reading and writing. For several years he served as a University Coach to develop literacy and learning in a large urban middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Content Area Reading and Writing: Fostering Literacies in Middle and High School Cultures
• Author: Norman Unrau
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2004
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Jan 25, 2010
• ISBN: 0130184551, 9780130184559
• Length: 458 pages
• Subjects: Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Reading & Phonics