If you want literate students, you must teach:
-
Reading comprehension,
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Nonfiction writing, and
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Study skills.
Moreover, you must teach those skills regularly throughout the
school year.
The more you integrate these three areas into your total
curriculum, the easier teaching becomes: each lesson on one
skill reinforces teaching on the other two.
The three competencies should be:
The material below outlines how to achieve that triple-treat.
Authenticity matters
Don't restrict your reading instruction to imaginative literature.
Teaching reading comprehension is most effective when you teach
reading strategies from authentic, nonfiction texts. Expository
prose is required reading and required writing for everyone.
You'll find good, short expository essays suitable for middle
and high school students on grammar, etymology, punctuation,
and usage. In fact, you'll find more on those subjects
than on literary topics.
That abundance will help you in teaching reading comprehension,
writing skills, and all other facets of your English language arts
curriculum.
Writing skills develop reading skills
Until students become competent writers, reading good writing
does little to develop their writing ability. However, instruction
in writing improves reading, especially if students' reading
and writing is in the same genre.
Struggling readers are helped by instruction in thesis + support
writing regularly found in persuasive essays. The thesis + support
pattern is the basis for most expository writing ordinary people
encounter, including student texts.
Knowing the thesis + support teaches students:
In effect, when you teach the essay
structure as the basis for writing, you are teaching reading
comprehension while you teach writing.
Don't just take my word for it
In 2010, (two years after I first published this web page) the
Carnegie Corporation of New York released a report showing that
writing improves reading.
Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading
was written by Steve Graham and Michael Hebert of Vanderbilt University.
The 74-page report is available free in PDF format from all4ed.org.