This professional resource by Christine D. Bremer, Sharon Vaughn, Ann T. Clapper, and Ae-Hwa Kim discusses Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) as an approach to teaching reading in mixed-ability classrooms. This strategy helps students improve their reading comprehension and can be implemented in a subject-area classroom, such as science or social studies, to improve student comprehension of expository text. The authors concede that CSR takes time to teach the various strategies, but students benefit by developing skills enabling them to better understand the material in their reading assignments. An additional benefit of this approach is that students develop skills related to working in groups. This resource also gives explicit steps for implementing CSR in the classroom.(author/mcg)

Here is a resource to help a career-technical teacher who might be tempted to say, "I am not a reading teacher." This article provides clear and concise directions about enhancing students' reading comprehension. The article explains how to put in place strategies that will increase students' understanding of what they are reading. The reading strategies are: (a) preview (before reading), (b) click and clunk (during reading), (c) get the gist (during reading), and (d) wrap up (after reading). Use of these strategies will not only help students to improve their reading comprehension, but can also help teachers quickly gauge a student's reading skill. The article provides short lessons and the materials needed to properly implement the strategies into the everyday classroom teaching. (jrs)