what we have failed to preserve in the process of "improvement"...

Beverly Enns, a faculty chair for curriculum and instruction and reading/literacy at Capella University in Minneapolis, says secondary classroom teachers need to understand the fundamentals of reading instruction and integrate this knowledge with content acquisition. Sarah Mahurt, associate professor of literacy and language at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., offers these strategies to help teachers get started:

Engage the student in dialogue Instead of asking students to just give an answer, encourage them to explain their understanding of the material and how they arrived at the answer.

Assign more writing on the reading By slowing down the thinking process, writing allows students to explore and articulate their own connection to the material.

Avoid worksheets Students learn more by generating their own questions that engage the student in dialogue, rather than filling in blanks.

Categorize the text Help students identify different types of text, like narratives and research papers, so that as they process the material they can determine which information is the most relevant.