“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
—Frederick Douglass
Educators will agree that literacy (the ability to read and write) is the cornerstone of learning. Literacy opens the world and allows one to be a lifelong learner. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) summarizes it well:
“Literacy empowers and liberates people. Beyond its importance as part of the right to education, literacy improves lives by expanding capabilities which in turn reduces poverty, increases participation in the labour market, and has positive effects on health and sustainable development.”
So, literacy is not just an essential skill; it is a human right and a social justice concern. We have a concerning declining trend in literacy in the United States. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 32% of 12th graders in 2024 were below “basic” performance in reading, which is down 3 points when compared to 2019 data, and 10 points compared to 1992. Many factors contribute to this decline, but we educators need to focus on solutions. One thing we can do to change the trajectory of literacy, specifically at the secondary level, is adopt a whole-school approach and a content area literacy focus.
- Truth #1: The majority of secondary educators do not have a background in reading and/or literacy instruction, including English teachers.
- Truth #2: A lack of literacy skills has a detrimental impact on society. According to ProLiteracy’s synopsis of the Organization for Co-operation and Economic Development’s (OECD) 2023 survey of adult skills, “28% of American adults read at or below the lowest level assessed” on the survey. This means roughly 59 million American adults lack the skills needed to successfully navigate daily life. ProLiteracy also states that “The World Literacy Foundation estimates that low literacy skills cost the U.S. economy $300 billion annually” and “94% of employers surveyed said they have employees who do not have the literacy skills to meet the requirements of the job, costing an estimated $46 billion in revenue annually.”
- Truth #3: Developing literacy skills is not easy, nor is it natural. In order for us to read, we repurpose parts of our brain to recognize letters, add sounds to those letters, and then add meaning to those sounds. If this is something interesting to you, I highly recommend the video below about the work of Dr. Stanislas Dehaene, a leader in cognitive neuroscience.
All of these truths add to the urgency of an all-hands-on-deck approach to literacy. The good news is there are many content-specific literacy-focused skills that you can bring into your classroom. I implore everyone to seek professional development in the Science of Reading, which helps educators address reading deficits with decades of research-backed practices (start by checking out TeachersFirst’s Science of Reading Resources and our professional learning units on the subject). Maybe send your principal the link to this blog with the above portion highlighted as a wink-wink hint. In the meantime, there is no one-size-fits-all literacy approach, so here are some best practices to try so you can see what works for you and your team:
WIDA Recommends
WIDA is a consortium that develops tools and standards to help multilingual learners along their educational journey. Here are a few suggestions from the article “Four Tips for Teaching Reading in Content Areas.”
- World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) is a consortium that develops tools and standards to help multilingual learners along their educational journey. Here are a few suggestions from the article “Four Tips for Teaching Reading in Content Areas:”
- Teach the organization and purpose of a text before reading it. Content area literacy depends on students’ reading and comprehension of content-specific texts, and the organization and purpose of a chemistry lab report are very different from those of a short story in English 10. Readers need deliberate and specific instruction on the purpose and organization of texts in every class.
- Have text-based discussions with the class. Present a question to students prior to the reading that they will need to answer. Ask students what a specific term in the text means, or have them explain the main topic in their own words.
- Identify the struggle areas in the text and pre-teach them. If there are any challenging or new vocabulary words, teach them to the class before the reading. If the overall concept is challenging, like stoichiometry in chemistry, explain the general concept or demonstrate a basic stoichiometry process.
- Conduct an examination of literacy skills to understand each student’s needs. WIDA suggests that educators have students complete a literacy mapping activity or conduct an empathy interview to learn about their literacy backgrounds.
Lenses of Literacy
This wonderful resource from Dr. Mikkaka Overstreet and Dr. Lymaris Satana, “Literacy Lens: Effective Literacy Practices for Secondary Students,” helps secondary teachers bring the Science of Reading into their instructional practice. These are merely highlights, so check out the resource in its entirety for more in-depth suggestions.
- Teach morphology in an authentic way. Take discipline-specific vocabulary and break the words down to their morphemes; explain the morphological meaning of the word parts and help students understand the connections between the parts and the whole—bonus if they can think of other words that use the same parts!
- Explicitly teach reading comprehension skills for content-area-specific texts. Give students math word problems and talk them through as a class before solving them.
Back to the Basics
Lindsey Barrett wrote “How To Teach Reading When You Didn’t Go to School for That” for We Are Teachers in 2023. It’s aimed at an upper elementary audience, but there are practical tips that should become standard across grade levels.
- Meet with your content area team and analyze student data. Use the data and the standards to guide a plan for these classes.
- Have students write. Students crafting meaningful sentences about what they read helps them process what they’ve learned, and is also a great way for teachers to check for understanding.
Further Suggestions
To help you navigate this a bit more, here are a few more resources that I recommend looking over:
- “How to Work Literacy Instruction Into All Content Areas” is an Edutopia article that shows how literacy inclusion works across all content areas.
- “Integrating Literacy Across the Curriculum: An Easy Way to START” is a how-to guide from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) (reviewed here) on implementing a school-wide approach to content area literacy. START is an acronym for the steps and tools needed to support teachers in this process.
- “Applying Literacy Standards Across Content Areas” by Peg Grafwallner offers detailed examples of literacy implementation in Physical Education and Science, demonstrating the same process in each.
- “Content-Area Literacy” from AdLit (reviewed here) provides teachers with lessons across a variety of content areas that focus on literacy skills and content-area standards.
- “Introduction to the Science of Reading,” “Morphology PD Part 1,” and “Morphology PD Part 2” come from the Louisiana Department of Education (reviewed here) and offer a great overview.
- TeachersFirst has a host of blog posts about reading and The Science of Reading that focus on resources, reading methods, and enhancements that can work in all content areas.
There are many resources available to help teachers easily integrate literacy into their daily curriculum practice. Students have a basic human right to literacy, and we all need to help ensure that our students have all the skills they need to have the bright futures promised to them.