CONTENT AREA READING: LITERACY AND LEARNING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM (12TH ED.)

CONTENT AREA READING: LITERACY AND LEARNING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM (12TH ED.) by Richard T. Vacca, Jo Anne L. Vacca, and Maryann Mraz

Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning across the Curriculum (12th ed.), by Richard T. Vacca, Jo Anne L. Vacca, and Maryann Mraz, highlights instructors' tendency to teach academic content as separate subjects. Vacca et al. (2017) establish reading and writing as a gateway skill, contending that reading grants access to all other content areas while writing demonstrates critical thinking ability. The authors explain strategies that help teachers and teacher educators integrate reading and writing into nonEnglish Language Arts (ELA) subjects to increase student comprehension and critical thinking. When instructors fail to incorporate such literacy strategies, they send indirect messages about subject matter importance, insinuating that reading and writing are separate, standalone subjects (Ciampa & Gallagher, 2016; West et al., 2016). ELA-centered instruction conveys how other content areas apply discipline-specific communication and information-processing skills. Subsequently, ELA integration makes disciplinary literacy (also known as content literacy) an essential classroom component. Vacca et al. (2017) note that instructors implementing discipline-specific literacy strategies facilitate how to "read, write, and think in a way that is aligned with the methods that professionals utilize in their respective fields" (p. 16).

Non-ELA instructors will find Content Area Reading to be a helpful text. The 12th edition acknowledges and explains new and disciplinary literacies, along with multimedia literacy. Explained strategies in Part 1 focus on processing and assessing texts (both print and digital media). Such strategies include before, during, and after...