Literacy and Text Reading in Middle and High School Social Studies and English Language Arts Classrooms

TLDR

This study reports vocabulary and reading comprehension instructional practices implemented in middle and high school social studies and language arts classrooms and describes text reading practices. We conducted 137 observations of 11 social studies and 9 language arts teachers over one academic year. Instructional practices supportive of vocabulary and reading comprehension varied between social studies and language arts, with similar overall time spent reading text but differences by text type, reading mode, and grade level within both subjects.

Abstract

This study reports vocabulary and reading comprehension instructional practices implemented in middle and high school social studies and language arts classrooms. It also describes text reading practices. We conducted 137 observations of 11 social studies and 9 language arts teachers over the course of 1 academic year. We observed instructional practices supportive of vocabulary and reading comprehension to differing degrees in social studies and language arts. The proportion of time spent reading text was roughly the same across the 2 subjects, with differences by text type, reading mode, and grade level within both subject areas.