Integrating Literature in the Content Areas

Book excerpt: This practical, accessible resource will help future and practicing teachers integrate literature into their middle school or high school classrooms, while also addressing content area standards and improving the literacy skills of their students. Two introductory chapters are followed by five chapters that each cover a different genre: Chapter 3, Informational Books; Chapter 4, Fiction; Chapter 5, Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir; Chapter 6, Poetry; and Chapter 7, How-to and Hands-on Books. Each genre chapter consists of four parts: Part 1: Discusses the genre and how content area teachers can use books within that genre to further content learning and enhance literacy skills. Part 2: Offers hands-on instructional strategies and activities using literature, with activities for use in a variety of disciplines. Part 3: Presents individual author studies (three or four per chapter) with bibliographies and guidelines for using the authors' books in content area courses. Part 4: Features an annotated bibliography of specially selected children and young adult literature for that genre, organized by content area. The annotations provide information about the book, which can be used to prepare booktalks, and teaching ideas for using in a specific content area. Altogether these sections contain more than 600 annotated entries tabbed by subject area, including art, English/language arts, languages and culture, math and technology, music, PE/health, science, and social studies/history.