Teachers in Annenberg Challenge sites across the country are making similar discoveries as schools and systems work on ways to help students at every level read, write, and think better.

In Los Angeles, second-grade math students are writing their own word problems about dinosaurs in a classroom where every subject connects to their growing interest in, and comprehension of, the world of words.

In Houston, struggling fifth-grade readers get a boost when they serve as coaches for beginners in the early grades. Guiding the younger children through easier books, the older ones gain practice and confidence in the skills they need themselves.

In San Francisco, middle and high school kids learn to break a difficult academic text into manageable chunks-making sense out of what before seemed impenetrable-then write in their journals about just how they did it.

And in a Chicago history class, high school students in a Socratic seminar read the letters of Civil War soldiers, probing their historical meaning by linking the texts to their own experiences.

Each of these classroom moments has its roots in a growing recognition by Annenberg educators that literacy instruction has come a long way since the days of Dick and Jane. Informed by a solid body of research on how humans learn to make meaning of the written word, schools are coming to terms with the need for a richer and more coherent approach from kindergarten through high school.

Teaching literacy is everyone's responsibility now, they assert-and so they put money and time into support for teachers trying to alter the ways they work with children and each other.

Challenge sites have all urged schools to select a clear focus for improvement rather than dividing their energies among too many areas at once. With reading and writing assessments showing poor and minority students at well below acceptable levels, improving students' literacy has shot to the top of most schools' priority lists in the past five years.

Just how to get there, however, has provoked considerable debate-not only among educators themselves, but among policymakers, parents, and the press. Since most of us base our opinions on how we (or our children) were taught to read, the "reading wars" that rage in legislatures and Little League bleachers rarely call on the substantive research of recent decades. And even educators, who are more likely to know what the research shows, need to learn how to turn theory into effective everyday classroom practice.

Until the 1960s, most children learned to read from "run, Dick, run"--style basal readers, drilling in "look-say" recognition of a carefully controlled vocabulary. A shift in the 1970s moved phonics and "skills" testing to center stage, training even the earliest learners to figure out (or "decode") words from the symbols of print. As cognitive psychologists began to challenge conventional theories of how people learn, the trend swung away from "skill and drill" and toward more authentic contexts for the early reader. By the 1980s the "whole language" movement was urging teachers to let kids' skills and understanding develop on their own, through immersion in children's literature and an emphasis on the writing process.

• Reading aloud to students introduces them to the world of written language, the joys of reading, and the art of listening.
• Shared reading from one book everyone can see allows children to work through material otherwise beyond them, learning and applying the skills and strategies that successful readers use.
• Guided reading has students with similar needs meet with the teacher in small groups, working through a text that is slightly above their independent reading level.
• Independent reading asks students to choose the materials they will enjoy reading at a level that is comfortable for them.
• Word study begins with making connections between print and language and goes on to build a set of skills that helps children identify and understand individual words.
• Modeled writing has the teacher think aloud while planning, writing, and revising a piece in front of the class, so children can observe the process of trying different words, sentences, and paragraphs.
• Interactive writing involves children and teacher taking turns with a "shared pen" and reading the text they create together.
• Shared writing has the teacher serve as scribe and coach, writing down the students' ideas and language, building their confidence as writers, readers, and editors.
• Guided writing is a mini-lesson on writing combined with time for students to write, get feedback from teacher or peers, and revise.
• Independent writing asks students to write their own pieces in a variety of styles, including journals, stories, and informational pieces. By writing for authentic purposes and different audiences, students build their skills; teachers can use the work to inform further instruction.