#1 - Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy

At the middle school where I teach ELL, I share classroom space with our Literacy Specialist.  The Principal put us in the same area, since our students have many of the same instructional needs.   95% of my ELL students were actually born 10 minutes away from the school in our town.  They have grown up in the USA, and have had ELL instruction for 7-9 years; yet 30 of them are still ELL since they do not have the literacy (reading and writing) skills required to pass the state language assessment.

Our Literacy Specialist has 15 years of experience teaching literacy, and it is interesting to get her insight on what works to increase students' reading achievement.    At the middle school level, when the high- needs kids are clearly identified, she says that a variety of factors are necessary for developing literacy.  Among them are motivation, personal accountability, and fostering intrinsic rewards from reading. 
She provides each student with a "menu" of activities that they can choose to do during each 40 minute session.  Some of the essential tools that she uses to create high-interest, active reading environment for students are:

1. The students fill out a beginning of the year interest inventory, or personal interview.  It discusses their favorite activities, movies, classes, etc. since a main way to get them hooked on reading is by providing high-interest materials. 
2. She has them choose from a comprehensinve list of variety of high-interest pieces about anything from school shootings, to poetry, to graphic novels or biographies of famous authors. 
3. To help students to establish strong foundation of  reading for comprehension, she ensures that they are all well-versed in the 7 Keys to Reading Comprehension (Visualizing; using background knowledge (schema); asking questions; making inferences; sythesizing; using fix-up strategies).  The strategies are posted on the wall, used as bookmarks, and discussed daily.
4. Students are held accountable for what they read.  This is a major philosophy of hers.  They start to have dialogues using the terms "schema" and "I infer that...".  It is important that the students feel empowered and informed by reading when they leave the literacy lab.