Too often, students reach college without the learning, critical thinking, and literacy skills they need to succeed in higher education. Recent educational trends that promote teaching to the test, short reading and writing assignments, group work, and technological resources contribute to students' difficulties transitioning to college-level…

Teachers of standards based, College Prep English classes regularly face resistant and struggling readers who fail to engage, persevere, and comprehend curricular texts. As a result, these readers do not share in class discussions. Therefore, a class discourse was formulated upon Gee's (1996) Social Discourse theory and Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and…