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Maine Content Literacy Project (MCLP) It is the goal of the MCLP to provide a set of reading and vocabulary tools to help scaffold content learning. These literacy and learning tools provide structure for teachers to support students understanding of increasingly complex content. They help students learn to think critically and deeply about what they read and learn. Why Literacy Strategies Matter Providing strategies students can use independently has a powerful impact on learning:
 * They provide “how to” tools that help students comprehend and think about text
 * They are easy to teach and easy to use, yet they have incredibly powerful results
 * They provide a gateway between “learning to read” and being assigned tasks that require “reading to learn”
 * They provide support, encouragement, and hope to struggling readers who often think they cannot learn
 * They deepen student thinking about content
 * They help students “learn to learn” on their own

Embedding Literacy Strategies into Content Instruction

Literacy support strategies need to be appropriately used to support content learning. Using the lesson planning process known as “Backward Design” (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) is a very effective way to align literacy strategies meaningfully with content so they support the content learning purpose and do not become just another “worksheet” activity. There are three stages in the backward design process:
 * 1) Identify desired results- What enduring understandings are desired?
 * 2) Determine acceptable evidence- How will you know students have acheived the desired results?
 * 3) Plan Learning experience and instruction- What will the lesson include?