Abstract:

The main purpose of this synthesis of knowledge is to create a body of knowledge on approaches or practices to adopt or to adapt that would foster the students’ ability to read or write texts, whilst taking into account the diversity of secondary school students in order to help decision-makers, curriculum developers (CSE, 2014), teaching materials developers, as well as schools administrators, educational advisors and teachers who work in secondary schools take decisions (St-Amand & St-Pierre, 2013). The Higher Education Council (CSE, 2010) proposes that to attain academic success the diversity of learning rhythms and of students’ needs should be considered. These guidelines pose challenges to both pre- and in-service teacher training programs, and are based, among other things, on the need for differentiated and oriented instruction and they are planned to meet all students´ needs. "When students are integrated to a school or a class they are expected to adjust themselves: but the institution does not question its own functioning. However, the school or class that includes students tries to establish different learning conditions to accommodate all kinds of needs (CSE, 2016, p.31).

Given the characteristics of high school organization, reading comprehension teaching practices must be taught by all teachers regardless the subject they teach. Thus, pedagogical approaches to improve reading comprehension are implemented in all subjects and are the subject of numerous scientific and professional articles. To improve the writing skills of students with difficulties in an inclusive context, the SRSD approach (Graham & Perin, 2006) has proved to be largely successful. The field of adolescent literacy (Hinchman & Appleman, 2016) focuses on practices that take into account their interests, their knowledge and the diverse adolescents’ literacies both at school and outside of it. This field focuses on how gender, language, socio-cultural background and other identity dimensions interact with curriculum and teaching methods, on how they shape adolescents' development and their engagement in reading and writing. It explores innovative practices where teachers use a variety of multimodal texts, from paper textbooks to digital ones, as well as collaborative learning initiatives. In this synthesis of knowledge, we will consider reading and writing as a cross-curricular competency and we will seek approaches and practices that are recognized for being effective not only in language courses, but which incorporate the teaching of reading and writing in all the disciplines offered at high school. As for the presentation, we will mainly focus on collaborative teaching-learning approaches aiming to develop high school students´ reading and writing skills in inclusive contexts.

Keywords:

Reading, Writing, Collaborative, Inclusion, high school.