Exploring Disciplinary Literacy

  By Dana VanderLugt, Ottawa ISD Literacy Consultant and Disciplinary Literacy Task Force Member I remember the staff meeting well. I was early in my career as a middle school English teacher when my principal made a flippant comment, something like, “We’re not here for our content, but for kids. We love our students more than what we teach.” I instantly felt a pang of guilt. I did care about my students. I loved reading with and beside students, helping them to think deeper about texts, pushing their writing skills beyond what they believed was possible. I secretly even loved when they rolled their eyes about my passion around morphology or when I introduced the magic of the dash—my favorite punctuation mark.  When it comes to teaching, I can’t separate kids and content: what I love is teaching students English.  I, like possibly many other secondary teachers, have woken up more than once in a cold sweat from a nightmare: it’s the beginning of the school year and I have ...

As part of our studies in Equity-Based Disciplinary Literacies at Washtenaw ISD, participating educators are reading and applying learning from The Civically Engaged Classroom: Reading, Writing and Speaking for Change . Ms. Willow Newman, an ELA teacher at the Early College Alliance at Eastern Michigan University, finds that learning, thinking, and planning with students for civic engagement naturally leads to enacting inquiry-based instruction in the classroom. The following summary from Ms. Willow highlights #1 Inquiry-Based Instruction of The Essential Instructional Practices for Disciplinary Literacy in the Secondary Classroom , particularly: engages students in disciplinary-specific (e.g. historical, political, economic, sociological, or geographic) thinking;  helping students see social science connections to their lives and identities by reading and engaging in discipline-specific, real-world, and/or issue-based investigations with attention to issues of equity, power, an...

By Laura Gabrion, Wayne RESA Literacy Consultant and Disciplinary Literacy Task Force Member, and Jenelle Williams, Oakland Schools Literacy Consultant and Disciplinary Literacy Task Force Co-Chair As noted in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Policy Research Brief entitled “Literacies of Disciplines'' (2011), “[i]mplementing literacies of disciplines will require significant attention to professional development for teachers.” Furthermore, e ffective professional development, as described in a literature review by Darling-Hammond et al. (2017), should have several key characteristics. It needs to be focused on content; involve active and collaborative learning; use models of effective practice; provide opportunities for feedback and reflection; and be of sustained duration. As such, “[t]he professional development that will provide teachers with the resources and strategies necessary to support students in acquiring plural literacies needs to be sustained and ...

by Stacie Woodward Disciplinary Literacy and Social Studies Consultant, Oakland Schools Social studies education should prepare students not just for college and careers, but for life---particularly, civic life.  All students deserve to leave high school with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable them to effectively do things like serving on juries, deciphering the platforms of political candidates, spotting fake news, and engaging in problem-solving and informed action to better their own communities.   Perhaps now, more than ever, the experiences in social studies classrooms need to focus on building the critical thinking, problem-solving, and participatory skills vital to engaged citizenship. Thankfully, after years of marginalization of the social studies and the narrowing of the curriculum as a response to the demands of high-stakes testing, there is an emerging emphasis on shifting toward this type of powerful social studies education. In 2013, the Col...

By Cherron Ramsey, Wayne RESA, and Dr. Kristi Hanby, Wayne RESA   It never fails; year after year secondary mathematics teachers hear the same questions from students: when am I ever going to use this and why do I need to know this?  When we hear this same refrain repeated annually, it’s possible we may come to think of it as commonplace and unavoidable.  But it may be worth asking ourselves what is behind that question. Let’s take this question at its face value and consider its foundations.  What are students experiencing in their own day-to-day lives and why does the mathematical work they are doing in classrooms feel so disconnected?  Perhaps this question continues to be at the forefront of students' minds because they truly don't see the connection or relevance to the mathematics content they are asked to complete.  As mathematics teachers, we may realize the importance of determining if something is proportional or of being able to interpret dat...

by Darin Stockdill, PhD Design Coordinator, CEDER In this post, we’re taking up the following important question: “Why is literacy important in a math classroom?”  One approach I take when considering this kind of question is to immediately flip it on its head and ask, “ Why would literacy NOT be important in a math classroom? ”  Of course, answering either version of the question ultimately depends upon the definition of literacy being used.  In other words, whether or not one thinks literacy is important in a math classroom depends largely upon how literacy is defined.  When many people hear the word literacy , they often first think of reading, and when we think of reading, particularly with respect to learning to read, we often think of reading narratives, especially fictional stories.  Perhaps this is because many people learn to read in school and at home with alphabet and picture books, and then move on to short chapter books.  So our no...