Exploring Disciplinary Literacy

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 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...

It's All About Inquiry: Understanding the Social Studies Standards, C3 Framework and Disciplinary Literacy Essentials   By Melissa Brooks-Yip, Coordinator of Instruction, and Amy Olmstead-Brayton, Coordinator of Assessment Services, Washtenaw ISD With the adoption of the Michigan Social Studies standards in the spring of 2019, we began receiving requests for support as schools and districts considered how their social studies curriculum may need to change. In preparing for our work, we realized that while many teachers were aware of at least one of the guiding documents, their depths of understanding varied. For this reason, most were not considering how all three documents could be used as tools to guide instruction and assessment. Additionally, we had to honor the fact that while we all agreed with the guiding principles described in the C3, the day-to-day practices in our classrooms and schools looked much different. We came to understand that in order to have classrooms dr...