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Jacy's PowerPoint Slides - ILA 2018 - From Adlit to Disciplinary Literacy

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Jacy's PowerPoint Slides - ILA 2018 - From Adlit to Disciplinary Literacy

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Reading Next | Carnegie Corporation of New York

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Reading Next is a cutting-edge report that combines the best research currently available with well-crafted strategies for turning that research into practice. Informed by five of the nation's leading researchers, Reading Next charts an immediate route to improving adolescent literacy. ...

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Adlit.org -- Strategies, Videos, & Articles

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Adlit.org -- Strategies, Videos, & Articles

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Strategies

http://www.adlit.org/strategy_library/

Videos

http://www.adlit.org/media/

http://www.adlit.org/media/mediatopics/comprehension/

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Concept maps help students visualize various connections between words or phrases and a main idea. Concept maps have been shown to support struggling readers by building off of students' prior knowledge and asking them to reflect on their understanding while reading. They are easy to construct and can be used across all content areas. Learn how to use this strategy in your classroom, and download a concept map graphic organizer.
See strategy >

As your new students come into your classroom this fall, you may find they require extra support when reading expository texts. Their unique structure and style differs from other sorts of reading, so teaching students about signal words and organization can help.

If you're looking for ways tech can support your teaching in the 2019-2020 school year, this list is here to help. These top-rated apps and sites - ranging from instructional supports to organizational tools to social networks and beyond - help make one of the world's toughest jobs a bit easier. Once you've found a few great tools for back to school, head over to our Teaching Strategies page dedicated to helping you Set Up Your Digital Classroom for Success. (From Common Sense Education)

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AdLit.org is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to the parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers. AdLit.org is an educational initiative of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation's capital, and is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Ann B.

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Special Issue on Adolescent Literacy (2008)

http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/adolescent-literacy

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Adolescent Literacy explores key issues and debates in the adolescent literacy crisis, the popular use of cognitive strategies, and disciplinary and content-area literacy.

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Time To Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success | Carnegie Corporation of New York

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Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Readiness, pinpoints adolescent literacy as a cornerstone of the current education reform movement, upon which efforts such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must be built. ...

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Adolescent Literacy in the Era of the Common Core

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Adolescent Literacy in the Era of the Common Core

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http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/adolescent-literacy-in-the-era-of-the-common-core

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Adolescent Literacy in the Era of the Common Core Book Cover

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Annenberg Disciplinary Literacy Free Online Modules

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Annenberg Disciplinary Literacy Free Online Modules

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http://www.learner.org/courses/readwrite/

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Bridge Builders: Teacher Leaders Forge Connections and Bring Coherence to Literacy Initiative

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Bridge Builders: Teacher Leaders Forge Connections and Bring Coherence to Literacy Initiative

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Ippolito, J., Dobbs, C. L., & Charner-Laird, M. (2014). Bridge builders: Teacher leaders forge connections and bring coherence to literacy initiative. JSD, 35(3), 22-26.

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Bridge Builders Ippolito Dobbs Charner-Laird 2014 digital

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... Articles, Blogs, Books, and Ways to Connect! :)

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Jacy Ippolito - Department Chair & Associate Professor, Salem State University - VisualCV

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J., Condie, C., Dobbs, C. L., Charner-Laird, M., & Blanchette, J. (2017). Planting seeds: To grow science disciplinary literacy skills we must layer basic and intermediate literacy skills across K-12. Massachusetts Reading Association Primer, 45(2), 14-23.

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Layering Intermediate and Disciplinary Literacy Work

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Layering Intermediate and Disciplinary Literacy Work

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Dobbs, C. L., Ippolito, J., & Charner-Laird, M. (2016). Layering intermediate and disciplinary literacy work: Lessons learned from a secondary social studies teacher team. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 131–139.

https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jaal.547

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Enter your email address below. If your address has been previously registered, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. If you don't receive an email, you should register as a new user

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The Roles of Teacher Leaders in Guiding PLCs Focused on Disciplinary Literacy

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The Roles of Teacher Leaders in Guiding PLCs Focused on Disciplinary Literacy

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Charner-Laird, M., Ippolito, J., & Dobbs, C. L. (2016). The roles of teacher leaders in guiding PLCs focused on disciplinary literacy. Journal of School Leadership, 26(6), 975-1001.

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JSL invites the submission of manuscripts that contribute to the exchange of ideas and scholarship about schools and leadership. All theoretical and methological approaches are welcome. We do not advocate or practice a bias toward any mode of inquiry (e.g., qualitative vs. quantitative; empirical vs. conceptual; discipline-based vs.

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Ippolito, J., Dobbs, C. L., & Charner-Laird, M. (2017). What literacy means in math class: Teacher team explores ways to remake instruction to develop students' skills. The Learning Professional, 38(2), 66-70.

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Investigating Disciplinary Literacy: A Framework for Collaborative Professional Learning (2017)

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Investigating Disciplinary Literacy: A Framework for Collaborative Professional Learning (2017)

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But What Does it Look Like? Illustrations of Disciplinary Literacy Teaching in Two Content Areas (2018)

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But What Does it Look Like? Illustrations of Disciplinary Literacy Teaching in Two Content Areas (2018)

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Rainey, E. C., Maher, B. L., Coupland, D., Franchi, R., & Moje, E. B. (2018). But what does it look like? Illustrations of disciplinary literacy teaching in two content areas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(4), 371–379. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.669

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Enter your email address below. If your address has been previously registered, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. If you don't receive an email, you should register as a new user

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Books that Defined an Era of Adolescent Literacy

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Books that Defined an Era of Adolescent Literacy

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Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work by Doug Fisher & Nancy Frey

Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey

Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann

I Read It, But I Don’t Get It by Cris Tovani

Reading Instruction that Works by Pressley & Allington

They Say, I Say by Graff & Birkenstein

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The Key to Effective Disciplinary Literacy Instruction (2017)

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The Key to Effective Disciplinary Literacy Instruction (2017)

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Ippolito, J., Wilder, P., & Condie, C. (2017, June). The key to effective disciplinary literacy instruction...

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Over the past 20 years, educators in the United States have voiced concerns about adolescents' lackluster reading, writing, and communication skills. The Carnegie Corporation's 2009 Time to Act report outlines why early reading, writing, and communication success may not automatically translate into later excellence in high school, college, and the workplace.

Some of the concern stems from what Tim and Cynthia Shanahan (2008) noted as a widespread lack of secondary school focus on " disciplinary literacy" instruction, or the explicit teaching of how to read, write, and communicate as historians, mathematicians, scientists and so on. The Shanahans were among the first to conceptualize disciplinary literacy. They argued that students need more than "basic" literacy skills (e.g., decoding, mastering sight words) and more than "intermediate" literacy skills (e.g., the common, generalizable reading strategies and routines associated with the " content-area literacy " movement).

The Shanahans argued that adolescents in secondary classrooms need explicit scaffolding of the ways disciplinary insiders (i.e., professional artists, historians, mathematicians, musicians, engineers and so on) create and communicate content within their respective fields. Disciplinary literacy assumes there are real differences in the ways professionals across fields participate and communicate, and that without initial instruction in those explicit differences, students might flounder in college and the workplace. Importantly, disciplinary literacy work is about more than just "strategy instruction." The focus is on apprenticing students into the practices used to construct knowledge in disciplines.

Bolstered by a focus on the teaching of discipline-specific vocabulary, reading, writing, and communication skills within the Common Core State Standards, the disciplinary literacy movement has grown. States such as Wisconsin have taken seriously the multi-disciplinary literacy charge of the Comm on Core t o help students "learn to read, write, speak, listen, and use language effectively in a variety of content areas . . . specify[ing] the literacy skills and understandings required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines" (CCSS, 2010, p. 3).

Yet, as a disciplinary literacy view of teaching and learning takes hold in schools and districts nationwide, several important questions emerge:

In order for disciplinary literacy (DL) instruction to take-hold and improve student learning, school districts would be wise to think of DL along a K-12 continuum. Below, we offer a Responsive Disciplinary Literacy Teaching Framework for all teachers to use as they design DL instruction. But, we recognize the instruction designed will look different across disciplinary classrooms because "tasks, texts, and talk" vary by discipline. Finally, we offer two snapshots of DL instruction, one from the earliest grade levels and one from later grade levels to illustrate the power of this work across the K-12 continuum.

A Framework for Responsive Disciplinary Literacy Teaching

While there have been several popular ways of conceptualizing disciplinary literacy in recent years, we are in great need of more teacher-friendly frameworks to help promote a shift toward disciplinary literacy work. More than instruction which foregrounds the discipline and backgrounds (or ignores) the literate lives of students, a responsive disciplinary literacy approach can honor the lived experiences of students and form a bridge between students' experiences and communities of disciplinary practice ( Moje, 2015). In this way, teachers can work together to integrate local disciplinary practices with the literate practices and identities of specific students ( Wilder & Herro, 2016). Our colleague Phillip Wilder at Clemson University suggests one such framework comprised of three key teaching practices.

1) Creating purpose with inquiry and tasks

Engaged reading requires an authentic reason to think (inquiry) and a complex disciplinary problem (task). Authentic disciplinary inquiry finds the sweet spot between questions valued in the discipline and those which matter in our local communities. But, authentic inquiry won't sustain student engagement unless a complex task mimics disciplinary practice.

2) Identifying and assessing appropriate disciplinary texts

While a text can be viewed as any representational resource (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) used by students during disciplinary inquiry, teachers should select texts which align with the discipline, represent conflicting perspectives on the topic, and function as tools for literate thinking. When analyzing historical narratives about Benjamin Tillman, a U.S. historian would prioritize primary sources in the same way a biologist would prioritize observations of eroded creek beds and water samples when determining the health of a nearby waterway.

3) Modeling literate disciplinary thinking

Within disciplinary inquiry with appropriate texts, every student will experience multiple bottlenecks or predictable places where their thinking gets stuck. And, as resident disciplinary experts, teachers can scaffold student thinking. However, knowing which bottleneck to address with whom remains a challenge, as students may not all experience the same bottlenecks at the same time with each disciplinary text. By paying close attention to students' interaction with texts, teachers can apprentice students into disciplinary ways of reasoning and using texts.

The Framework in Action

To illustrate this framework in action, consider two snapshots of classroom instruction, one from high school and one from first grade. Each snapshot highlights students actively engaged in disciplinary literacy inquiry work.

1) Using Texts as Tools in High School to Investigate the Impact of 2015 Flooding in South Carolina

When the historic Thousand-year Storm subsided, over twenty inches of rainfall had burst local dams, washing away roads, bridges, and homes -- including Stephen's, which he shared with his younger brother and grandparents. Now, a year later, and sitting in Mr. Washington's eleventh grade earth science class, mere blocks from where fields were washed out, subdivisions went weeks without power, and heroic rescues of stranded neighbors on rooftops occurred, Stephen's experiential knowledge intersected with local scientific norms for inquiring, testing, and knowing more about the world around him.

Within a four-week unit, Mr. Washington, Stephen, and his peers would investigate the impacts of the flood on local lives, while addressing one of the five primary Earth Science standards. Standard H.E.5. states students should "demonstrate an understanding of the dynamics of Earth's atmosphere" ( SC Department of Education). But, as any science teacher can attest, standards do not explain how to support students' development of deep conceptual knowledge about the formation of local weather systems, the nature of the relationship between human activities and climate change, or how to "use the science and engineering practices, including the processes and skills of scientific inquiry, to develop understandings of science content" (SC Department of Education, p. 106).

Stephen and his peers can develop deep conceptual knowledge in Earth Science only by using the habits of reading, writing, and reasoning valued and used by the specific discipline as they investigate weather and climate (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010, p. 8). Teachers, then, can use three key teaching practices to support how students use texts as tools for disciplinary thinking, communicating, and participating (Pearson, Moje & Greenleaf, 2010; Siebert et al., 2016; Wilder, 2016).

For Mr. Washington, using the three teaching practices means bringing intentionality to his planning and teaching. Instead of designing disciplinary literacy inquiry, tasks, texts, and scaffolding regardless of the students in the room, these practices become "best practice" when Mr. Washington uses his knowledge of his students to inform how, when, and why instructional practices are used.

After listening to student memories of the flooding, Mr. Washington and his students discussed how the flooding continued to impact family farms, homes, health and economic security. Students' concerns about mold, contaminated local water supplies, and even the distrust of meteorology suggested several possible inquiry questions for the class to pursue, with the students ultimately settling on "How should our community continue to support those impacted by the flooding?" Mr. Washington suggested the class investigate how the flooding continued to impact lives and whether or not the FEMA emergency funds were sufficient.

Stephen proposed the class present their "stories and research" to the city council. After building a purpose through inquiry and task, Mr. Washington used the second practice to select appropriate disciplinary texts. In the discipline, "texts" included those valued by scientists and those related to the topics investigated. Mr. Washington gathered charts and graphs on the storm's meteorological data, as well as videos of thunderstorm formations. He guided students in collecting mold samples from the homes of area community members, water samples from nearby ponds, and executive orders and news stories related to FEMA's response.

For each of the texts, Mr. Washington asked students to preview the texts and predict how the texts might be challenging and helpful. Finally, as student groups used the texts to investigate different topics and develop local scientific models related to water quality, severity of mold in community homes, and meteorological accuracy in central South Carolina, Mr. Washington used close observation of student bottlenecks (or areas where students get stuck in their thinking) to inform his modeling of scientific reasoning with texts and data. Designing disciplinary inquiry and tasks, selecting appropriate disciplinary texts, and scaffolding disciplinary thinking can become "best practice" when teachers marry instructional decisions with the needs, voices, and lives of students.

2) Providing First Grade Students with Authentic Scientific Reading, Writing, and Inquiry Opportunities in Massachusetts

In a summer program targeting English Learners needing support with reading, writing, listening and speaking, we chose to embed literacy interventions in content knowledge. As we met our elementary students, we quickly discovered that they had little-to-no experience with the ocean across the street from their school.

Although they saw it every day from their bus window, most students had not touched the water or played in the muddy banks. So, we took our young scientists to the ocean (crossed the street), set their minds at ease that their shoes would be clean again, and asked them to put on their "scientist hats" and observe. One group of 10 rising first graders began to make observations about the color of the sky, the birds flying overhead, the dead crab by their feet, the muddy areas and watery holes for small creatures, and the bubbles on top and emerging from the depths of the ankle-deep water.

Observations led to questions: What are the animals in the water? Why are some areas muddy? Why do we have bubbles in our cove? These simple, honest questions became our curriculum and the foundation of all of our literacy interventions. Students' initial questions led to more questions, inquiry led to inquiry, and the investigations began. Teachers were encouraged to provide opportunities to talk science, read science, write science, and do science with Pearson and colleagues' model in mind.

For the rising first graders, their most pressing questions were about bubbles. These young scientists read books about bubbles, sang songs about bubbles growing and popping, learned the parts (e.g., skin, air) and shape of bubbles (e.g., sphere), experimented with bubbles, and asked more questions about bubbles. They created lava lamps (materials included empty water bottles, vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and antacid tablets) to make observations about how bubbles formed and moved in a liquid. Although their conclusions may seem simple (e.g., The color of the food coloring placed in the lava lamp becomes the color of the bubble's skin), they were totally appropriate and valid conclusions based on observational evidence. Our rising first graders then wisely asked why some bubbles outside our school were yellow in color, resulting in an older group of elementary students investigating the effects of boat pollution on our cove.

As bubble questions exploded, the rising first graders questioned, "Are bubbles always round?" To investigate, students created whimsical and geometrically-shaped pipe cleaners, dipped in soapy water, and then recorded their observations. "It didn't stay a square!" rang out on the blacktop and was quickly recorded in science journals, after students observed a bubble changing to a sphere once it left the square wand. Importantly, students recorded findings because scientists record findings, not because it was our writing block time or because we were trying to make a writing connection. Disciplinary literacy naturally integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Our rising first graders continued to test emerging hypotheses. Specifically, they needed to investigate if their bubble wand findings (i.e., all bubbles are round) were true in other settings. Our scientists took their clipboards and went back to the ocean to search for non-spherical bubbles. Testing conclusions, reading about bubbles, learning about surface tension (in Kindergarten language), and then testing surface tension with water droplets extending over our water bottle lids engaged these young scientists. They could confidently explain why every bubble at the beach, in a lava lamp, or in your water bottle was always round. And, throughout all of these experiences, they were questioning, revising ideas, discussing findings, determining other ways of finding answers, and eventually presenting their new understandings to an outside audience. Teachers modeled scientific habits of mind as they questioned and researched alongside our students.

One of the teachers reflected: "I learned that the more hands-on and authentic experiences you give students, the more questions and ideas they have with their own thinking. I found that this carried over into their writing and reading. They started to go deeper with their thinking in reading and writing." That deeper thinking was, in fact, the beginnings of scientific disciplinary literacy.

At the core of the responsive disciplinary literacy teaching framework is the notion that authentic inquiry requires and motivates complex reading and writing work. Inquiry questions must be important, relevant, and timely. In the examples above, high school and elementary teachers chose experiences and texts that began to answer students' authentic, place-based questions. The inquiries, tasks, and texts addressed student misconceptions; prompted reflection and rich conversation; and promoted critical reading, writing, and communication skills (including a growing awareness of the inaccuracies and partial truths of any particular text, dataset, or observation). Simultaneously, in each classroom, teachers were authentically learning alongside students, building their own knowledge of disciplinary literacy and the world. Disciplinary literacy emerged from following students' honest inquiry.

As disciplinary literacy becomes an increasingly popular frame for content-area instruction, it is important to note that this kind of teaching does not happen by accident. Disciplinary literacy does not translate simply into thematic units of related activities nor simple sets of generalizable "strategies." Disciplinary literacy instruction deliberately engages students in authentic inquiries, tasks, and texts. It is a kind of teaching that, at its best, rekindles teachers' and students' curiosity about the world around them, and empowers them to collaboratively explore real questions about their own lives and environment.

If we begin this work early, and provide authentic literacy experiences over time, we will undoubtedly find ourselves with a new generation of citizens able to think, read, write, and communicate as scientists and other experts - inquiring, constructing, and conveying knowledge in their respective disciplines. Now is the time to invest in exactly this kind of substantive, worthwhile teaching and learning in schools.

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The Key to Effective Disciplinary Literacy Instruction | edCircuit

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"Disciplinary literacy" instruction is the explicit teaching of how to read, write, and communicate as historians, mathematicians, scientists and so on. Adolescents in secondary classrooms need explicit scaffolding of the ways disciplinary insiders (i.e., professional artists, historians, mathematicians, musicians, engineers and so on) create and communicate content within their respective fields.

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Condie & Ippolito. (2016). Exploring elementary teachers' experiences of teaching DL

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Condie & Ippolito. (2016). Exploring elementary teachers' experiences of teaching DL

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Middle School SS Interactive Reading Guide

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Middle School SS Interactive Reading Guide

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Examples of Intermediate and Disciplinary Literacy Work across Grades

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Examples of Intermediate and Disciplinary Literacy Work across Grades

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Algebra - Multiple Texts and Habits of Mind in 9th Grade 

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Algebra - Multiple Texts and Habits of Mind in 9th Grade 

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Wisconsin Extensive DL Resources by Subject Area

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Wisconsin Extensive DL Resources by Subject Area

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By Subject Area

http://dpi.wi.gov/standards/literacy-all-subjects

PD Resources

http://dpi.wi.gov/standards/literacy-all-subjects/professional-learning

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Reading Like A Historian curriculum is a unique and effective way to teach High School History. By turning students into history investigators, teachers help them develop critical thinking skills and increase student engagement.

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History Lessons | Stanford History Education Group

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This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.

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Science Close Reading / DL Site from BPS

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Science Close Reading / DL Site from BPS

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Boston Public Schools  Science Department

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Science and Literacy: Close Reading, CWA & more!

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Rationale for Implementation of Literacy Strategies in Science: As science teachers, we understand that our students need time, practice, and lots of encouragement in order to learn how to read and...

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Middle School Inter-disciplinary Reading Guide

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Middle School Inter-disciplinary Reading Guide

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Target Science Literacy Skills Across H.S. Years

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Target Science Literacy Skills Across H.S. Years

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Intermediate/DL Reading Guides H.S. Science Class

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Intermediate/DL Reading Guides H.S. Science Class

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Reading like a Historian Reading Skills chart

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What is a HABIT OF MIND? It is your backpack of tools (why/what you are reading for) that you use to approach reading in Spanish. HABITS OF MIND : bundles of purposes (why/what you are reading...

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Word Generation Academic Lang. Materials

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Word Generation Academic Lang. Materials

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SERP | Word Generation * Academic Language Development

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Word Generation emphasizes 21st century learning goals, such as using academic language, developing an argument, reasoning analytically, reading to find evidence, reviewing data, discussing various perspectives, engaging in debate, and expressing well-reasoned positions in writing.

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Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy (2017)

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Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy (2017)

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Vol. 74

No. 5

Abstract

Divergent Perspectives

Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction

Instructional Practice: Choose Disciplinary Texts

Instructional Practice: Model Expert Practices

General Strategy Instruction

Instructional Practice: Use Multimodal Text Sets

Instructional Practice: Do What "Good Readers" Do

Engagement in the Discipline

Instructional Practice: Engineer Teachable Moments

Teaching Disciplinary Literacies

Which approaches to literacy instruction are right for your content-area classroom?

Credit: Kevin Davis

Abstract

Divergent Perspectives

Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction

Instructional Practice: Choose Disciplinary Texts

Instructional Practice: Model Expert Practices

General Strategy Instruction

Instructional Practice: Use Multimodal Text Sets

Instructional Practice: Do What "Good Readers" Do

Engagement in the Discipline

Instructional Practice: Engineer Teachable Moments

Teaching Disciplinary Literacies

Over the last 10 years, federal reports, the standards of professional education organizations, and the Common Core State Standards have all called for a focus on literacy instruction in the content areas. Disciplinary literacy instruction has gained traction as an educational priority because of its potential to support adolescent literacy and increase students' access to deep content knowledge that engages them in school and prepares them for life after graduation.

At the same time, there have been multiple and at times conflicting messages about what disciplinary literacy instruction is and what it should look like in content-area classrooms. In our review of more than 200 articles describing literacy instruction in content-area classes, we identified a spectrum of approaches to disciplinary literacy instruction, each with its own set of instructional strategies. From these, we've singled out three specific perspectives that reflect the diverse purposes of disciplinary literacy.

Divergent Perspectives

Here is where most educators agree: The academic disciplines are communities that collaborate to produce knowledge about the world and human experiences. In these communities, there are agreed-upon conventions that guide the production, communication, and critique of disciplinary knowledge. The central goal of disciplinary literacy instruction is to help adolescents develop "insider status" in these communities. In that light, disciplinary literacy instruction can be viewed as an apprenticeship in which students are carefully guided as they engage in specialized ways of thinking, reading, writing, and talking (McConachie et al., 2006).

Learning the skills or habits of mind of a discipline allows adolescents to become smart consumers and critics of subject-area knowledge, rather than passive recipients (Fang &amp; Coatoam, 2013; Moje, 2007). Understanding how knowledge is created in the disciplines can help adolescents assess claims made in political discourse and act as informed citizens. They can apply these same skills to act for social justice by challenging accepted knowledge and generating new knowledge (Moje, 2007).

But perspectives on disciplinary literacy begin to diverge when it comes to what literacy instruction should look like in content-area classrooms, including whether educators should teach discipline-specific strategies, apply general reading strategies to content goals, or engage students in subject-specific experiences that involve reading and writing.

What follows are descriptions of three approaches that could support content and literacy goals for adolescents, including how and when each approach might be useful in the classroom. The approaches are not necessarily distinct, self-contained versions of disciplinary literacy instruction to be used separately. Rather, each is a valid mode of instruction that supports literacy in the disciplines in a different way; teachers can adopt practices related to each approach at different points of instruction, depending on their curricular goals and students' needs.

Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction

One approach is focused on the practices that disciplinary insiders use to read complex disciplinary texts (Fang &amp; Schleppegrell, 2010; Shanahan &amp; Shanahan, 2008; Shanahan, Shanahan, &amp; Misischia, 2011). This practice is guided by the understanding that disciplinary texts are unique and contain highly specialized language and text structures (Schleppegrell, 2004).

The challenge for adolescent readers is that they lack highly specialized skills and knowledge, which are a prerequisite for engaging with complex disciplinary concepts. This leaves many of them, even those who have developed general comprehension strategies, ill-equipped to read and learn from disciplinary texts independently. So, rather than drawing from a general toolbox of literacy skills to apply across disciplines, the goal of disciplinary literacy instruction from this perspective is for adolescents to develop multiple sets of highly specialized literacy tools that allow them to "read like a historian" or "write like a scientist."

Instructional Practice: Choose Disciplinary Texts

If students are to develop discipline-specific skills, they need text types and purposes for reading and writing that provide opportunities to apply and refine specialized skills. Teachers working from this perspective are careful to choose texts that are specific to their discipline. This often means avoiding textbooks because they present knowledge as uncontroversial, obscuring the way experts use arguments to generate, critique, and refine knowledge. For students to learn about argumentation in the disciplines, they need to engage with texts that allow them to see how experts structure arguments, support their claims with evidence, and use technical language.

Instructional Practice: Model Expert Practices

The discipline-specific skills needed to learn from these types of texts are best identified and taught by content-area teachers who know what it takes to read, write, and critique texts in their area of expertise. These teachers model the specialized practices they have developed as a result of participating in the discipline themselves, pointing out what makes the texts unique and providing strategies to address these features.

Teachers using this approach reflect on their own habits as expert readers so they can name and demonstrate these routines for students. These teachers explain why they do what they do, and then provide opportunities for students to practice those skills. A science teacher may model how to read charts and graphs to make inferences about data. A history teacher may demonstrate how to establish the provenance of a primary document. Helping students try out expert practices allows teachers to explain how the text or task shapes how they read.

General Strategy Instruction

A second approach is focused on efforts to extend or adapt general literacy skills to fit the reading and writing found in content-area classes. Because the texts found in content-area classrooms are often written at or above grade level, the primary reason adolescents struggle with them is that they need to be better readers and writers across the board. Therefore, the goal of instruction in the content areas is to support students' overall literacy proficiency by helping them develop general strategies they can use flexibly across the disciplines.

To plan instruction from this perspective, teachers try to find easier sets of texts to convey content so that students can read texts at or just above their level. Instead of reading a textbook chapter to learn about mitosis, students might read the chapter, watch a video clip, read a cartoon version, and use an interactive model of the process. This provides students who find the textbook difficult with other sources of information and allows them to consider a range of representations of the same information. Teachers often assign different texts to different groups of students or lead students through multiple representations of the same content.

Instructional Practice: Do What "Good Readers" Do

In addition to providing text sets, teachers also try to make difficult texts more comprehensible by teaching general strategies (for instance, visualization, annotation, and summarization). For this reason, this approach often calls for collaborations between literacy specialists and content-area teachers-each drawing on their expertise to make general literacy skills relevant to disciplinary learning. To apprentice students into higher levels of reading ability, rather than into specialized types of reading practices, teachers might name and demonstrate a strategy that "good readers" use. Teachers who follow this approach are often found referring to a set of common strategies that students recognize from all of their classes.

Doing what good readers do isn't necessarily different from reading like a scientist, mathematician, or historian. In fact, some argue that the skills needed to engage in disciplinary inquiry are the same skills needed to be a critical reader in any content area and that students can learn to adapt those skills to fit many reading tasks (Nokes, 2011; Quinn &amp; Thomas, 2013; Gillis, 2014). From this perspective, well-developed general strategies should allow students to navigate a range of texts. When you believe that students lack adequate literacy abilities and need support for both content and literacy learning, strategies inspired by this perspective might be a good fit.

For example, a current events teacher might demonstrate setting a purpose for reading a newspaper on the basis of its features (headlines, photos, infographics, and so on). The teacher might also demonstrate how to make connections within an article, perhaps between paragraphs and data representations, by looking back and forth between the elements as new information is presented. Teaching generic strategies like these that can apply across content areas helps students learn important skills required for reading success.

Engagement in the Discipline

A third approach encourages full participation in the discipline, rather than only engaging students in the acquisition of content or literacy skills. Teachers working from this perspective don't ask students to do things "like a scientist"; they ask students to "do science." If scientists collect data, students don't just read about how data can be collected; they collect data themselves. "Doing" the discipline will inevitably require reading and writing of some kind, so the goal is to support students with the skills and strategies they will need to be "doers" as the needs arise.

Instructional Practice: Engineer Teachable Moments

With this approach, teachers frame questions and problems for students to investigate and "engineer teachable moments" (Cervetti &amp; Pearson, 2012) in which they can teach or support specific literacy skills. For instance, a 7th grade STEM teacher decides to start a community garden that will also be a site for students to conduct experiments with plants and soil. Students are engaged in all parts of the planning for this garden from design to building to evaluation. When preparing students to write e-mails to potential funders, the teachers use exemplar texts to show how expert fundraisers write to donors, and they provide a writing process for students to refer to. When students report the results of experiments conducted in the garden, teachers may provide discipline-specific models so that students can share their ideas with a scientific community.

The instructional practices might be similar to the first two perspectives (some discipline-specific, some general), but the reasons they are used are different. Students are not learning to write to become better writers or to learn how to "write like a scientist." They are doing so because such e-mails are central to the work of funding a community project and communicating scientific ideas is an essential part of doing science. In other words, it's the intentions behind text selection-not the texts-that differentiate this approach from the others.

These teachers are often found modeling literacy skills and strategies "at the point of need" during disciplinary inquiry (Cervetti &amp; Pearson, 2012). For this reason, a lesson objective might be task-oriented ("students will write compelling e-mails to funders") and the lessons, examples, and models would be literacy oriented (for example, revising and editing). The focus is not necessarily on what experts do or what good readers do, but on whatever it takes to accomplish the project. Therefore, teachers might demonstrate both general and specific strategies depending on what students need. You might see disciplinary texts and leveled texts in use, but they are selected and used in the service of some line of inquiry (not just because of their level or text features).

Allowing for authentic engagement-and acknowledging that reading, writing, and talking will be required along the way-is what defines this approach to disciplinary literacy. When you believe your students need a compelling reason to engage in academics and reach content and literacy goals, this approach might be a good fit.

Teaching Disciplinary Literacies

Because there are multiple possible goals for disciplinary literacy instruction, there are also multiple approaches to planning and implementing disciplinary literacy instruction (see Figure 1, " Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction "). Rather than allowing contrasting messages to overwhelm or stymie teachers' efforts, it's important to understand the breadth of possibilities, as well as when and how various approaches might apply. Each of the approaches exists on a continuum that spans different instructional goals, materials, and strategies, but they can be used in complementary ways within a single classroom, especially when teachers feel empowered to integrate them to meet the needs of their students.

Figure 1. Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction

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Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy

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Vol. 74 No. 5 Abstract Divergent Perspectives Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction Instructional Practice: Choose Disciplinary Texts Instructional Practice: Model Expert Practices General Strategy Instruction Instructional Practice: Use Multimodal Text Sets Instructional Practice: Do What "Good Readers" Do Engagement in the Discipline Instructional Practice: Engineer Teachable Moments Teaching Disciplinary Literacies Which approaches to literacy instruction are right for your content-area classroom?

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A companion report to Carnegie's Time to Act, focuses on the specific skills and literacy support needed for reading in academic subject areas in higher grades. Outlines strategies for teaching content knowledge and reading strategies together.

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Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy

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A companion report to Carnegie's Time to Act , focuses on the specific skills and literacy support needed for reading in academic subject areas in higher grades. Outlines strategies for teaching content knowledge and reading strategies together.

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Argumentation Across the Disciplines (2018)

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Argumentation Across the Disciplines (2018)

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The Argument for Argumentation | Literacy Design Collaborative

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On the minus side of the ledger, we tell our children-even adult members of our families-not to argue, implying that arguments are bad, disruptive to friendships, and to be avoided at all costs.

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Historical Thinking Chart | Stanford History Education Group

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This chart elaborates on the historical reading skills of sourcing, corroboration, contextualization, and close reading. In addition to questions that relate to each skill, the chart includes descriptions of how students might demonstrate historical thinking and sentence frames to support the development of these skills. [Spanish chart updated on 06/23/20.]

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Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices

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Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices

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WWC | Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices

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This guide presents strategies that classroom teachers and specialists can use to increase the reading ability of adolescent students.

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What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides

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What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides

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A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts.

To search by Topic or Keyword, use the Practice Guide Search.

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A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts. To search by Topic or Keyword, use the Practice Guide Search.

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Bean, Kern, Castek, & Ippolito -- ILA 2018 -- 2017 ILA Standards: Preparing Effective Classroom Literacy Teachers

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Bean, Kern, Castek, & Ippolito -- ILA 2018 -- 2017 ILA Standards: Preparing Effective Classroom Literacy Teachers