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https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/this-is-disciplinary-literacy/book246182

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https://www.amazon.com/Disciplinary-Literacy-Action-School-Wide-Thinking/dp/1544317476

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https://www.stenhouse.com/content/text-sets-action

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https://www.heinemann.com/jenniferserravallo/readingstrategiesbook2/

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https://www.heinemann.com/products/e05083.aspx

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Reading Rockets | Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Reading Rockets | Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Comprehension strategies are conscious plans — sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. These seven strategies have research-based evidence for…

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Reading Rockets | Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Reading Rockets | Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Meyer, B. J. F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: North -Holland.

Meyer, B. J. F., Brandt, D. M. & Bluth, G. J. (1980). Use of the top-level structure in text: Key for reading comprehension of ninth-grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 72-103.

Meyer, B. J. F., Middlemiss, W., Theodorou, E., S., Brezinski, K. L., McDougall, J., & Bartlett, B. J. (2002). Older adults tutoring fifth-grade children in the structure strategy via the Internet. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (3), 486-519.

Meyer, B. J. F., & Poon, L. W. (2001). Effects of the structure strategy and signaling on recall of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 141-159.

Meyer, B. J. F., Wijekumar, K., Middlemiss, W., Higley, K., Lei, P., Meier, C., & Spielvogel, J. (2010). Web-based tutoring of the structure strategy with or without elaborated feedback or choice for fifth- and seventh-grade readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 62-92.

Wijekumar, K. K., Meyer, B. J. F., & Lei, P. (2013). High-fidelity implementation of web-basedIntelligent tutoring system improves fourth and fifth graders content area reading comprehension. Computers & Education, 68, 366-379.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P. (2012). Large-scale randomized controlled trial with 4 th graders using intelligent tutoring of the structure strategy to improve nonfiction reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Technology Research and Development. 60, 987-1013.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P.-W, Lin, Y., Johnson, L.A., Shurmatz, K., Spielvogel, J., Ray,M, & Cook, M. (2014). Improving reading comprehension for 5 th grade readers in rural and suburban schools using web-based intelligent tutoring systems. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7:4, 331-357, DOI: 10.1080/19345747.2013.853333

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P-W, Hernandez, A., August, D. (in press). Effects of web-based text structure instruction for 4-6 th grade Spanish Els reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Williams, J. P., Hall, K. M., Lauer, K. D., Stafford, K. B., DeSisto, L. A., & deCani, J. S. (2005). Expository text comprehension in the primary grade classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 538-550.

Williams, J. P., Stafford, K. B., Lauer, K. D., Hall, K. M., & Pollini, S. (2009). Embedding reading comprehension training in content-area instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 1-20.

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Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Learn how to implement a research-based text structure strategy that infuses text structures at every step of reading comprehension instruction, beginning with the introduction of the lesson, previewing of text, selecting important ideas, writing a main idea, generating inferences, and monitoring comprehension.

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Background

Text structure refers to how the information within a written text is organized. This strategy helps students understand that a text might present a main idea and details; a cause and then its effects; and/or different views of a topic. Teaching students to recognize common text structures can help students monitor their comprehension.

Benefits

Teachers can use this strategy with the whole class, small groups, or individually. Students learn to identify and analyze text structures which helps students navigate the various structures presented within nonfiction and fiction text. As a follow up, having students write paragraphs that follow common text structures helps students recognize these text structures when they are reading.

Create and Use the Strategy

To create the text structure strategy teachers should:

1. Choose the assigned reading and introduce the text to the students.

2. Introduce the idea that texts have organizational patters called text structures.

3. Introduce the following common text structures (see the chart below for more detailed information):

description

sequence

problem and solution

cause and effect

compare and contrast

4. Introduce and model using a graphic organizer to chart the text structure.

To use the text structure strategy teachers should:

1. Show examples of paragraphs that correspond to each text structure.

2. Examine topic sentences that clue the reader to a specific structure.

3. Model the writing of a paragraph that uses a specific text structure.

4. Have students try write paragraphs that follow a specific text structure.

5. Have students diagram these structures using a graphic organizer.

Examples

Problem-Solution
This type of structure sets up a problem or problems, explains the solution, and then discusses the effects of the solution.

References

Dickson, S. V., Simmons, D. C., & Kameenui, E. J. (1995). Text organization and its relation to reading comprehension: A synthesis of research. Eugene, OR: National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED386864

Dymock, S. (2005). Teaching Expository Text Structure Awareness. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 177-181.

Simonsen, S. (1996). Identifying and Teaching Text Structures in Content Area Classrooms. In D. Lapp, J. Flood, & N. Farnan (Eds.), Content Area reading and Learning: Instructional Strategies (2nd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

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Text structure refers to how the information within a written text is organized. This strategy helps students understand that a text might present a main idea and details; a cause and then its effects; and/or different views of a topic. Teaching students to recognize common text structures can help students monitor their comprehension.

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Article | Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy | Timothy Shanahan & Cynthia Shanahan

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Article | Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy | Timothy Shanahan & Cynthia Shanahan

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AdLit | Tim Shanahan | A Disciplinary Literacy Bibliography

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AdLit | Tim Shanahan | A Disciplinary Literacy Bibliography

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If you are looking for additional articles to learn about Disciplinary Literacy, check out this bibliography of articles created by Tim Shanahan

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Blast from the Past: Since this entry was originally published research on disciplinary literacy has burgeoned. This update increases the bibliography greatly and this big increase in emphasis should encourage and support those who are trying to bring disciplinary literacy to adolescents around the world.
These days I hear a lot of reading authorities talking (and writing) about disciplinary literacy, but they really mean adolescent literacy or content area reading and writing. They don't understand the distinction that is being made.

Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized or somewhat unique texts or text features in those texts that are the province of a particular field of study and the specialized approaches to reading and writing texts used by experts in a field of study. Thus, historians, because they create, communicate, and evaluate a different kind of knowledge than scientists, use different kinds of text and have different ways of reading such text than scientists.

There are various ways that one can study the information in text to remember it for a test or something, and that probably doesn't vary much across contents. But disciplinary literacy refers not to those student or learning concerns, but to the ways of reading/writing that are specialized to the actual fields of study. There is nothing wrong with addressing how to teach reading better in a social studies class or how to teach students to learn better from a social studies textbook ... that just isn't what we mean by disciplinary studies.

Thus, if someone is talking about how to read like a scientist, they are dealing with disciplinary literacy. But if they are talking about how to do story problems in math, how to memorize terminology in a science class, or the most pedagogically sound textbook to use in social studies, they are really talking about something else. If it is about being a better student or learning to read more effectively, it is not about disciplinary literacy (though I suspect if teachers focused more on apprenticing the students into the disciplines they would become better students).

The Common Core State Standards and the Indiana and Texas standards all attempt to address disciplinary literacy. They want their students to read literature the way that a literary critic would, or to read a history book the way a historian would.

I hear often from graduate students seeking information about disciplinary literacy. Towards that end I am providing the following partial bibliography. I think this could be helpful both to researchers and teachers.

Disciplinary literacy bibliography

Abel, K. L., and Exley, B. E. (2008). Using Halliday's functional grammar to examine early years worded mathematics texts. Australia Journal of Language and Literacy, 31, 227-241.

Akkus, R., Gunel, M., and Hand, B. (2007). Comparing an inquiry-based approach known as the science writing heuristic to traditional science teaching practices: Are there differences. International Journal of Science Education, 29, 1745-1765.

Amos, L. B. (2014). Disciplinary literacy in action: Epistemological resources for reasoning with domain-specific texts in history and the social sciences disciplines. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Anthony, R. J., Tippett, C. D., and Yore, L. D. (2010). Pacific Crystal project: Explicit literacy instruction embedded in middle school science classrooms. Research In Science Education, 40, 45-64.

Ashby, R. (1993). Pilot study on students' use of evidence. Unpublished study, Essex, England.

Ashby, R., and Lee, P.J. (1987). Children's concepts of empathy and understanding in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), The history curriculum for teachers. London, England: Falmer Press.

Anzai, Y. (1991). Learning and use of representations for physics expertise. In K. A. Ericsson and J. Smith (Eds.) Toward a General Theory of Expertise - Prospects and Limits (pp. 64-92). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ashby, R. (1993). Pilot study on students' use of evidence. Unpublished study, Essex, England.

Ashby, R., and Lee, P.J. (1987). Children's concepts of empathy and understanding in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), The history curriculum for teachers. London, England: Falmer Press.

Bazerman, C. (1985). Physicists reading physics: Schema-laden purposes and purpose-laden schema. Written Communication, 2, 3-23.

Bazerman, C. (1998). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Berkenkotter, C., Huckin, T.N., and Ackerman, J. (1988). Conventions, conversations, and the writer: Case study of a student in a rhetoric Ph.D. program. Research in the Teaching of English, 22, 9-44.

Berland, L. K., and Reiser, B. J. (2009). Making sense of argumentation and explanation. Science Education, 93(1), 26- 55.

Brill, G., Falk, H., and Yarden, A. (2004). The learning processes of two high?school biology students when reading primary literature. International Journal of Science Education, 26(4), 497-512.

Brozo, W.G., Moorman, G., Meyer, C., and Stewart, T. (2013). Content area reading and disciplinary literacy: A case for the radical center. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(5) 353-357.

Burke, K.A., Greenbowe, T.J., and Hand, B.M. (2006). Implementing the science writing heuristic in the chemistry laboratory, Journal of Chemical Education, 83(7), 1032-1038.

Cavagnetto, A. R. (2010). Argument to foster scientific literacy: A review of argument interventions in K-12 contexts. Review of Educational Research, 80, 336-371.

Chapman, S. C. (2015). Disciplinary literacy: A study of the cognitive, social, and semiotic practices of disciplinary experts. Unpublished dissertation, University of Florida.

Cherner, T., Kelley, A., and Norris, M. (2015). Disciplinary literacy: Teaching students to read as historians chapter. In T. N. Turner, J. Clabough, and W. Cole (Eds.), Getting at the core of the Common Core with social studies (pp. 153-166). Charlotte, NC, US: IAP Information Age Publishing.

Chi, M. R. H., Feltovich, P. J., and Glaser, R. (1980). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5, 121-152.

Christiansen, L.M. (2007). Legal reading and success in law school: An empirical study. Seattle University Law Review, 30, 603-649.

Christiansen, L.M. (2008). The paradox of legal expertise: A study of experts and novices reading the law. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, 53, 53-87.

Deegan, D.H. (1995). Exploring individual differences among novices reading in a specific domain: The case of law. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(2), 154-70.

de La Paz, S. (2005). Historical reasoning instruction and writing strategy mastery in culturally and academically diverse middle school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 139-156.

de La Paz, S., Ferretti, R., Wissinger, D., Yee, L., and MacArthur, C. (2012). Adolescents' disciplinary use of evidence, argumentative strategies, and organizational structure in writing about historical controversies. Written Communication, 29, 412-454.

de La Paz, S., and Wissinger, D.R. (2015). Effects of genre and content knowledge on historical thinking with academically diverse high school students. Journal of Experimental Education, 83, 110-129.

Donovan, M. S., and Bransford, J. D. (2005). How students learn. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Drew, S. V., Olinghouse, N. G., Faggella-Luby, M. W., and Megan, E. (2017). Framework for disciplinary writing in science Grades 6-12: A national survey. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109, 935-955.

Driver, R., Newton, P., and Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms. Science Education, 84, 287-312.

Duhaylongsod, L., Snow, C., E., Selman, R., l., and Donovan, M.S. (2015). Toward disciplinary literacy: dilemmas and challenges in designing history curriculum to support middle school students. Harvard Educational Review, 85, (4), 587-608.

Dunkerly-Bean, J., and Bean, T. W. (2016). Missing the "Savoir" for the "Connaissance": Disciplinary and content area literacy as regimes of truth. Journal of Literacy Research, 48, 448-475.

Faggela-Luby, M.N., Graner, P.S., Deshler, D.D., and Drew, S.V. (2012). Building a house on sand: Why disciplinary literacy is not sufficient to replace general strategies for adolescent learners who struggle. Topics in Language Disorders, 32, 69-84.

Fang, Z. (2012). Language correlates of disciplinary literacy. Topics in Language Disorders, 32, 19-34.

Fang, Z. and Schleppegrell, M. (2008). Reading in second content areas: A language-based pedagogy. University of Michigan Press.

Fang, Z., and Schleppegrell, M. J. (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53, 586-597.

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Fitzgerald, J.C. (2011). Comprehending historical narratives: Exploring the relationship between causal language and students' mental representations of history. Unpublished dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

Flury-Kashmanian, C. (2016). Engineers reading disciplinary texts: Skimming for "shiny objects" and tapping into knowledge and experience. Unpublished State University of New York at Buffalo.

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Fulda, J. S. (2009b). Towards a unified theory of "ifs"-the theory of conditional elements: Further evidence from conditionally self-falsifying utterances. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1440-1448

Goldman, S. R., Britt, M. A., Brown, W., Cribb, G., George, M., Greenleaf, C., Lee, C.D., Shanahan, C., and Project READI (Submitted). Disciplinary literacies and learning to read for understanding: A conceptual framework of core concepts and processes.

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Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized or somewhat unique texts or text features in those texts that are the province of a particular field of study and the specialized approaches to reading and writing texts used by experts in a field of study.

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Article | Reading Rockets | Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?

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Article | Reading Rockets | Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?

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Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?

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This commentary discusses what disciplinary literacy is and why it is important. It then discusses the ways in which elementary school teachers can infuse aspects of disciplinary literacy into elementary instruction. It argues that the Common Core Standards, even those at the K-6 level, are providin…

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Article | Disciplinary Literacy: A Shift That Makes Sense

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Article | Disciplinary Literacy: A Shift That Makes Sense

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Becky Stewart, a high school physics teacher, had attended so many workshops on reading strategies that she felt as if she could teach a session herself. She tried to do what was asked of her, utilizing K-W-L charts and close reading strategies, but she jokingly told her friend that if one more person told her that every teacher was a teacher of reading, she would quit her job and find work in a research lab.

For years, disciplinary teachers have felt they were being asked to supplement their content with a separate reading curriculum. "I'm not a reading teacher," Becky explained. "My degree is in science, and I want to teach science. I really don't want a job where I am responsible for teaching kids how to read and write."

Becky is not alone. Even English teachers point out that they, like other content-area teachers, have a full curriculum that doesn't start or end with basic literacy skills. And beware of asking a math teacher, whose very language is often represented in ways other than the alphabet, what she thinks of the reading strategy movement. Elective or special area teachers, such as those who teach music or the arts, are also often asked to include literacy strategies in their teaching, though their texts may be in the form of props, canvas, clay, or sheets of music rather than a traditional book. Since a text is really anything imbued with meaning (Draper, 2015), it doesn't make sense to require teachers who rarely use print-centric materials to employ traditional reading methods to help students gain understanding.

One of the problems with such a narrow definition of text is the "one-size-fits-all" reading strategy movement, where generic strategies are often used as isolated activities completely unrelated to the content. Some schools, for instance, implement "strategies of the week" in which all teachers must use a common concept map or have a similar word wall related to their current unit of study. Such an approach doesn't help students understand when and how a strategy might be used or adapted, and it can actually undermine their ability to become independent and flexible learners.

Enter Disciplinary Literacy

Disciplinary literacy takes a turn away from isolated content-area strategies and clarifies what teachers can do to help their students learn in a more effective way. It respects the varied ways that students read, reason, write, think, speak, and, most important, participate in specific content areas. Researcher Elizabeth Moje (2010) deepens the definition by arguing that disciplinary learning doesn't just build knowledge but actually produces or constructs it. Let's consider the K-W-L mentioned earlier. This strategy has been shown to be generally effective in helping students

However, it would be much more useful if the strategy were customized to various content areas, directing students to use their new knowledge. In other words, in a disciplinary literacy approach, the K-W-L strategy becomes something different for each content area:

Content-area writing is similarly specific to each discipline. For example, a well thought-out metaphor may enhance a piece of writing in an English class but would hardly work for a written deconstruction of a math problem or the concise, factual writing needed in science. Getting students to think about content also requires targeted disciplinary skills. When a teacher asks students to think like a historian, he means that they must learn how to intuitively source materials, read closely for underlying bias, and engage in an analysis of the text or a comparison of one text to another. This sort of thinking, although it shares some commonalities with other disciplines, helps students learn how to specifically engage in the subject of history as opposed to, say, math or science. In short, disciplinary literacy is about doing the work of the disciplines instead of merely reading about it.

Diving into Disciplinary Literacy

But how do busy teachers make the shift to a disciplinary literacy classroom? It requires an embedded approach that honors the expertise of content-area teachers. First, they must identify what students need to learn and do to become successful in their content areas, preferably through dialogue with colleagues who teach the same content. Once they have named such skills and behaviors, they should focus on how to teach these skills while teaching content-not as a sidebar to the content. Admittedly, teachers may need to engage in a book or lesson study or even participate in a professional development opportunity to learn how best to teach the identified skills, but focusing on literacy skills within the disciplines brings to life a much richer schoolwide curriculum as students learn how to use literacy for different purposes in various subject areas.

As teachers discuss the skills students need in their content area, they can expand these lists and then determine the most effective instructional practices to help students practice and master such skills-all while engaging in the authentic work of their disciplines.

Through disciplinary literacy, we can create readers and writers who come to use literacy for its highest purpose-learning-with an expert by their side, a content area teacher who not only understands the subject but also how to use literacy to unlock it.

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Disciplinary Literacy: A Shift That Makes Sense

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Becky Stewart, a high school physics teacher, had attended so many workshops on reading strategies that she felt as if she could teach a session herself.

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https://www.heinemann.com/products/e00972.aspx

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Our library provides effective, research-based classroom strategies to help strengthen your students' skills in phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.

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Article | Keys to Literacy | What is Disciplinary Literacy?

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Article | Keys to Literacy | What is Disciplinary Literacy?

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The value of embedding literacy instruction in content teaching has been known for decades. Back in 1979 while studying for my Masters degree, one of my courses was titled Reading in the Content Areas. Since then, I have come across literally hundreds of books and courses with the same title. There has long been a consensus based on decades of research that content teachers can play an important role in teaching students literacy skills (Snow, 2002; Meltzer et al, 2003; Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). This is a major tenet of the Common Core State Standards, as evidenced in the title of the literacy standards: Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects and highlighted in the introduction to the standards:

"Literacy standards for grade 6 and above are predicated on teachers of ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of literacy in their respective fields." (Common Core, 2010, p. 3)

Traditionally, the goal of content literacy instruction has been to increase students' ability to write, listen and speak as they read and learn content from different subjects, also described as content disciplines. My Key Comprehension Routine, Key Vocabulary Routine, and Keys to Content Writing professional development programs train teachers of all subjects how to provide content literacy instruction. I believe that content teachers are in the best position to do this because they know the unique demands of reading and writing in mathematics, science, history, or other specific disciplines.

In the last several years the term disciplinary literacy is popping up in educational publications and research articles. Most teachers I know conclude that this must just be another name for content literacy. But for those who are considered disciplinary literacy experts, there is a fundamental difference between content and disciplinary literacy.

What is disciplinary literacy?

Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan published a 2012 article in Top Language Disorders that is often cited in discussions about disciplinary literacy titled " What is disciplinary literacy and why does it matter? "

They describe the difference between content and disciplinary literacy this way:

"Content area literacy focuses on study skills that can be used to help students learn from subject matter specific texts. Disciplinary literacy, in contrast, is an emphasis on the knowledge and abilities possessed by those who create, communicate, and use knowledge within the disciplines. The difference is that content literacy emphasizes techniques that a novice might use to make sense of a disciplinary text (such as how to study a history book for an examination), whereas disciplinary literacy emphasizes the unique tools that the experts in a discipline use to engage in the work of that discipline... Content area reading prescribes study techniques and reading approaches that can help someone to comprehend or to remember text better (with little regard to type of text), whereas disciplinary literacy emphasizes the description of unique uses and implications of literacy use within the various disciplines." (p. 8)

Emily Rainer and Elizabeth Moje wrote about disciplinary literacy in a 2012 article published in English Education titled " Building Insider Knowledge: Teaching Students to Read, Write, and Think within ELA and across the Disciplines ".

They describe disciplinary literacy this way:

" Disciplinary literacy refers to the shared ways of reading, writing, thinking, and reasoning within academic fields (Moje, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Each discipline has unique ways of asking questions and solving problems. Similarly, each discipline has unique expectations for the types of claims that are made and the way those claims are supported. These differences play out in the ways that texts are written and in the demands those texts place on the readers. For these reasons, we can say that each discipline has its own discourse community, a shared way of using language and constructing knowledge." (p. 73)

They also note:

"Disciplinary literacy practices are cultural constructions, and many of those practices are not learned simply by observation. Thus, middle school and high school teachers, who are already part of the disciplinary culture by virtue of their disciplinary preparation, need to help students into the culture by making explicit the discipline-specific literacy practices of their areas (Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, & Mueller, 2001). Such disciplinary literacy instruction does not seek to make experts of teen- age students. Rather, disciplinary literacy instruction begins to help students to read, write, and think in ways that are aligned with experts in the field." (p. 73)

I have a mixed reaction to this relatively new focus on disciplinary literacy. On the one hand, it makes sense that students should benefit from learning what is unique about the way literacy is used in one discipline such as math versus another discipline such as history. This is especially the case for students who go on to post-secondary education or who start careers in areas that require a high degree of disciplinary-specific reading and writing skills.

On the other hand, there are huge numbers of high school students who have below grade-level reading and writing skills - they have not learned even basic content comprehension and writing skills. My concern is that high school, and especially middle school, content teachers will focus on more advanced disciplinary literacy skills at the expense of teaching more fundamental content literacy skills.

This sentiment is reflected in a 2012 article by Michael Fagella-Luby and colleagues in the same issue of Top Language Disorders as the Shanahans' piece. It is titled " Building a House on Sand: Why Disciplinary Literacy Is Not Sufficient to Replace General Strategies for Adolescent Learners Who Struggle "

They note this about disciplinary literacy:

"There is growing interest in disciplinary literacy instruction as a primary means of improving adolescent literacy outcomes. At times, this disciplinary framework has been represented as a replacement for the more broadly known general strategy instruction. However, disciplinary literacy, a potentially powerful idea, cannot replace general strategy instruction for all adolescent learners because adolescents who struggle with reading and writing do not possess the foundational skills and strategies necessary to learn proficiently. We believe that such a statement is necessary because, at times (including Fang, 2012, and Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012), disciplinary literacy has been represented as a replacement for the more broadly known general strategy instruction. To suggest that content teachers need only focus on the strategies that will unpack the complexity of specific concepts in certain content areas is a likely recipe for teacher frustration as teachers face the challenge of today's academically diverse students in middle and secondary school classrooms. Moreover, such a linear disciplinary focus implies that content teachers do not bear responsibility for teaching foundational general strategy instruction to all students in their classes." (p. 70)

Don Deschler, Director of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, summarizes this position in a two-minute video titled " What are specific considerations that teachers must make related to disciplinary literacy for students with reading difficulties?"

Here are some additional resources related to disciplinary literacy:

References

Biancarosa, G., and Snow, C.E. (2004). Reading next: A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Meltzer, J., Smith, N.C., and Clark, H. (2003). Adolescent literacy resources: Linking research and practice. Providence, R.I.: Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University.

Snow, C. (2002). (Chair). RAND reading study group: Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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What is Disciplinary Literacy? - Keys to Literacy

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The value of embedding literacy instruction in content teaching has been known for decades. Back in 1979 while studying for my Masters degree, one of my courses was titled Reading in the Content Areas. Since then, I have come across literally hundreds of books and courses with the same title.

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Article | Shanahan on Literacy | Disciplinary Literacy: The Basics

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Article | Shanahan on Literacy | Disciplinary Literacy: The Basics

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Disciplinary Literacy: The Basics | Shanahan on Literacy

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Disciplinary literacy is based upon the idea that literacy and text are specialized, and even unique, across the disciplines.

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Jessica McCracken | Disciplinary Literacy Presentation

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Jessica McCracken | Disciplinary Literacy Presentation

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SHARE | Disciplinary Literacy | Jessica McCracken 

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AdLit | Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

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AdLit | Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

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To assume that one can simply have students memorize and routinely execute a set of strategies is to misconceive the nature of strategic processing or executive control. Such rote applications of these procedures represents, in essence, a true oxymoron-non-strategic strategic processing.
- Alexander and Murphy (1998, p. 33)

If the struggling readers in your content classroom routinely miss the point when "reading" content text, consider teaching them one or more of the seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers. Cognitive strategies are the mental processes used by skilled readers to extract and construct meaning from text and to create knowledge structures in long-term memory. When these strategies are directly taught to and modeled for struggling readers, their comprehension and retention improve.

Struggling students often mistakenly believe they are reading when they are actually engaged in what researchers call mindless reading (Schooler, Reichle, & Halpern, 2004), zoning out while staring at the printed page. The opposite of mindless reading is the processing of text by highly effective readers using cognitive strategies. These strategies are described in a fascinating qualitative study that asked expert readers to think aloud regarding what was happening in their minds while they were reading. The lengthy scripts recording these spoken thoughts (i.e., think-alouds) are called verbal protocols (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). These protocols were categorized and analyzed by researchers to answer specific questions, such as, What is the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' strategies as they determine the main idea of a text? (Afflerbach, 1990b).

The protocols provide accurate "snapshots" and even "videos" of the ever-changing mental landscape that expert readers construct during reading. Researchers have concluded that reading is "constructively responsive-that is, good readers are always changing their processing in response to the text they are reading" (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995, p. 2). Instructional Aid 1.1 defines the seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers, and Instructional Aid 1.2 provides a lesson plan template for teaching a cognitive strategy.

Instructional aids

Instructional Aid 1.1: Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

Activating

"Priming the cognitive pump" in order to recall relevent prior knowledge and experiences from long-term memory in order to extract and construct meaning from text

Inferring

Bringing together what is spoken (written) in the text, what is unspoken (unwritten) in the text, and what is already known by the reader in order to extract and construct meaning from the text

Monitoring-Clarifying

Thinking about how and what one is reading, both during and after the act of reading, for purposes of determining if one is comprehending the text combined with the ability to clarify and fix up any mix-ups

Questioning

Engaging in learning dialogues with text (authors), peers, and teachers through self-questioning, question generation, and question answering

Searching-Selecting

Searching a variety of sources in order to select appropriate information to answer questions, define words and terms, clarify misunderstandings, solve problems, or gather information

Summarizing

Restating the meaning of text in one's own words - different words from those used in the original text

Visualizing-Organizing

Constructing a mental image or graphic organizer for the purpose of extracting and constructing meaning from the text

Instructional Aid 1.2: A Lesson Template for Teaching Cognitive Strategies

1. Provide direct instruction regarding the cognitive strategy

a. Define and explain the strategy

b. Explain the purpose the strategy serves during reading

c. Describe the critical attributes of the strategy

d. Provide concrete examples/nonexamples of the strategy

2. Model the strategy by thinking aloud

3. Facilitate guided practice with students

Instructional Aid 1.3: A Lesson Template for Teaching Summarizing

Lesson Template for Teaching Cognitive Strategies Lesson Plan for Teaching Summarizing

1. Provide direct instruction regarding the cognitive strategy

a. Define and explain the strategy.

Summarizing is restating in your own words the meaning of what you have read-using different words from those used in the original text-either in written form or a graphic representation (picture of graphic organizer).

b. Explain the purpose the strategy serves during reading

Summarizing enables a reader to determine what is most imporant to remember once the reading is completed. Many things we read have only one or two bid ideas, and it's important to identify them and restate them for purposed of retention.

c. Describe the critical attributes of the strategy.

A summary has the following characteristics. It:
-Is short
-Is to the point, containing the big idea of the text
-Omits trivial information and collapses lists into a word or phrase
-Is not a retelling or a "photocopy" of the text

d. Provide concrete examples/nonexamples of the strategy.

Examples of good summaries might inlude the one-sentence book summaries from The New York Times Bestsellers List, an obituary of a famous person, or a report of a basketball or football game that captures the highlights.

The mistakes that students commonly make when writing summaries can be more readily avoided by showing students excellent nonexamples (e.g., a paragraph that is too long, has far too many details, or is a complete retelling of the text rather than a statement of the main idea.

2. Model the strategy by thinking aloud.

Thinking aloud is a metacognitive activity in which teachers reflect on their behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes regarding what they have read and then speak their thoughts aloud for students. Choose a section of relatively easy text from your discipline and think aloud as you read it, and then also think aloud about how you would go about summarizing it - then do it.

3. Facilitate guided practice with students.

Using easy-to-read content text, read aloud and generate a summary together with the whole class.

Using easy-to-read content text, ask students to read with partners and create a summary together.

One students are writing good summaries as partners, assign text and expect students to read it and generate summaries independently.

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teach the seven strategies of highly effective readers

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Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

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To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one.

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Video | Disciplinary Literacy | Cynthia Shanahan

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Video | Disciplinary Literacy | Cynthia Shanahan

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Video | Disciplinary Literacy: Why it Matters and What We Should Do About It | National Writing Project

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Video | Disciplinary Literacy: Why it Matters and What We Should Do About It | National Writing Project

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Disciplinary Literacy: Why It Matters and What We Should Do About It

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Video | NCTM | Disciplinary Literacy in Math Instruction | Building Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics

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Video | NCTM | Disciplinary Literacy in Math Instruction | Building Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics

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https://dpi.wi.gov/math/disciplinary-literacy

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Building Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics

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Blendspace | Digital Platform to Organize Text Sets

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Blendspace | Digital Platform to Organize Text Sets

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https://www.stenhouse.com/content/text-sets-action

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Article | Hot to Integrate Disciplinary Literacy in the Science Curriculum

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Article | Hot to Integrate Disciplinary Literacy in the Science Curriculum

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Science disciplinary literacy may seem like uncharted water for STEM teachers who have not traditionally considered reading their purview. The case for integrating disciplinary literacy is compelling: increased academic rigor, instruction that better prepares students to be independent learners in the field, and authentic learning that more closely resembles the work of experts in the field.

But making disciplinary literacy a reality in the classroom can be far more challenging, particularly for those teachers who have not traditionally focused on reading skills. How do you integrate literacy into existing instruction in a way that doesn't seem supplemental? What texts do you use? What questions do you ask?

Here's our guide to answering just those questions and making disciplinary literacy a reality in the science classroom.

1. Use disciplinary literacy to build depth into what you already teach

Rather than creating a separate unit on science literacy where you try to build skills in isolation, integrate science reading into your existing curriculum. If you happen to be teaching a unit about minerals, for instance, begin with an article about diamonds that explains why this precious gem is so valuable. Use that article to get students thinking about the properties of minerals and use that as a lead-in to a hands-on activity. Finish the unit with a published study about minerals that gives students a chance to see how scientists communicate their research in a journal. Closely analyze the graphs in that study and connect the broad themes to what students have already learned.

By integrating disciplinary texts into what you're already studying, you give students an opportunity to make the core content more relevant. They see that the topics they are studying are ongoing areas of investigation for the science community and areas of interest for the greater public. Students also get the opportunity to build their content knowledge before attempting to read more rigorous texts, which makes it more easy for students to access authentic writing in the field; published research tends to contain very specialized vocabulary that requires deep understanding of concepts.

Finally, giving students the opportunity to read about research in the field helps them to understand the principles of good experimentation. When students take apart research studies and examine the hypotheses, methodology, results, and conclusions of research, they are getting insight into how science is done. They can in turn apply this to their own hands-on activities and inquiry.

2. Leverage three types of texts: popular articles, textbooks, and published research studies

Science teachers should consider integrating a variety of texts into their curriculum and using those texts for different purposes in their instruction:

Popular articles are short texts published for the general public, such as those found in newspapers. Because they are destined for non-experts, they are often accessible and help to convey why a particular science topic matters to society. These are terrific entry points to the study of a new topic because they grab students' interest and lead them to begin the process of inquiry. For example, reading an article about melting ice in Greenland would help students generate interest in global warming. Some of these articles also include charts, diagrams, or links to research that students can investigate more closely.

Textbooks do not fit the category of authentic texts, but they are still extremely useful in delivering basic knowledge and introducing key vocabulary. To get students motivated to closely read the textbook and construct meaning from it (as opposed to merely memorizing definitions and glossing through the rest), use jigsaw reading: put students into small groups and assign each student in the group a different section of the textbook to read and digest. Each student will then be tasked with communicating what they've read to the other members of their group and trying to piece together the full textbook section. Alternately, have some members of the small group perform a hands-on activity, then ask a question that requires students to bring together their understanding of what they've read and what they've found through their experiment to answer a larger question. For example, have one student in the group read through a textbook section about oil spills. Have a second student read a textbook section about cleaning up oil spills. Have two other members of the group perform an experiment where they extract oil from an oil and water mixture. Then have the group come together to answer a question about whether they would prefer to have an oil well right outside their town and support their reasoning with evidence.

Published research studies are terrific ways to end a unit. They require a large amount of content knowledge and domain-specific vocabulary, which makes them difficult to access before students have studied the topic. They also help students understand how scientists communicate their research (abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion) and how to decipher graphs and charts.

3. Ask questions that encourage students to think like scientists

Once you have the curriculum and the texts in place, the next step is to understand what sorts of questions to ask your students to get them thinking like real scientists. We've created a helpful poster to answer that question:

Correlation or causation? Help students understand how scientists obtain their results. Analyze the methodology of experiments to determine whether scientists are deriving their results using an appropriate control or merely identifying a relationship between two variables. One great website to introduce this concept is spurious correlations, which demonstrates strong correlations between two completely unrelated variables. Students can then apply this reasoning to the popular articles they read for class and be encouraged to bring in their own examples of studies based on correlation rather than causation.

What questions weren't answered? Using current information to inspire further inquiry is a cornerstone of scientific thinking. Scientists often present this sort of thinking in the introduction to their studies, where they take stock of the known data in their area of inquiry and then raise the unanswered question that drove their own investigation. They also present these sorts of questions in the conclusions of their studies, hoping to inspire further research based on their findings. Get students into the habit of asking themselves this same question whenever they encounter a published study, whether in a popular news article or a professional journal.

Is the sample size valid? Encourage students to look at sample sizes, particularly in experiments that involve human subjects. Ask them to think about the consequences of using a sample size that is too small, particularly if the study is used to drive policy decisions. Bring in examples of published research studies that rely on sample sizes that are far too small to be meaningful and see if students can figure out what's wrong based on their reading of the methodology.

Is this research biased? Data can be interpreted in many ways, and it's important for students to realize that special interests can skew results. Show students examples of biased research, such as this Newsweek article arguing that the food industry promotes biased research that influences nutritional policy. Find research negating the effects of global warming and asking what information researchers may have omitted and what interest they might have in promoting a particular representation of the data. This will help students become more informed consumers of science research and alert them to the ways that bias can infiltrate science headlines.

Do the results support the conclusion? Scientists love to poke holes in research, and students should do the same. The best activity for this purpose is to look at a major headline announcing a jaw-dropping scientific breakthrough, then read the study that inspired the headline. In some cases, the study's results have been greatly exaggerated and would likely not support the conclusion of the headline. In a simpler version of this exercise, the teacher could write a short description of flawed reasoning in a fictitious study and ask students to read through it and identify the problem.

Other explanations for the results? When evaluating the validity of a conclusion, have students ask themselves if there is another potential variable that the researcher might have missed. If a particular supplement leads to a group of people recovering faster from surgery, is the effect due to the supplement itself or a placebo effect? If people who eat caviar tend to live longer, is it because caviar is good for you or because the people who can afford to regularly eat caviar can also afford high-quality medical care and other comforts that benefit their longevity?

As your investigate these questions, have students pay attention not only to the text on the page they are reading but also the visuals and representations of the data. Scientists spend a great deal of time investigating these elements and use them to draw their own conclusions or visualize processes. Before reading through a research study, have students look at the graphs and charts and infer what the study is testing and what its conclusions might be. As they read about science concepts and perform their own experiments, ask students to design their own diagrams and use charts to represent their data. Understanding these visual representations will help students with their college-entrance exams (the science sections of the ACT, AP, and IB tests all ask students to derive meaning from charts, graphs, and diagrams). It will also help to build the skills that scientists regularly use to decipher information from published studies.

Related:

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How to Integrate Disciplinary Literacy in the Science Curriculum

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A guide to integrating disciplinary literacy into existing science content, choosing the appropriate texts, and asking the questions to get students thinking like scientists.

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https://www.heinemann.com/jenniferserravallo/readingstrategiesbook2/

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Disciplinary Literacy and Reading Across the Content Areas

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Disciplinary Literacy and Reading Across the Content Areas

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Author: Art Peterson

Summary: For teachers in the content areas, Elizabeth Birr Moje's work provides strong guidance for improving disciplinary literacy. Moje's argues that focusing on disciplinary literacy helps teachers understand the thinking and learning demands students face as they move through different content area classes that make up a typical high school day. This post serves as a short introduction to her work in preparation for viewing the video of her excellent keynote at NWP's National Reading Initiative. Find the keynote at Disciplinary Literacy: Why It Matters and What We Should Do About It.

Original Date of Publication: January 13, 2010

What does it mean to be "smart" in a discipline? Does it mean knowing many facts? Does it mean understanding the discipline's important theoretical ideas? Does it mean being able to understand what questions the discipline is meant to address? Perhaps it means to be able to create new knowledge that addresses those very questions?

For many educators, these multiple and seemingly conflicting demands frame essential questions about teaching and learning in their discipline. Elizabeth Birr Moje explores these questions in a keynote delivered to the NWP's National Reading Initiative called Disciplinary Literacy: Why It Matters and What We Should Do About It

Moje, a professor of Literacy, Language and Culture in the Educational Studies Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor at the time of her talk, urges educators to give attention to a focus she calls disciplinary literacy.

The idea of disciplinary literacy is not new in itself. It has a rich tradition in the field of rhetoric among those interested in writing in the disciplines, especially in higher education. However, Moje has been a leader among those arguing that thinking about disciplinary literacy will help us understand how to think more productively about the thinking and learning demands students face as they move through different content area classes that make up a typical secondary school day.

It's Moje's belief that each discipline has its own literacy and that by stripping away the one-size-fits-all literacy "strategies" and engaging students in the way historians and scientists actually read and write, literacy learning will be central, no longer a side dish.

Theory that Starts in the Classroom

Moje's thinking about disciplinary literacy has evolved out of years of experience as a high school teacher of history, biology, and drama, as well as out of her university work with school-based colleagues.

"Many years of experience have shaped my thinking about disciplinary/adolescent literacy," she says. "During my years as a regular classroom teacher, I routinely found myself frustrated with my inability to get kids to engage in reading and writing disciplinary texts. At the same time, I witnessed them reading and writing all sorts of texts on their own time, or for dramatic productions that I directed, so I knew that they would or could read or write when they had a purpose or an interest."

Moje's work as scholar and ethnographer supports these earlier understandings. She has spent more than eight years following children in the low-income, predominantly Latino southwest side of Detroit. Working with these young people, she found that they would devour books like the Harry Potter series, S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, and Louis Sachar's Holes. However, confronted with most textbooks, their enthusiasm for learning shriveled.

Alternatives to Textbooks

Moje's solution: Put the textbook on the back burner. Textbooks, she believes, are a primary culprit in what Theodore Sizer has described as the "pedagogy of telling," providing content area teachers with a vehicle for covering vast amounts of information in short periods of time at the expense of the understanding that makes for true engagement.

Moje would replace dependence on a single text with the tools that workers in a scholarly field actually use. Students of history, for instance, would have at their disposal a variety of source documents that would help them construct their own narrative and understandings.

"Literacy thus becomes an essential aspect of disciplinary practice, rather than a set of strategies or tools brought into the disciplines to improve reading and writing of subject-matter texts," she wrote in "Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change," which appeared in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.

Moje is realistic about the difficulties of such an approach. She tells the story from her own classroom experience. As a history teacher, she had assigned her students to read one of The Federalist Papers. "The next day I asked, 'So what was Madison trying to say?' I was met by blank stares. The work was not accessible to my students."

She knows that it will be the educator's job to find user-friendly materials and provide the scaffolding that will generate understanding. This task is somewhat easier now than it was when Moje was a classroom teacher now that multiple text types and new media are at the fingertips of teachers and students.

"Teachers can employ many different forms of representation to construct knowledge of one concept-different genres (e.g. narrative, expository, poetics, music), different symbol systems (e.g. print, graphs, tables), and different semiotic tools (image, sound, and performance)," she writes in Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Teaching and Learning. "Each of these forms-now readily available through digital venues-can support the construction of knowledge necessary to access the abstract print text of the disciplines."

Linking Learning and Life

For any of this to work, however, Moje insists on another principle that has been at the forefront of her work for many years. Learning must be linked to everyday life. She provides an example in which she and her colleagues asked middle school students to analyze data from a hypothetical experiment designed to test a mother's advice that two young women wash their hands for at least 15 seconds to reduce bacteria growth.

"In their conclusions we asked students to both write a scientific claim based on the data and write what they would tell their mothers about the experiment. As a literacy activity, students had to read data from charts and then make their claims." These students were acting as scientists but in the context of a familiar experience.

With these themes in mind, view her keynote from the NWP Reading Initiative conference.

Related Resource

Original Source: National Writing Project, https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3041

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Disciplinary Literacy and Reading Across the Content Areas

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Author: Art Peterson Summary: For teachers in the content areas, Elizabeth Birr Moje's work provides strong guidance for improving disciplinary literacy. Moje's argues that focusing on disciplinary literacy helps teachers understand the thinking and learning demands students face as they move through different content area classes that make up a typical high school day.

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The Library of Congress makes millions of unique primary sources available online to everyone, everywhere. There are a few different ways to discover the best primary sources for you.

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