Literacy by discipline:

• History: Focuses on sourcing (who wrote it?), contextualizing (when/where?), and corroborating (what do other sources say?) to construct a narrative.

• Science: Prioritizes analyzing data, understanding technical vocabulary, and interpreting multimodal texts like diagrams, graphs, and protocols.

• Mathematics: Requires precision in interpreting symbolic language, formulas, and proofs, where every symbol holds specific meaning.

• Literature: Centers on analyzing thematic development,, authorial intent, and interpreting meaning within creative texts.

Disciplinary literacy in social studies/history can include analyzing many different sources, cross checking many different sources to get a full understanding of a historical event, and sequencing events. It can also involve analyzing the text to see who wrote it and understanding the perspective of that author and thinking about the biases that the author may have.

Disciplinary literacy in math is very different than the other subject areas. In math you need knowledge of critical thinking and problem solving skills and you need to know the mathematical language and formulas that are included in the sub area within math (geometry, algebra, etc.) It can also involve looking at data and how it is represented and understanding that.

In Language Arts/English it is focusing on many different comprehension strategies such as prior knowledge building, analyzing the texts, questioning and finding answers to those questions, and identifying the author and their point of view and challenging that.

In science, disciplinary literacy may look similar to math in understanding formulas and needing to use critical thinking and problem solving skills. Students need to learn how to read representations of data that may come from labs or scientific journals.

Each discipline is different for example, students in a social studies or history class would need to read the text from a point of view of a historian. The student needs to connect facts, understand cause and effect, organize, and categorize people and events.

In Math classes, students need to become problem solvers. Then must take the text and make connections to numbers, graphs, and charts. They also need to understand relationships and patterns.

In English, students need to be effective readers and writers and demonstrate an understanding of moving from different genres fluidly.

In Science, students need to use specific language while experimenting. Students need to be mindful of the smallest mistakes that can cause different outcomes.

Literacy by discipline:

• Science- Students need to interpret and analyze data, and write lab reports.

• Math- Students need to be able to describe problem-solving processes and justify reasoning in writing.

• Social Studies- Students need to analyze primary sources and understand historical context.

• Art- Students need to be able to critique, review, and interpret artistic work.

• Language Arts- Students need to be able use different comprehension strategies, be effective readers and writers, and interpret meaning within different texts.

  
  

  Literacy in varying disciplines is not about reading every subject the same way, but mastering the specialized "languages" of different fields to become a capable, critical, and informed person in society.

For example, in Social Studies it is imperative to understand thesis-based essay organization. Social studies papers will generally open with a presentation of the core argument in a thesis format that also provides an outline for how the following paper will be structured. A book will follow this format in a more extended manner - the introduction will generally provide the core, overarching arguments as well as a rundown of how each chapter will address different aspects of the supporting evidence. Each chapter will in turn begin with a presentation of the core argument related to that subtheme and then unpack data and argumentation to support that portion of the argument. Understanding how this scheme works can allow a reader to more quickly process papers and books produced by historians, as well as to immediately identify the most relevant portions of a text.

The hard sciences tend to unpack information differently - often beginning with an abstract before moving into prior research, research methods, and then providing conclusions and reflections. This process reflects the fact that the hard sciences are more rooted in actual studies based on the scientific method rather than a review and assessment of different sources to support a series of historical conclusions.

Understanding how experts in different fields process and present information is also important in helping students to accumulate cultural capital - the ability to communicate fluently within different social circles who have different kinds of social and economic power. For example, understanding how people critique and discuss art, and being able to imitate those behaviors, is typically associated with being educated and cultured, which in turn makes it easier to move fluidly within upper class social circles.

English: English emphasizes analyzing themes and synthesizing information from multiple sources. Students will need to read and comprehend multiple worldviews as they engage with a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts.

Math: Students need to be able to derive the key information from a word problem and apply both their knowledge and intuition to solve it. They also need to justify their reasoning for their solution.

Science: Science texts are often process driven. As such, students need to read and understand step-by-step processes and the underlying forces that drive them.

Social Studies: Many social studies texts emphasize chronology – students need to be able to piece together events in a linear manner. For primary sources, students will need to under point of view and the historical context for which the person is speaking. Additionally, students will often need to compare and contrast between different cultures.

Music: Literacy does not need to just apply to the English. Reading music is a whole other language, and becoming fluent in it is another form of literacy. The same can be said for learning a foreign language such as Spanish.

In English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Fine Arts students may read to understand a theme, an idea, a feeling, recognize historical perspectives, and understand arguments. This type of reading is much different than the procedural reading of math and science. When writing for ELA, SS, and Fine Arts, a student may have to communicate their own understanding, feeling, or perspective. They will need to connect ideas using different forms of writing organization (essay, summary, narrative, poetry).  Additionally, they may have to write about why an author wrote a piece of text, why an artist created a painting or music, and why events may have occurred historically. This type of understanding requires students to pull on their own experiences with the world and then connect those experiences to those in which they are reading.

There are a large number of comprehension strategies that can be used for reading and writing and choosing the correct strategies for each content area will make a difference in ensuring students' understanding of that specific discipline.

It supports critical thinking by comparing and contrasting information within the varied realms of knowledge.

It prepares to solve real world problems by navigation between ways of knowing.

Without literacy people will not engage in civility matters.

1. Reading- 

   1. Close reading strategy to allow students time to analyze the text.

   2. Research articles for their specific scenario.

2. Writing- 

   1. Students will write down any questions they have in the text. 

   2. Write a summary and create text dependent questions.

   3. Observations during test trials/lab.

3. Discussion- 

   1. Discuss with a partner the questions you had from the text

   2. Sharing ideas at the end and answering each other's questions they wrote down earlier in the class.

   3. Compare and contrast different type of rockets. 

2. What are each of the instructional steps of Mr. Clyde’s lesson? 

1. Warm Up/ Engage - Rocket video, how to get a rocket to work. 

2. Close Reading and Annotation- How do rockets work.

3. Research

4. Central Ideas and support with evidence from text. 

5. Check for understanding by having students create their own summary questions.

6. Planned Investigation

Participate in the Metacognition Poll here    (DONE)

Respond: Why is literacy in varying disciplines important and how is it different in each discipline? Respond Here

Literacy in multiple disciples is very important for a students education. To have the ability to perform using different strategies is a highly sought after skill that many are still trying to develop. I taught k-2 math (1 year), science (5 years) and engineering/coding courses (5 years). Each course that I have taught requires a different approach when it comes to literacy. 

• In math, they need to be able to understand the information provided and solve the problem.

• In science, they need to follow a strict set of directions, understand the data/evidence and create a reflection based on the data. 

• In engineering, we create tons of blueprints for models students need to be able to decode and recreate. 

These differences are important because they teach the students how to think and solve problems in that specific field. It allows students to think critically and (in engineering) redesign problematic parts of our builds (car, rocket, ferris wheel, etc.). All of these different ways of analyzing literacy skills also allows the students to implement their newly learned skills in the real world when dealing with real world issues. One day someone could be out fishing and realize a strategy or skill, learned in science, could help them out when they really need it (based on my calculations the water temp is too high and we need to find deeper water).

Vocabulary plays a big role, especially in subjects like science and social studies where there is a lot of content specific language. Explicit vocabulary instruction helps students better understand key ideas, build background knowledge, and explain their thinking more clearly. When students understand the vocabulary, they are more likely to fully understand the content.

Literacy also looks different depending on the subject. In reading, students work on general comprehension skills across many types of texts, which they can then apply to other content areas. In science and social studies, literacy focuses more on understanding informational text and topic specific vocabulary. In math, literacy is needed to understand word problems students have to figure out what the problem is asking and what information is important in order to solve it.

Overall, disciplinary literacy matters because students need the right tools to understand text in every subject, not just reading. When literacy is taught intentionally across disciplines, students are better able to access content and show what they know.