Disciplinary Literacy, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Scaffolding.
by Parker Jones
So I'll let Y'ALL in on a little secret: teachers are not doing a good job at teaching reading as an academic discipline
Being Elementary Ed teachers puts us in a better position to teach literacy because we are responsible for teaching most of the subjects anyway. Gillis details the strategy Response Heuristics, a method that disseminate the authors' work and meaning. The best part is that this strategy can be used in all subjects and can improve student scaffolding.
So I'll let Y'ALL in on a little secret: teachers are not doing a good job at teaching reading as an academic discipline
I know, right?
From the reading, it's clear that teachers are struggling with disciplinary literacy, but what is disciplinary? According to Buehl, "students must navigate a curriculum that features arrays of texts from disparate and increasingly distinct academic disciplines." In other words, students need to be able to disseminate meaning from math, sciences, and history textbooks much in the same way we do in college today. As it stands right now, students are only learning basic and intermediate literacy skills, which are important but we need to be thinking about taking that next step to prepare students for learning academic disciplines in college and trade schools.
If the goal is to improve disciplinary literacy, what can we do as teachers?
...well we can take steps to make literacy a part of each subject.
It's not as bad as you might think.
According to Victoria Gillis' Disciplinary Literacy Adapt Not Adopt, "literacy professionals may not mean to turn science or history or mathematics teachers into reading teachers." This is what secondary teachers hear when we say, “every teacher is a teacher of reading.” This sort of pronouncement just turns secondary teachers against ideas that, when implemented, can improve student learning and their literacy simultaneously. While speaking from a Secondary Ed position on the matter, Gillis highlights a general sense of hesitation teachers have about including Literacy in other subjects other than reading and it's true. All teachers are not reading teachers, but as elementary teachers we kind of are.
Gillis gave us a few strategies to improve students' literacy, but isn't the path to disciplinary literacy really hard? How can Elementary teachers possibly prepare students to disseminate academic level text? Well, hold your horses because we are about to talk about modeling.
Students don't do well when asked to do something they never really done before, so it shouldn't be all that surprising when students in high-school struggle to use disciplinary literacy skills that they where never taught. That's why at the elementary level we need to model how to critically examine text. Once we model critical literacy, those tools are going to be with the student when they attempt to disseminate disciplinary literacy.
With that in mind, we are the first line of defense when it come to teaching critical literacy but now I wanted to ask Y'ALL some questions:
- What are some strategies you would use to teach literacy in other subjects?
- How important do you feel disciplinary literacy is for you as an elementary teacher?
- Where do you think disciplinary literacy strategies can be best applied?
- Why do you think students struggle with disciplinary literacy?
- When do you think students can make meaning of complex text?
GREAT memes! I love how you quoted Gilli's article saying "literacy professionals may not mean to turn science or history or mathematics teachers into reading," and "this is what secondary teachers hear when we say, 'every teacher is a teaching of reading," because it sums up the basics of the reading this week. I know I have mentioned this many time before in class, but one way I would implement literacy in other subjects is through books. Children's book range in all different subjects all while simultaneously benefiting grammar and literature skill. Another activity is having the students journal in other subject. For example I am going to implement a math journal in my classroom that we will wright in daily during math time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dani, I was wondering if you had any specific books you would use a part of your literacy in other classes. Having that extra resource would be really helpful.
DeleteParker-
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Dani! I love the memes and love that you quoted Gilii's article! I think that people get confused on what literacy really is, its not just writing, its anything/everything that depicts a meaning to the person it was meant for. to answer your Question Parker, I think a way literacy could be used in math is having the kids write out what the symbols in math mean, especially as they are first learning or as they learn a new one, for example, what does an x mean when it looks like 4 x 2, vs when they are older they could talk about what it means in an equation like 4x-3=15. I think simple ways like that could incorporate literacy into math, of course you could go above and beyond with that very simple example, but I just wanted to answer the question. :) overall, I feel like literacy plays such a huge role in today's society that you almost have to incorporate it into every subject!
I really like your idea for naming and identifying parts of a number sentience as literacy. I can think of a ton of great math related books that would go well with this topic. There could even be a math workshop revolving around this idea.
DeleteParker,
ReplyDeleteI love how you emphasized the importance of modeling these literacy skills for our students. You put it perfectly when you said, "Students don't do well when asked to do something they've never really done before, so it shouldn't be all that surprising when students in high-school struggle to use disciplinary literacy skills that they were never taught." We even see this happening in our elementary school classrooms. I feel like all too often we expect our students to be able to critically examine texts using specific skills, and then look at them in shock when they do not know how to use the skills. How easy would it be to model these skills one time and eliminate at least some of this confusion? So, when you ask, "Why do you think students struggle with disciplinary literacy?" I believe the issue is that we are expecting our students to know how to use the skills without modeling the skills first.
Thanks Stephanie, I was wondering about how you would model these skills in your future classroom. what are your thoughts?
Delete"Once we model critical literacy, those tools are going to be with the student when they attempt to disseminate disciplinary literacy." This is one of the best lines about modeling ever. I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here so hang on tight. Modeling is so very important and as much as I hear it discussed throughout almost every article we have read in all of our blocks, I feel as though it is not as applied in the classroom. Modeling something once for a child is not going to immediately teach them how to do it and I have seen many teachers expect this of their students. Repetition is something that has been proven over and over again to help children learn and the repetition of modeling from a teacher would certainly be more helpful than showing something once. Part of repetition is structure because you have to structure how and what you will be showing again and again to allow children to learn more effectively. Sooooo, what if we applied repetition of literacy in other subjects? For example, I loved Breaira's idea of having students right out what the symbols meant because it gives them the literacy behind the symbols. What if they had to do that more often? In my third grade class, I have seen a worksheet where the students had to write the same number 4 different ways and then do it again for a different number but the same 4 ways. That combines repetition while adding literacy for understanding.
ReplyDeleteAll of my thoughts came pouring out all at once as I was reading your blog post so I apologize if this seemed a little jumbled at times.
It's OK Hayley I understand you. So Hayley I was wondering why you fell so strongly about using repetition of modeling to teach literacy, not saying you're wrong or anywhere close to that. I would just like to know what some of your insights are when it comes to this topic because I sense a lot of passion coming from your post.
DeleteParker,
ReplyDeleteI agree, modeling is one of the most important tools we have to teach almost all skills. I also really liked the idea of Response Heuristics in the article, Disciplinary Literacy, Adapt Not Adopt, p.616. This was the three column graphic organizer breaking the literature into literal information, inferential/interpretive thinking and the application. I found this article in Edutopia, Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom, by Sarah Kesty. https://www.edutopia.org/article/supporting-literacy-science-classroom
In the article she used this idea and adapted it to science. She would take a text and center it on the page and create a column to the left and had students pull out and define key vocabulary. Then she had another column on the right where she would ask a question of the student about the reading. The questions could range from supportive, fact based questions to application and extension questions for more advanced readers. I loved this because it was a great way to differentiate instruction too!
Very Interesting, thank you for sharing some articles you found with us. I especially like the idea of getting students to state the main idea of what they are learning in science in their own words. I find some of the literacy work at Eastbrook to be a bit too control, I wanna give students the opportunity to explain things in their own words to try and increase understanding.
DeleteFirst of all, your memes are great; just getting that out of the way. Secondly I completely agree with your point. Literacy is not simply a subject to be taught in school, it's a vital component to learning that should be applied to all aspects of education. It's not as if there isn't an abundance of applicable literature out there just waiting to be utilized for the purposes of history, mathematics, social studies, science, etc. We have the tools, we just need to apply them. Heck, we constructed an entire math mini-lesson around children's literature just a few semesters back. I'd really like to incorporate that kind of lesson planning into my future teaching practices. Nice job, Parker!
ReplyDeleteThank you Sam, I feel like this weeks reading has put everyone in a mindset and got them thinking about how they plan to include literacy in different subjects. I hope tomorrow we will have some time to discuss in detail some of our ideas for applying literacy. I'm interested in what you have to share.
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ReplyDeleteParker, I know almost everyone else has pointed this out but love your memes. I also totally agree with you that as elementary teachers, it is literally our job to incorporate literacy in all of the subjects that we teach. This will better prepare them for high school when they’re going to be expected to use disciplinary literacy skills. I love that you pointed out that modeling what we’re expecting of them is a way to teach them these skills. We can’t expect them to use these skills and feel comfortable if we don’t teach them how, and then model exactly what is expected of them.
This is Emily.
DeleteFor some reason Emily, I'm having trouble replying to your post but thank you for your insight. I feel a lot of people where able to internalize this idea that there needs to be some kind of give and take when it comes to teaching literacy. It may seem like a simply concept of "the children can only do what they are taught" but I've seen teachers at Eastbrook get frustrated by students inability to apply what they have learned when the students still have question about what they learned.
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