E341 BLOCK III

Disciplinary Literacy By: Samantha Burns "I’m a math teacher, so I shouldn’t have to teach literacy… right??" This is a comment I regularly hear from teachers in secondary education, or even those studying to be middle/high school teachers. There is a very common belief that because you have studied to become a teacher in a specific content area, you shouldn't be expected to learn or teach anything outside of that. It's seems that it's up to the elementary and reading teachers to teach literacy.  But if our students are only taught basic and intermediate literacy skills, are we putting them at a disadvantage? And if they're taught incredible literacy skills in language arts, what happens to their literacy skills in other disciplines? Are we just letting those dwindle away?  In order to understand the importance of incorporating literacy across disciplines, we have to understand that literacy is more than just general strategies of rea...

Disciplinary Literacy: Adapt Not Adopt By: Alexis Gounaris I don't know about you all, but when I was in high school Science and Math classes I dreaded the day we were going to be forced to write about our thinking for a Math problem or when we were asked to infer WHY this happened in this experiment. I thought to myself "why in the world am I writing out a plan and my thinking of solving this math problem why can't I just solve it" and "this is math class why am I writing a paragraph?!". In Science, I dreaded inferring why something happened because I feared it being wrong. Along with that, the graphs and charts we had to study in both subjects and think about what they were telling us. Fast forward to today, I realize the importance of both of those things and I am glad my teachers were able to force me to critically think rather than just be expected to crank out the formula or write down the observations. It gave me a deeper un...

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     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 ...

DISCIPLINARY LITERACY By: Maddy Munn Have you ever thought about the deeper meaning and understandings of literacy? Well, you’re in luck because that is what this week’s readings are all about! Watch out, don't get stuck in the QUICKSAND!  In the article Disciplinary Literacy: Adapt not Adopt by Victoria Gillis, we are introduced with the idea that many think that " every  teacher (is) a teacher of reading." (Gillis 614). While Gillis explains that this is not true, we are DEF not all teachers of reading, we are teachers of something more important which is LITERACY! So, you may be asking yourself how can I as a teacher of different subjects promote literacy in the classroom? Well pals I'm here to give you the inside scoop! And here it is... We in fact CAN promote literacy in our classrooms in different subjects in MANY ways! Let's start with the idea of disciplinary literacy and what it means. Disciplinary literacy is t...

E n a b l i n g Text By. Alaina Kogler “Words can inspire. And words can destroy. Choose yours well.”  Robin Sharma School  Curriculum  vs Enabling Text Texts that are required in the school  curriculum are meant to provide students with the literacy skills they need in order to raise their reading scores. While this sounds great if you take out the fact that everything is done to prepare for standardized testing, the texts are severally lacking. Many kids cannot relate to these stories and so they find them to be boring. They become uninterested and are far more likely to not create a deep understanding or think critically about them.  Schools and teachers should include more enabling texts.  "An enabling text is one that moves beyond a sole cognitive focus such as skill and strategy development to include an academic, cultural, emotional, and social focus that moves students closer to examining issues they find rele...