In the Classroom

When I first started reading about disciplinary literacy, it was hard to imagine tangible ways it could be incorporated into the classroom. It was difficult for me to make connections to the concept and my own learning/teaching experiences. The article, “But What Does it Look Like?” demonstrated how disciplinary literacy was effectively implemented into a social studies and physics lesson. This showed me creative ways that educators challenged their students to think like a professional. It also helped me recall upon lessons I have seen in my field experience and how they might relate to disciplinary literacy. The two different lessons were considered disciplinary literacy through the following criteria: engaging, eliciting and engineering, examining words and language, and evaluating ways with words.

Mr. Franchi had his students debate a topic from the perspective of a historical figure. He did not talk at all during the debate, in order to give students total control of the conversation. Before the debate, each student was given a historical artifact. After reading, they had to infer what the authors opinion would be on a specific proposal. By analyzing a primary source and defending their claim, students had to engage in the language of a discourse. Mr. Coupland began his lesson by having students differentiate between an observation and explanation. He threw a ball up into the air and told students to develop a claim based on the format, “what is the effect of blank on blank for blank.” (Rainey 375). Students used a software program to analyze the ball’s motion. Then, they wrote an argumentative paper on the physical law as if they were Galileo. An interesting similarity I noticed between these two lessons was that the teachers had the students develop their arguments from the perspective of a known expert in the field. This gave the students a framework for how to think about the content.

In my field experience, I observed a sixth grade cross-curricular classroom, titled Cultural Literacy. After learning more about how disciplinary literacy can be implemented into the classroom, I was able to recall upon ways it was used in the class I observed. The purpose of the class was to develop culturally literate students. In one lesson, students learned about the Cultural Iceberg model, developed by Edward T. Hall. The model shows aspects of culture that are easy to see above the surface, such as food and literature. Under the surface are aspects such as unwritten rules and norms, which are harder to see and identify. Students looked at different examples of culture and had to identify where they would fall in the iceberg. In this lesson, students were engaging in the language of a discourse and organizing cultural elements in the same way an anthropologist would.

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