In my blog post, I focused on the article, Disciplinary Literacy in Elementary School: How a Struggling Student Positions Herself as a Writerby Anne Haland. This article focuses on disciplinary literacy and how a student that is a struggling writer positions herself to be a disciplinary writer when given a model to use. Throughout this article, the author seeks to model how texts can scaffold a student that is struggling with writing to improve their writing in the different disciplines. I chose to read this article because in my future classroom, I will have struggling writers. I want to help these students in the ways that I can to improve their writing across every discipline. This article provides ways for me to make that possible. It provides three questions to think about before reading that I found to be interesting. One of which covers how a teacher can find model texts, how a teacher can create communication that has students taking the role of an expert, and how a teacher can encourage her students to talk about writing and texts? 

            The article begins by describing disciplinary literacy and content area literacy. It begins with a definition of content are literacy and demonstrates the differences between the two topics. Content area literacy is from a general look and takes on the use of reading, writing, and talking in order to learn a particular subject. Disciplinary literacy takes into account this ideas from content area literacy, but means something a little different. It simply means that we should teach specialized ways to read, write, and understand a discipline, so students are able to read and write like a chemist or literary scholar (Haland, 2016). This topic is crucial in education because students are unable to use their general reading skills in every discipline; students should be taught the ways in which reading each discipline differ from one another. Now, how can students be taught this. It can start with simulation and imagination. This can help students to get an insight and learn how to embody the role of a chemist or literary scholar. In other words, students are taking on the perspectives in these specific roles in order to write across the various disciplines. 

            One thing that I have also found to be of importance is the time that disciplinary literacy should be learned. I had always thought that it would be beneficial for instruction on disciplinary literacy to start in elementary school. Most of the time we have only seen this in middle school, high school, and even college. It has been argued that early instruction should not be learned because they are not able to develop generic and specialized strategies at the same time. While other research has found that young children, specifically in second grade, can think, read, and write like a scientist. This provided a base that this instruction should be taught starting in kindergarten. This has been an ongoing debate that has yet to come to a resolution. 

            The article follows a Norwegian classroom of about 43 students and 2 teachers. In this classroom, students wrote in multiple informational genres that were supported by model texts. These helped the writer to consider the communication conventions on the genre and the positions of the reader. When writing occurred in this classroom, they used scaffolding that was provided by multiple phases. The first phase was inquiry. This phase was where the students would engage with the content. The next phase was choosing model texts. When students were working on a new writing task, they would be presented with model texts that would illustrate the language features that the teacher had wanted them to address. The third phase was text discussions. Once students completed the model text readings, they would participate in a text discussion that’s structured as and open invitation. This would focus on the language of the texts. The students would be paying close attention to the words that the authors used and the structure of the text. The fourth phase was modeling. This was used to help students transfer the identified ideas and language features within their own writing. These phases helped to support students’ writing by working them through the steps of a writing process and allowing them to derive the benefits of model texts. 

            Model texts provide students with clear expectations that were connected to issues, including genre, style, language, and authorship. These relied on a discipline-specific way of knowing and doing. Model texts gave students a direction for their writing. They also give an insight into the different types of language and text composition in writing. 

            In this blog post, I focused on the article by David E. Kirkland and Austin Jackson, “We Real Cool”: Toward a Theory of Black Masculine Literacies. the article is focused around an empirical ethnographic research study. The argument in their study was that the cool kids enacted blackness and masculinity through coolness. The study was on the literacy practices of  a group of 11- to – 14-year-old black males who called themselves “the cool kids.” It is framed using theories that view literacy as a social and cultural practice involving multiple sing-and-symbol systems. There were two questions in which they focused their research on and that guided their study. The one question was how did coolness relate to literacy among “the cool kid”? The other questions was what symbolic patterns helped to shape these relations? 

            When the study began, they were initially looking at the literacy practices of the young men of “My Brother’s Keeper” (MKB), but as they got to know the young men and became more familiar with them, this changed. They became more aware of the social ecology of the group, which changed their study to focus on how the literacy practices of the seven member in “the cool kids” had lifted literacy off the page. (Kirkland & Jackson, 2009).  They found that the literacy practices that this group of young men had used was very unique and familiar to them. With this in mind, there study was now directed around was examining how literacy formed and functioned within the group of young men, “the cool kids”. One thing they made sure to emphasize was that their study didn’t revolve around critical literacy, it focused around black males literate lives and the ways in which coolness embodies and gives visible form to the in between aspects of black males subjectivity when it is expressed through literacy. (pg. 279) 

            One thing I found interesting was the way that the two scholars had defined literacy. They define it as a cultural practice that is embedded in social and cultural phenomena, in relation to this article, coolness. They believe that literacy is capable of operating from a diversity of representational systems. This is in reference to combining written and oral forms with visual, gestural, and other kinds of symbols. In this article, we can see this definition at use because this article is focused around a group of young men using more than words to communicate to one another. 

            Another thing that had sparked my attention was the ways in which coolness was viewed and framed. The take a look at two perspectives in particular. These perspectives on coolness are either viewed as negative or positive and that black males are deviant or misunderstood. Black males often viewed coolness as their means of masculinity, involving speech, style, and physical and emotional posture. The coolness that black males strive for and use are often and indicator of poor academic outcomes and distances in forming intimate relationships. Also, black males felt that the level of their coolness correlated to their masculinity literacy practices. They raised a question that I had never thought of before prior to reading this article. The questions was, how might we view coolness as a way of representing other things, such as everyday values and viewpoints of black males in particular?

            The participants of this study were seven young men in the MBK program. They were particularly selected because they stood out to the scholars more so that the other young males. They stood out because they considered themselves and were considered by their peer sot be cool. The criteria was based on three factors, including their reputations among peers as cool, their perceptions of themselves as cool, and their willingness to participate in the study. The ages of the participants ranged from eleven to fourteen. The data sources they looked at were video records (10- 3 hours per recording), field notes (10-172 total pages), interview transcripts (300 pages), and site artifacts (317). 

            Their findings describe how race, gender, and pop culture marked the group’s use of language and style and reveal how coolness, as a pop-cultural artifact of black manhood contributed to the literacy practices of the young men and to the construction of their symbolic selves. These were designed to help contribute to building a theory of black masculine literacies. (Jackson & Kirkland, 2009). The findings were based on the themes and patterns that emerged in the data collected. These patterns relate to the cool kids’ use of symbols illustrate how they constructed coolness and identity, which can traced beyond coolness through their patterns of communication and talk. The social constructs they used, or the use of language by the cool kids, functioned to demonstrate to others how “cool” they really were. The scholars found that the literacy practices that “the cool kids” used were unique and familiar to them. The literacies that helped to construct the young men as cool were about style, and this was often shown by the writing on their shoes. The cool kids had their own language, which became an interior anchor that allowed them to straddle the scholastic margins of school and the social parameters of peers. (285). The cool kids’ language was a pragmatic resource for participation in valued cultural contexts. For example, the language of the cool kids, cool talk, operated as a means of linking the young men to pop culture. To them, this was seen as the essence of cool. Cool talk played on language in culturally specific ways. Words like “dog,” were frequently used among the cool kids as terms of affection. 

            This article was very informative and also demonstrated the findings through the young men’s artwork. Some of the artwork that was expressed was thoughts on African American language from two perspectives, examples of hip-hop cultural influences on cool talk, example of hip-hop apparel, and an example of sports apparel. Young black men practice literacy through a lens that they find to be cool even when others do not understand or see from their perspective. 

In this blog post, I focus on a cross-disciplinary reading by Carol D. Lee, The Multi-Dimensional Demands of Reading in the Disciplines. I found this article to be interesting because it argues that there are a number of complexities for teachers and students when reading through the various disciplines. She puts the emphasis of difficulty more so on the teachers, rather than the students. She supports this argument by going through the role of culture in learning and reading, the social and emotional dimensions of learning, the complexities of close reading in the disciplines, and a model that outs each of these components together. I will argue and agree with Lee’s argument that there are complexities on reading comprehension when there is an explicit focus on reading in the disciplines.

            In The Multi-Dimensional Demands of Reading in the Disciplines, Lee presents and supports her argument through a series of topics. Lee believes that there is a need for students to be learning to read closely and critically with disciplinary texts. She supports this argument by giving us numerous reasons and points. She believes that schools offer abilities for students to learn skills that they are not likely to learn in their everyday lives, including how to prepare for the participation in becoming an adult in the workplace. Lee gives us four dimensions to use when learning to read difficult texts across the numerous disciplines. These dimensions are laid out into separate sections throughout her article.

 The first is the role of culture in learning and reading. Culture plays a significant role in a student’s learning. “People embody multiple identities associated with their participation in cultural practices associated with their historic memberships in ethnic groups, nationalities, and family groups…” (Lee, 2014). Culture plays a key role in learning to engage in the close reading of disciplinary texts in school for students. This is due to the idea that students are always bringing in prior knowledge when they are reading, whether they are in Kindergarten learning to decode texts, or in high school trying to grapple with texts in science, math, social studies, etc. This prior knowledge is taken from the reader’s life experiences, and this knowledge is essential when the reader is trying to find the relevancy of the text. 

The next dimension is the social and emotional aspect of learning. Most of the efforts that the U.S. uses to enhance literacy learning in school is the focus on the cognitive demands of reading and writing. The problem is that schools rarely put emphasis on the social and emotional demands of this cognitive work for young students. Emotional demands include the willingness to grapple with the uncertainty that they may feel when reading, trying to grapple through their short and long term goals with the demands of such difficult texts, and working towards completing the text when the reading gets to be too hard. This emotional demands can even be further focused on when the students are facing challenges that may be outside of school. When students are reading these difficult texts from across the different disciplines, these emotional demands arise causing students to feel a sense of hopelessness when they read, adding another complexity to it. Reading is not only just an emotional experience, but it is a social experience as well. Many adults and older students are able to relate to many texts, and even if they are reading alone, they don’t even feel that they are because they are still in dialogue with the author and with the ideas presented in the book. Younger students also do not feel alone when they are reading, but this is because they are constantly interacting with their classmates and teacher, discussing the material that’s being covered. The problem with this is that students often times leave out their own perceptions of a book due to a differing opinion or perspective that one of their peers or teachers may have. This ends up influencing their efforts and engagement with the text. Learning to read is a social and emotional effort that is intertwined with the prior knowledge that a student has and in their cultural practices with settings. 

The third dimension of Lee’s argument covers the demands of close reading across the disciplines. Reading comprehension is a difficult process. As students are reading, they are making predictions and inferences about the text they are reading. In these efforts, we are working towards understanding the text by monitoring comprehension. Students are using their prior knowledge and taking what they already know to link it to the new information they are receiving from the text. Students are ultimately engaging with what the author is trying to convey to the reader. These strategies or toll kit for reading, as Lee refers to it, are geared towards each of the disciplines. This encourages students to use the prior knowledge that they have in each. These strategies also foster and help students to reach their goals for reading and the demands that the text entails. 

Lee concludes with emphasis on the students. She discusses the perceptions that students have of themselves as readers and how they are active participants in the classroom. While also trying to read difficult and complex texts, students are also wrestling with their identity and body challenges and changes and their social interactions expanding with their peers and teachers within the classroom. It is essential for teachers to bring in students’ cultural background to help foster their prior knowledge, and for teachers to put into perspective the social and emotional demands of student in grades K-12. 

After reading Lee’s text, I have come to agree with the four dimensions she has come up with when students are reading and the important aspects to take into considering regards the students’ prior experiences. Students not only have the demand of a difficult text to try to comprehend, but they also have to take into consideration their cultural demands and social and emotional demands. 

            In this blog post, I will be discussing what I noticed  about the video from Reading Rockets, List-Group-Label, and the video from TEDD, True/False Equation, and how they relate to disciplinary literacy/content area reading. I will also be discussing my argument, that writing and reading require differentiated knowledge in various subjects towards the article by Peter Smagorinsky, Disciplinary Literacy in English Language Arts. 

            The first video from Reading Rockets was called List-Group-Label. This is a vocabulary and comprehension strategy that helps develop categorization sills, build background knowledge, activate critical thinking, and grow vocabulary. This video give you an in action scenario of this strategy being taught in a second grade classroom. The strategy is a three step process. The first step is to brainstorm a list of related words. The second is to group the words into subcategories, and the last is to label the groupings with descriptive titles. In order to begin the strategy, you must select a concept that you can explore. The concept that this teacher selects is built around the idea of gardening, being that they had just read a book called, The Gardener. Right off the bat, this video relates to the concepts of disciplinary literacy and what we are discussing in content area reading. Students are being taught about the discipline, gardening. For the class and the strategy they are discussing, they are looking at it through a gardeners perspective, taking a look at the different vocabulary terms used when gardening and the process of gardening. The teacher is using concepts from disciplinary literacy because she is having her students brainstorm a list of words they think of when they think about gardening. Once the students have finished brainstorming gardening words, they group them. The students place the words that are related to one another together and label each of the groupings with descriptive titles. These titles should be based on their reasoning for why they decided to group those specific words together.  I really liked this strategy because I believe that it helps students to recall information and vocabulary words from specific books they had read or topics that they are covering in class. For instance, in this video, the class is inadvertently being gardeners. They are recalling terms that were in a book that had read that follows along the lines of gardening and being a gardener. They are placing vocabulary terms that they recall from a story into categories. Splitting into categories, I believe, helps students to recall information when they are able to relate it to or tie it in to another word or topic. I could definitely see myself, in the future, using this strategy, while also tying in the concepts of disciplinary literacy. 

            The next video, True/False Equation, is from Teacher Education by Design, TEDD. In the activity shown in the video, the teacher poses an equation with two expressions and asks the students to decide whether the equation is true or false. The teacher is orchestrating the conversation by engaging students in reasoning about properties of numbers and operations. The goals of this activity are rational thinking and developing justification for conjectures, rather than computation. This is an activity that was used in a fourth grade classroom. The teacher begins by showing her students an equation and reminding them that whichever an answer they do decide on, they must have good reasoning skills to back it up. The teacher is using math equations and coming up with word problems to use on the numbers she provides. She also has students using reasoning skills throughout each word problem. She has her students converse with their partners and peers before deciding on an answer. After, she asks students to raise their hands if they believe it is true, and the same for false. Next, she asks for one student to defend their reasoning and the answer that they believe it is. This video definitely gets students minds working to not only formulate an answer, but to also come up with a reasoning to defend why they believe it is the answer that they chose. This lesson ultimately revolves around a math lesson. Students are being mathematicians throughout this activity. They are deciding if the answer is true or false, then they are defending their answer by using their reasoning skills. I also liked this video because the teacher never once downgrades a students’ ideas or answers, she only asks then to defend their answer by proving why they believe the answer is correct. 

            The final topic I am going to cover in my blog post is the article I had read for this week, Disciplinary Literacy in English Language Arts. I had picked this article because I thought it would be interesting to see disciplinary literacy being used in the subject that is my concentration and something that I will someday be teaching. The article discusses the complexities of learning the literacy practices and conventions in the discipline of English Language Arts. These practices follow around the topics of writing/composition, reading/literature, and language/grammar. The overall goal of the article is to urge teacher to prepare students for literacy development so they engage the world outside the classroom through language and related modes of communication in ways that enable them to understand others and to express their own views with fidelity to their intentions and clarity to their listeners and readers.(Smagorinsky, 2015). The author in this article is a high school English teacher. One thing that I really liked about this article was how the author opens up on a scenario about how a colleague of his once complained about their students not being to format in their history reports, and ultimately putting the blame on English  not teaching students how to write. I feel like this is often a misconception that most teachers in other subject areas have on English teachers. They believe that English teachers teach their students how to write in all other subjects, therefore, allowing other subject area teachers to be relieved of these duties. Most teachers of other subjects believe that writing id the same in English, Math, History, and so on, but really they aren’t. Writing requires differentiated knowledge in various subjects. That is how my argument came to be as I was reading this article. Teaching kids how to write narratives, is quite different than teaching kids how to write an argumentative paper. A writer of an argument needs to make sufficient claims carefully, while a write of a narrative needs not one claim because storytelling rarely requires one. This is the same in context to writing a science report requiring different knowledge than writing a report on Albert Einstein. If we can understand that as future teachers, then this will help “our students to have more practical writing knowledge than at least one district curriculum director out there” (Smagorinsky, 2015). There are some general aspects that students should know, including how to begin and end a sentence. He then makes an argument that reading requires different knowledge as well. He uses a great example that you need different knowledge when you are reading a poem, you need quite different knowledge than when you are reading instructions on how to a cabinet or toy. This article was very interesting to me because it pointed out the various misconceptions that even teachers make for the role of the English Language arts teacher. Also, that many of us and other teachers believe that reading and writing are the same in all subjects, when, after reading this article, clearly gives you the reasons to believe otherwise. I believe and can stand by each of these arguments that Smagorinsky makes throughout his article. 

In my blog post, I focus on the first article, Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School? by Shanahan and Shanahan. I argue that Disciplinary Literacy has a place in Elementary School. The Common Core Standards have only established disciplinary reading goals in grades 6-12, but what about Elementary School? Why are they being left out when these teachers play an important role for students in their development and readiness for college and their careers? I argue the importance of disciplinary literacy and how it plays a significant role in elementary schools. 

            In the article, it provides two different arguments, one that is for disciplinary literacy in elementary school and one that is against. Both are strong arguments that give valid information and reasoning on and for their standpoint. I will begin discussing the argument that is for taking a disciplinary approach to teaching reading at the elementary levels. Then, I will discuss the argument that is against. After both arguments are discussed, I will then provide my standpoint and the argument that I agree with more. 

            To begin, I am going to go over what Disciplinary Literacy is to give background information and a base on what the article is revolved around. “Disciplinary literacy refers to the idea that we should teach the specialized ways of reading, understanding, and thinking used in each academic discipline…” ( Shanahan & Shanahan, 2014). This topic is crucial in education because students are unable to use their general reading skills in every discipline; students should be taught the ways in which reading each discipline differ from one another. In order for student to be successful in their further education, they need to be taught that a “one-size-fits-all” type of reading will not help them to understand the material they are being taught and the readings in each of the disciplines. 

            What can elementary teachers and schools do to help prepare their students for college and career readiness, all while using disciplinary literacy? Informational texts help to do so, especially according to the CCSS. They say that in elementary school, students are mainly reading stories, rather than informational texts. The CCSS displays that this is a shift that occurs when students get to middle school, however, this isn’t the case. Elementary schools actually do read informational texts, through an array of text types, including biography, letter, speech, and scientific explanation. They have the ability to look at different pictures throughout the informational texts they read, including maps and looking at their keys, and biographies that may include a series of pictures in a timeline. With that being said, one thing that a teacher can do is to teach students to rea informational texts, and look at the differences among those and other literature, such as stories, that they read. Elementary school teachers can also help student get prepared and comfortable with disciplinary literacy reading by having their students read numerous texts that are followed around the same topic. This would allow and help students to see the similarities and differences on the specific ideas that are brought up in each text. Finally, elementary school teachers can teach vocabulary not only through stories and literature, but also through a number of science, social studies, and mathematics texts. It is important for students to be able to understand how and why words are used in various disciplines because they shouldn’t just be learning the meaning of the words. This will help students to understand the specialized nature of discipline-specific words. 

            The other side of the argument believes that it is unimportant for elementary school students to be introduced to disciplinary literacy. Their reasoning just doesn’t seem very strong at this point. They believe that there isn’t much of a reason to promote these ideas early on in a child’s life. Even though the cognitive levels are there, it would almost seem to be a waste for young children. If the cognitive level is there, then how could it possibly be a waste if it is only going to better prepare students for not only middle and high school, but for college and a career that they will obtain one day? The argument against disciplinary literacy in the younger grades also added that texts that they read at these grade levels don’t quite offer the opportunity for engaging in this type of thinking. 

            After reading about the two sides of the argument, there was one clear and obvious side for myself to choose. I do believe that disciplinary literacy has a place in elementary school. Young children are much more capable than I think we all typically believe. They have the abilities to see two different ways that people may explain a place or event due to the different perspectives that people have, and they the ability to make observations about a picture or artifact from the past or present. I believe that it is never too early to begin taking a disciplinary approach to teaching reading at the elementary levels. It ultimately serves to be more of a benefit to younger students rather than a deficit because it prepares them for their future. 

     

          

            

           

          

In this blog post, I will be discussing what disciplinary literacy looks like in a history and physics lesson in two different classrooms, taught by two different teachers. I will be looking at how these two teachers use Moje’s 4-Es from his heuristic model for disciplinary literacy teaching and how it serves to be a guide for disciplinary literacy would look like and include. 

            Many researchers believe that Disciplinary Literacy is becoming, if not already is, a necessity for students because it advances goals for college readiness and social justice. The first article demonstrates and discusses what disciplinary literacy teaching should look like and an illustration for what it would look like from a history and physics classroom. In both of these lessons, Mr. Coupland and Mr. Franchi’s teaching provide an example of Moje’s 4-Es. These 4-Es represent the four overlapping categories of instructional practice. The first is engaging students in work that aligns with problem-and text-based work of the disciplines. The next is eliciting and engineering students’ learning opportunities so they can complete classroom tasks successfully. The third E is examining words, language , and representations. The final one if evaluating words and ways with words. These 4-Es are Moje’s heuristic for disciplinary literacy teaching, and it serves to be a guide for what disciplinary literacy teaching must include. The article brings up numerous questions that come up in realm of disciplinary literacy. Some of which being what does it look like and how do I know that I am not already doing it? (Coupland, Franchi, Maher, Moje, & Rainey, page 371). 

 The article first looks at how disciplinary literacy was seen in a History lesson by Mr. Franchi. He had used the complex connections of engaging, engineering, examining, and evaluating to advance his students’ opportunities for historical literacy learning, practices and concepts. He began with engaging by providing a question at the center of his lesson that encouraged extended work with primary source documents that offered differing points of view on various historical figures. The majority of the given class time was focused around students engaging in reasoning and reading within history and the historical figures that they were presented with. The next connection came with engineering. Mr. Franchi examined his students’ work carefully because of the difficulty of the texts provided and learning goals of the lesson. “His construction of the pursuable question as a debate among historical figures supported students’ disciplinary literacy learning because it both required students to apply historical empathy and historical perspective and helped them build these skills in the process.” ( page 374). Naming a set of literacy practices in history, was another way that Mr. Franchi had engineered students’ disciplinary literacy learning throughout this particular lesson. He had framed these practices as approaches that his students could use flexibly and to analyze texts. The next complex aspect that was incorporated to show where disciplinary literacy was evident in the lesson was by examining words and language. Mr. Franchi had used graphic organizers to support how students had examined the language of the primary sources individually to look at the point of view that each historical figure could have held. With this in mind, students would attend to the meanings of words and would look at how the numerous historical figures had engaged and communicated the word. Words such as freedom were used predominantly throughout the history texts and by historical figures. Finally, students had used evaluating in context with the history practices and texts that they had read. 

Next, the article took a look at a physics lesson and how disciplinary literacy was found throughout the lesson. Mr. Coupland’s physics lesson was focused around projectile motion. The students began the lesson by observing their teacher throw a ball to one of their classmates and recording what happened. At first students were offering explanations, rather than observations. Mr. Coupland provided his students with questions about the relationship between position and time for a ball that is in projectile motion. To help students come to an answer, Mr. Coupland provided his students with a software program that allowed them to analyze a video of a ball in motion. For the remainder of the lesson, students worked on making theoretical arguments based on physical laws that they had been developing knowledge on, they had conducted experiments in small groups, and they had worked with their group and discussed how they would present their findings. Mr. Coupland utilized Moje’s 4-Es throughout his lesson. He began with engaging. Students were engaged when constructing, investigating, and communicating the questions the Mr. Coupland had offered on physics. Students also developed their own questions to collect, record, and analyze their data in order to present their findings. Next came eliciting and engineering. Mr. Coupland used modeling to scaffold students learning in the lens of disciplinary inquiry. He engineered students’ learning by requiring them to name disciplinary literacy practices, assumptions, and conventions in physics. Mr. Coupland also aided students to work together to come up with ways in which they would present their findings to their classmates. Examining words and language came about when Mr. Coupland supported his students to examine words and ways in physics. A good example of this was his emphasis on the purpose and meaning of scientific observation. Finally, was evaluating ways with words. Mr. Coupland demonstrated the how, when, and why to use particular ways with words across the physics domain. This was seen when he was describing the differences between an explanation and an observation and between assumptions that underlie the claims of different academic communities. 

Both of these lessons utilized Moje’s heuristic model for disciplinary literacy teaching. The two teachers engaged their students in disciplinary work by framing their lessons with questions that were perusable, recognizably disciplinary, open to students’ construction of meaning, and guided enough to provide a structure for students to learn disciplinary practice. They showed that it was possible to provide disciplinary literacy teaching for all groups of students in ways that utilize their students’ interests, needs, and skills. (Coupland, Franchi, Maher, Moje, & Rainey, page 377) These lessons offer students the opportunities needed in order for college readiness and engaged citizenship.

For this blog post, I will be discussing the many ideas I had encountered in the two readings for this week. The two readings focus primarily on a specific term, disciplinary literacy. The first reading was on the first chapter of Wolsey and Lapp, What is Disciplinary Literacy?.This reading discusses the differences between disciplinary literacy and content area literacy. The second reading, Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change, was written by Moje in 2008.

            Wolsey and Lapp’s reading begins by discussing the differences between content area literacy and disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is what we teach, rather than how we teach. Content are literacy is the ability to use reading and writing to learn about specific topics in a single discipline. It goes over a number of terms in depth, including content, content area,  and disciplinary literacy. It goes over the differences in each as well. They define content as what the words we read are really about, and how every text we read is about something, Content area refers to the school subjects. Having these school subjects is what keeps every school moving forward. They refereed to content area as the “teacher lounge talk”. Disciplinary literacy is those that are specialized to a specific subject area. This term is one that grows as the students’ progress through each grade level. It also lays out the ways for a teacher to be an effective communicator of information in more than one discipline, but still having the ability to offer students the help to build their communication and literacy skills in each of the disciplines. One thing I found to be relatable in this reading was when they discussed how a teacher who teaches a specific subject area is ultimately the best teacher of the literacies needed in order to understand the specific subject that they do teach. Not every teacher is a master of each discipline. They become a master of the specific discipline that they teach because they expand it through books and articles they read and write, the scores they compose, the inventions they create, and the problems that they solve. (Wolsey and Lapp, pg. 3 and 4). This is exactly how it is for students. It is difficult got them to be masters in all disciplines that they learn in school, just like a teacher. This is one of the messages that they work towards conveying in this reading. 

            In Moje’s text, she focuses on the term disciplinary literacy as well. She supports the idea of disciplinary literacy programs, rather than enabling subject area teachers to apply literacy teaching practices and strategies. (Moje, 96). Moje also remarks on the idea that in order for a young person to be an active member in the society that we live in today, disciplinary literacy is essential. Moje followed along the idea that Wolsey and Lapp had that it is essentially difficult for one person to master every discipline, whether they are a teacher or a student. It is almost impossible for one to teach the practices of a domain without having refined knowledge of that domain. This is the same for a student trying to read an article about a specific domain without having little knowledge about that domain first. 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.