English Language arts may be a difficult subject for some students to become a master in.  Students may have a hard time with reading, falling behind their peers who have more fluent skills.  Students may lack comprehension skills when asked questions pertaining to what they have read such as character analysis, plot, theme, narration voice, etc.  Students may also struggle with writing concepts or be misunderstood based on language they used to convey their meaning.  Students will need help learning sentence structure, how to write a coherent piece of work and how to provide reasoning to what they are writing about.  However, even with these difficulties that may arise in students as they move through school and continue to be given tougher material, reading is something that you use daily and need to have background information about when enhancing skills.  You also write more than it may seem, whether it is on a piece of paper, a laptop/computer, a text message, social media post, etc.  ELA disciplines are all around us every day, so students should begin growing their understanding and skills in order to help them become more fluent.

ELA tends to be a subject that is up for interpretation based on the teacher and how they would like students to complete work.  However, according to Peter Smagorinsky in his article Disciplinary Literacy in English Language Arts, “there is some general knowledge that students should know, such as how to begin and end sentences that make sense to other people and how those sentences function within the context of larger textual constructions” (paragraph 15).  Some teachers are looking for students to be able to start and end sentences in a different way than others, but students should have the background knowledge necessary to perform the given tasks depending on what is expected of them.  They should know the pieces needed to write a well-formed sentence and are able to make sense of the meaning of what they are writing/readings to ensure that others will get the message that they are trying to relay.  Inquiry can come be used to ask students how they should set up sentences and teach how to have sentences flow together.  Students will be encouraged to use their own language in their pieces of writing, while using the knowledge they gain about writing rules that should be followed.  Teachers should be able to see student growth in writing as they learn how to put sentences together, write a thesis statement and justify what they are writing/arguing.  Students may also use words that do not seem to fit in the context to you as a teacher but may seem correct to the student.  Depending on where your students come from and their family background, they may perceive words differently than we do as a teacher.  If we are unsure of what a student means by a word that seems out of place, it will be a good opportunity to have them reason why they wrote it the way they did.  Inquiry allows students to discuss their thinking process behind their work as well as providing them with opportunities to show their language and understanding of what is being asked of them to do. 

We have been working all semester to determine the definition of inquiry and how it is used within disciplinary literacy.  We as teachers know that asking our students questions is important to ensure they are learning and understanding what is happening within the content.  But what is kidwatching and responsive teaching?  What do the three ideas have in common with one another?  How do they relate to disciplinary literacy?

Heidi Mills with Tim O’Keefe argue, “Inquiry is not a strategy employed in a particular subject area or at a specific time of day. Rather, it is a stance we take toward learning and learners; the sign systems, such as language, mathematics, art, and music; and the knowledge domains in the sciences and social sciences,” within their article Inquiry into Assessment Strategies: From Kidwatching to Responsive Teaching (page 3).  Teachers engage in inquiry-based learning with students daily, as well as self-inquiry, providing themselves with ample time to reflect on their own teaching.  They need to ensure that students are receiving information in a way that is meeting their individual needs and doing so in a manner that follows the standard guidelines provided to them.  However, some students may not be interested in some of the tasks or texts they are asked to read.  This may then lead to the students struggling to pay attention or answer questions correctly.  When this happens, teachers may consider kidwatching to find things that students are interested in learning/doing.  The text provides readers with an example of a male teacher and his strategies that states, “He gathers information that reflect his students’ strengths, needs, and interests as readers and writers. He uses his observations and interpretations to make wise choices about books he might select for literature circle conversations; books he might recommend for individuals during independent reading; and strategies he might share with individuals, small groups, and the whole class” (page 3).  Kidwatching requires you to pay attention to what your students are saying and things that they relate to outside of the classroom.  If you are able to find texts or activities that can be related to students’ personal interests, you may be able to hold their attention better in the classroom.  Students interests may not align with activities you may have already had planned.  You need to be able to modify lessons and what is being taught to ensure the success of the students.  This could also be related to responsive teaching as teachers need to obtain information about their students and teach in a way that is beneficial for them.  The text continues with an explanation of the same male teacher from earlier by stating, “As a responsive teacher, Tim creates curriculum with and for his students by devising engagements that enable him to truly know his students; that help his students know him and one another; and that help them better know themselves as readers, writers, and learners” (page7).  The more you know about your students, the easier it will become to modify lessons to fit their needs within the classroom.

Now, going back to the original question, how are all three of these ideas related?  They all allow the teacher to see what their students’ needs are, as well as ways to modify their classroom to ensure students are gaining higher level thinking.  Inquiry allows teachers to see what students are learning and understanding from the curriculum they are being taught.  Having students explain themselves and their ideas will not only help them use new information they have learned, but also help the other students in the classroom who may be struggling to understand.  Teachers will not know what kinds of questions students need to be aske without kidwatching.  They need to learn their students; what they enjoy doing, what they struggle with or are very successful with, do they like working with peers or alone, etc.  The more time teachers take to get to know their students, the better they will be able to modify their teaching to reach the needs of all students, also known as responsive teaching.  All three topics are interrelated to one another, and as a teacher, you need to perform all three in order to have an open, culturally diverse, inclusive classroom where all students can gain knowledge to the best of their ability and strengthen skills for future education.   

Mathematics is a core subject in school that all students must learn.  It involves working with numbers in hundreds of different ways.  Some easy such as 2+2, and others so difficult that only old mathematicians know how to solve them.  But math is more than just using numbers, right?  If it involves reading, understanding, background knowledge, real-world experiences, higher-order thinking, etc. how can teachers expect students to learn math right off the bat?  How can math be transformed to be more relatable to students so they want to learn it?  “Using transactional reading strategies to support sense-making and discussion in mathematics classrooms: An exploratory study,” written by Borasi, Raffaella; Siegel, Marjorie; Fonzi, Judith; Smith, and Constance F. digs into how reading can correspond to learning mathematics, and how they could possibly be linked together.

The article mentioned above makes the claim that, “In recent years, the mathematics education community has begun to converge on an image of mathematics classrooms that bears little resemblance to the technique- and transmission-oriented classrooms familiar to most students” (Using transactional reading 1998).  If classrooms do not represent the same style in which they are used to learning mathematics information, will it be more difficult for them to learn than it already was before?  Paying attention to the wording may also raise some questions, i.e. how recent are the years in which the mathematics community begun making the changes, and how exactly did they come up with the tools in which they were moving away from familiar classrooms?  The article states, “The call now is for curricula that focus on developing reasoning, communication, and problem-solving abilities (NCTM, 1989) as well as on promoting understanding of the “big ideas” within mathematics (Steen, 1990) and building realistic conceptions of mathematics as a discipline (Borasi, 1992),” providing reasoning as to why teachers began making these changes.  The text also states, “Research on students’ learning and beliefs has also led some mathematics educators to articulate a new image of mathematics classrooms as communities of practice in which students join with peers to actively explore the concepts and techniques introduced so they can personally make sense of them (e.g., Schoenfeld, 1992).”  Going off the evidence and claims this article has made about mathematics, it can easily be related back to the skills that are associated with disciplinary literacy.

Disciplinary literacy is the way in which students read different forms of text within the different subjects.  Students grow their skills throughout their educational programs in order to read all texts at a high level.  But how can mathematics text and English text possibly be connected?  The article states, “we believe that expanding the kinds of texts read in mathematics classrooms beyond textbooks and word problems is important in order to expose mathematics students to issues that are becoming more significant as the goals for school mathematics are redefined”.  Moving away from just the standard readings that involve mathematics may enhance students reading skills when it comes to harder problems or other class subjects.  In the video that we watched in for a previous class, we see a math teacher having students read true or false questions allowed and then explaining them.  This technique is useful for students to hear themselves reading the problem, as well as working through their explanations.  Students are able to work with numbers in all different ways, but learning multiple ways to discuss them is when their learning can really take flight. 

Since I’ve been in school, I can always remember teachers asking “Why” of “How do you know” after many answers myself or my peers would give to questions they had asked.  Sometimes it posed a difficulty to students who knew the right answer but did not know how to explain it.  Other times, students would have a unique way of thinking about a question, giving a new insight of information that other students may not have thought about before.

Questioning is a way that teachers check for understanding, and for students to be able to push their thinking further.  Some students may not understand the text until their peers begin discussing it in class.  Some skills the students can use when this happens is to look for word recognition and begin looking for groups of similar words to put together.  We see this technique of grouping done in the first video from Reading Rockets.  She provides students with a topic, who then have the task of coming up with words that they associate with said topic.  Next, students grouped those words together in a fashion that made sense to them and could help them form a deeper meaning for the topic.  I find this to be very helpful in the classroom, especially when disciplinary literacy become more prominent within the student’s education.  This task can be used throughout all school subjects, which is useful for students because it will become easier the more they practice it.  However, the teacher in this video said, “there are no right or wrong answers as long as you can give reasoning,” and this can become a little problematic in certain situations.  Students should always be encouraged to feel safe and valued when they share their opinions and explanations within the classroom.  As teachers, it is one of our main jobs to ensure that students ideas and supported, and there is an open-door policy.  For this activity, it is okay that students may view the grouping of words to mean different things, but in some situations, there should be a deeper meaning behind the groupings than just an opinion.  Many words are used within all subject areas, but mean different things depending on the context in which it is used.  Being able to decode the meaning of words within the different content areas, or disciplinary literacy, will be beneficial for students and their understanding.

Both videos include a lot of student discussion.  Many times the teachers allow students to discuss with each other and give their explanations about their understanding.  For example, in the second video, the teacher gave the students a simple true or false problem, but had the student discuss why they thought the way they did about it.  True and false questions are closed-ended, not usually allowing students the opportunity to discuss and share their arguments.  In this video, the teacher changed the closed-ended questions into open-ended by having the students discuss what they believed the answer was, and why or how they figured it out.  This proved to be a Segway into meaningful class discussions, and all students had the chance to participate.

Both videos seem to have students that are the younger side, possibly upper elementary or middle school students.  Our previous blog post was based around should elementary students begin learning disciplinary literacy at an early age or later in their education.  Even though both teachers used aspects of disciplinary literacy (asking questions, discussions, content specific to the subject, reasoning, etc.), they may have struggled to find ways to teach students in this manner.  The article Disciplinary Literacy in English Language Arts: Exploring the Social and Problem‐Based Nature of Literary Reading and Reasoning written by Emily C. Rainey states, “Although English language arts (ELA) is a central academic domain in K–12 schooling, the application of disciplinary literacy theory to ELA is relatively underdeveloped, leaving policymakers, teachers, and teacher educators without clear ways of understanding and applying the theory to their work for the benefit of young people” (Moje, 2007).  One of the first things children learn to do is talk, which then turns into reading as they grow.  As a middle level major with a concentration in ELA, it is a little frustrating that teaching disciplinary literacy in English is not on a front burner or education.  Every subject is just as important as the others but learning how to read happens during an English class, and it is difficult on students who cannot master this skill.

Asking questions and finding words that are related to one another are both major aspects of disciplinary literacy.  As I have stated in my previous blogs, if students can find similarities between subjects they are learning, they may have an easier time transitioning from one to the next and retaining the information.  Asking questions does not only help students explain their thinking and find a deeper understanding of material, but also helps teachers see where students are standing in their learning.  Both teachers in the videos found a great way to get their students discussing, and having disciplinary literacy take place without them even knowing.            

They preach to students in elementary school that all the skills and knowledge they learn will come in handy in middle school.  They preach the same thing to you when you are in middle school about high school and high school about college.  However, if all the things you learn in elementary school will set you up for a lot of your future learning, should disciplinary literacy be one of those skills? 

Thinking back to elementary school, I can remember learning within the different subjects all by the same teacher.  We learned science, history, English, and math by her, only having a quick break between each before having to settle back into the classroom to take on new content.  At the same time, I could have been learning disciplinary literacy without even knowing it.  This could be a common feeling of younger students, because they are being introduced to many new concepts, and typically do what the teacher asks them to do.  The article Does Disciplinary Literacy have a place in Elementary school? written by Cynthia Shanahan and Timothy Shanahan describes how disciplinary literacy can be interpreted within elementary schools.  The text states, “That insight is the crux of disciplinary literacy: We should teach students the way reading in various fields differs rather than only expecting students to apply the same general lens across everything they read” (637).  If students only learn how to read in one way, they will not be able to be successful in decoding all kinds of texts within all subject areas.  The text also states, “Elementary teachers can do quite a lot to prepare their students for disciplinary literacy…ensuring that students read and understand the often nuanced differences among a wide range of text types, helping students make sense of information and ideas across multiple texts, and teaching vocabulary in every subject area in a way that helps students understand the specialized nature of discipline-specific words” (638-639).  Teachers in elementary schools can provide students with skills that will allow them to become successful readers within the disciplinaries, as well as know how to approach them in different ways.

Disciplinary Literacy and Inquiry: Teaching for Deeper Content Learning, written by Hiller A. Spires, Shea N. Kerkhoff, and Abbey C.K. Graham break disciplinary literacy into parts that have proven helpful with students and their understanding of content.  As I have mention in one of my previous blog posts, inquiry is an important aspect of pushing students’ knowledge further.  If students are not questioned about what they are reading, it cannot be ensured that students are understanding what is expected of them.  The text states, “Asking a question that piques curiosity and compels students to see an answer is key to high-quality inquiry” (153).  These questions may not interest students if they do not see the relevance that it has to them.  The text goes on to state, “Questions should be relevant to students’ lives and of social importance, which often can be the most gripping aspect of inquiry learning…questions should be student generated but also encourage teachers to facilitate the design process so the questions are high quality” (153).  Students can be provided with skills that can be used within all the disciplines, such as inquiry, to interpret information within the different subjects.  Questioning can be done within elementary schools, as it digs deeper into what students are learning, and is an important skill for students to do while they read for all content areas.

The last article, Reading a situated language: A sociocognitive perspective, written by James Paul Gee goes into detail about how language is not just how people speak, but how they interact with the things around them.  The text states, “A discourse integrates ways of talking, listening, writing, reading, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and feeling (and using various objects, symbols, images, tools, and technologies) in the service of enacting meaningful socially situated identifies and activities” (719).  Students need to be taught that not all texts will sound the same or speak the same way as they do.  Language is a way that people express themselves and everyone comes from a different background.  This, in turn, may cause difficulty for students while they read and try to understand what is going on.  This also presents itself as true when you begin to think about the different subjects.  Science textbooks have a different language than English novels do, yet students still have to interpret the meaning behind each.  This can begin to be introduced during elementary school because students will begin to notice how people are different and come from different backgrounds, but how everyone is included within the classroom.  If students come to the realization that texts are different, they will be able to read them in a way that is more understandable for them.

The line that stood out to me most within the readings for this week was from Shanahan and Shanahan stating, “It is never too early” (639) in regard to teaching disciplinary literacy in elementary schools.  The earlier you begin to give students skills that will help enhance reading and understanding that you cannot read all texts the same, the better they will become at it as they progress through schooling.       

Science content is different than history and history is different than English.  All three of those subjects are different than math content.  But how can they be taught in similar ways?  Every subject area within schools requires students to read texts or problems in ways that are crucial to understanding that specific content.  For example, students will read history texts differently than they will read word problems in a math class, but will have skills to understand or decode both texts.

One main tool that is similar across all subjects is inquiry.  The more that students ask questions and search within the discipline to find answers, the more in-depth knowledge they will obtain. The article, But What Does it Look Like?  Illustrations of Disciplinary Literacy Teaching in Two Content Areas, written by Emily C. Rainey, Bridget L. Maher, David Coupland, Rod Franchi, and Elizabeth Birr Moje, dives into the effects of inquiry on students and their understanding.  The text states, “All disciplinarians engage in cycles of inquiry that enable knowledge production; inquiry includes articulating questions or problems for pursuit, investigating those questions using discipline-specific methods, communicating results of investigations to specific audiences, and evaluating one’s own claims and those of others” (Moje, 2015, p.371).  Note that the quotes does not say that only certain subjects use inquiry while learning.  This is because questioning is important for all subjects in order to further the knowledge of students and to help them think on a deeper level.  The article, Disciplinary Literacy Through the Lens of the Next Generation Science Standards, written by Ana Houseal, Victoria Gillis, Mark Helmsing, and Linda Hutchison touches base on cross-cutting concepts within the curriculum.  The text gives examples of how science, English language arts, mathematics, and social studies learn different content knowledge, but students can use skills such as finding patterns to connect what they are learning to previous knowledge or even knowledge from another subject (383-384).  If students spend 50 minutes in each content area course, and have a 10 minute transition period to completely change their thinking process to accommodate for the next subject area, you could possibly lose a few students along the way.  If subject areas work together to allow students to use the same skills or mindsets in order to find information in each discipline, students could understand information on a higher level, and be willing to dig deeper into the inquiry questions that are asked of them.

Students minds are challenged when asked inquiry questions in which they need to pursue the answer.  If students have the ability to answer these questions using similar skills in all content area subjects, students may have a deeper understanding of what is being taught.  I personally believe that when content can be related to each other in some way, it becomes more meaningful for students as they can see where it is used more than once.  It is also important to keep in mind that students learn in different ways, so having the ability to use certain skills would be beneficial to them.  The previous text also states, “Literacy professionals working with content area teachers would be well advised to approach teachers through their disciplinary standards and focus on the habits of practice and the habits of mind” (384).  Teachers and students can work together to figure out content information and relate it to knowledge obtained through other disciplines.      

People read things everyday. From restaurant menus to subtitles of a movie and everything else they may encounter that has words. One of the first things children do in school is learn to read. They begin learning letter sounds and the meanings of words. While students are learning how to do these things, they may not realize that it will be used in all aspects of their education down the road.

Students learn different subject material such as mathematics, science, social studies and so on. They need to have the ability to read texts in the different content area subjects in order to obtain information. Disciplinary literacy is the way students read and understand information within readings/texts from the different subject areas. As stated in “What is disciplinary literacy?” written by Wolsey & Lapp, “Disciplinary thinking and the associated literacies may start and be fostered quite early in a child’s life. At the same time, the basic literacy skills (alphabetic principle, letter-sound correspondences, sight words, and so on) are of particular importance early in life” (8). It seems as though the earlier that students learn these important skills, the better they will become at reading within each subject. The article also states, “Experts and students working in the disciplines often use language and other symbol systems in ways that are unique to that discipline…experts and students know how to produce knowledge and communicate that knowledge in ways that are distinctive to that discipline” (10). This is a good example of showing how concepts that are used to understand reading are also important to learn content knowledge.

The article “Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change” written by Elizabeth Moje, digs deeper into how literacy effects the understanding within subject areas. The text states, “Young people do not need to go to school to learn what they already know; content literacy instruction can help youth gain access to the accepted knowledge of the disciplines, thereby allowing them to also critique and change that knowledge” (97). Students are provided with tools that help with reading and decoding, which also helps with breaking down an understanding of texts. The article goes on to state, “Disciplinary literacy then becomes a matter of teaching students how the disciplines are different from one another, how acts of inquiry produce knowledge and multiple representational forms (such as texts written in particular ways or with different symbolic systems or semiotic tools), as well as how those disciplinary differences are socially constructed” (103). By having the ability to read disciplinary texts and form and understanding of the information, students will gain valuable knowledge. They will be able to learn new information and retain it rather than just memorize and forget. They will be able to think critically and question information based on their own beliefs.

Both of the articles have mentioned that students view texts differently based on the context they are in. Students understand words based on the way they were taught them. “What is disciplinary literacy?” states, “The same word can be used in different ways depending on who speaks or writes the word and what the context is for its use” (6). This idea was also present in the article we read by Gee. Gee argued that students will understand things they learn differently than their peers due to the fact that they all learned how to read and interpret understanding differently. Students will have differing opinions that may be helpful in discussions and pushing students to further their knowledge. Disciplinary literacy is used all throughout learning and begins to be incorporated when students obtain the skill of reading more fluently. Content area knowledge and disciplinary information play hand and hand in helping students further their knowledge and grow throughout schooling.

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