Disciplinary Literacy Statement

A statement that resonates with me as I think about content vs disciplinary reading is that in the early elementary years of formal education, children are learning to read whereas they are reading to learn during their secondary education.  Without having been introduced to the concept of disciplinary reading before, I am very interested to learn how disciplinary reading, as it relates to science teaching, can focus our students to begin to think and learn as scientists.

Content area literacy uses reading and writing to teach the information contained within the subject. The general reading strategies learned early on in younger grades are utilized during content area literacy. These tools include asking questions, setting goals, previewing texts, making and verifying predictions, and activating prior knowledge. It is said that these strategies can be applied across all content areas. Classrooms that utilize discipline related texts have a unique set of strategies and practices to develop the literacy skills of the students. The outcome of strong literacy skills within a discipline is both an understanding of the disciplinary content and the disciplinary habits of mind. It builds an understanding of how knowledge is produced in the discipline.  

There is a challenge facing science teachers and disciplinary literacy in the classroom. The most meaningful science learning happens in a hands-on inquiry based classroom. How can science teachers blend the two and teach our students the critical thinking skills necessary to learn and do science?

The answer is very exciting for me as a secondary science teacher. The very nature of science and thinking as a scientist is inquiry based. A question is posed and through experimental verification, the question is examined and analyzed. Even so, prior to laboratory investigations, scientists use texts recording previous findings as a basis to generate new research. Therefore, science literacy instruction can engage students by making sense of scientific texts. If the engagement is well supported, this also serves as a form of learning through scientific inquiry. Thus, the students are learning true science and scientific thinking! As a teacher, I will have to support my students while reading disciplinary texts in my classroom. Some things to remember as a science teacher:

• Comprehension of science texts will require mathematical literacy
• Mathematical equations
• Math and Greek symbols

• Scientific texts require visual literacy
• Diagrams
• Drawings
• Graphs and tables

• Scientific texts require technical language and vocabulary that is specific to the particular situation