Disciplinary Literacy Statement

The ability to read is a very important skill, and is emphasized heavily in school standards. There are three levels of literacy, basic, intermediate, and advanced. Basic literacy is learned in younger years, focusing on how to read, simple vocabulary, and how to form sentences. Intermediate literacy is the content area literacy, learning how to think in more abstract ways. Content area literacy focuses explicit strategies used when reading, such as making summaries, inferring, asking questions, concept mapping, using prior knowledge, note taking, or comparing and contrasting. These are skills that are universal, and can be used across all content area. The content is the only difference between subjects, and the strategies of literacy are all the same.

Content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are both methods to teach literacy skills in a in a subject area whose focus is not literacy. Both work well together, and both should be used in the classroom. Content skills can be used as stepping stones to get to disciplinary literacy skills. Disciplinary literacy uses different literacy skills depending on the subject. Students are no longer learning to read, but are reading to learn. Each content area needs its own reading skills to help the learners best comprehend what they are reading, using a unique set of practices. Each subject has its own processes and practices, and generic literacy skills are not the best at gaining a true understanding of the content area. These vary because of the questions asked when reading, how the text is organized, what is used as evidence, what type of text is read, and what is focused on when reading the text. A summary of the differences can be viewed here.

Each discipline will approach the same text differently, because everyone brings different prior knowledge. When a person reads, their background knowledge and experience will influence what they comprehend, pay attention to, and their perspectives. Teachers can influence the way their students will approach a text by adding to their background knowledge with content area. Content knowledge is needed to read content texts, and each subject needs to help its students build their knowledge in different ways.

The subject of science requires many unique reading skills. Being literate in science means understanding how science concepts are rendered in various text forms. Science is challenging because it has specific elements, such as skill with mathematics, visual literacy, new vocabulary words and different syntax, words with different meanings, and relationships between texts are often not explicit in the text. Science literacy requires skill with math, as science uses a lot of quantitative data and statistical results, which students need to be able to interpret and understand. Science also requires visual literacy, as the data is often displayed in visual formats, such as tables, graphs, or charts, such as the graph below, showing the turbidity of water from the start of a river. Students need the skills to read this text to understand the information it provides.

Science texts also introduce new vocabulary, such as turbidity, which is the clarity of the water. The syntax might be different, such as putting a synonym right after a new word, or adding an example mid-sentence. Words that students are be familiar with might have new meanings in science, such as a table no longer being the object you eat from, but instead a way to display data. And finally, science is not always clear, and requires background knowledge or inferences to be made. Things are not always explicitly stated in a science text. Science literacy required students to make sense of data, draw inferences, and construct meaning for texts, basic requirements of all good readers.

Practicing these new skills does not need to take the place of content learning, but instead should be combined with content comprehension. Both skills can enhance each other. Scientists use literary sources in their jobs to help get background and form research questions. Students should also experience this, using literary practice as an inquiry exercise, searching texts for questions and answers. There should be concept-oriented reading instruction with explicit instructions in reading strategies, to increase content knowledge and reading comprehension. Overall, content knowledge and literacy skills will both increase with inquiry as the common core.