READING, WRITING, AND REASONING IN THE DISCIPLINES

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READING, WRITING, AND REASONING IN THE DISCIPLINES

• National Literacy Coaching Summit
• April 2009
• Anika Spratley, PhD

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Objectives

• Define disciplinary literacy
• Define literacy coaching
• Identify literacy-based practices of four subject
  areas
• Determine best literacy coaching practices for
  each subject area

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Guiding Questions

• How do the literacy-based practices of a
  discipline differ from those of another
  discipline?
• Who are the experts in each discipline and what
  types of knowledge producing activities do they
  engage in?
• How can literacy coaches adjust their practices
  to suit the different disciplines?

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What is Literacy?

• The ability to
• Read
• Write
• Listen/view
• Speak/discuss/present
• Demonstrate creative and critical thinking

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What is Disciplinary Literacy?

• Literacy involves cross-disciplinary capacities
  of people to apply knowledge and abilities in
  different content areas and to analyze, reason,
  and communicate as they pose, solve, and
  interpret diverse real-life problems.
• The ability to understand, critique, and use
  knowledge from texts in content areas.

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What is Disciplinary Literacy?

• Being literate requires being familiar with and a
  proficient user of relevant disciplinary
  discourses and practices.
• Vocabulary, language traditions, conventions,
  practices and procedures, cognitive and
  metacognitive actions, emotional dispositions,
  and technologies tools used

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What is Coaching?

• Coaching is school-based professional development
• Content coaches focus on helping teachers improve
  instruction in a particular academic discipline

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What are the Key Elements of Literacy Coaching?

• Skillful Collaborators
• Content area literacy coaches are skilled
  collaborators who function effectively in middle
  school and/or high school settings
• Skillful Job-Embedded Coaches
• Content area literacy coaches are skilled
  instructional coaches for secondary teachers in
  the core content areas of English language arts,
  mathematics, science, and social studies

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What are the Key Elements ofLiteracy Coaching?

• Skillful Evaluators of Literacy Needs
• Content area literacy coaches are skilled
  evaluators of literacy needs within various
  subject areas and are able to collaborate with
  secondary school leadership teams and teachers to
  interpret and use assessment data to inform
  instruction.
• Skillful Instructional Strategists
• Content area literacy coaches are accomplished
  middle and high school teachers who are skilled
  in developing and implementing instructional
  strategies to improve academic literacy in the
  specific content areas.

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Promoting Advanced Literacy

• When coaches genuinely understand the literacy
  practices of a discipline they are better able to
  support teaching and learning
• Coaching from a disciplinary literacy based
  perspective promotes advanced literacy
• Moving from generic reading strategies to
  discipline specific literacy strategies

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Where do we begin?

• The first step is understanding the practices, or
  ways of knowing and doing, in a discipline.

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Card Sorting Directions

• In your pile you have cards which name specific
  disciplines and cards with descriptors
• The descriptor cards provide information on ways
  of thinking, knowing, and doing in disciplines,
  as well as, dispositions of disciplines.
• Match the descriptor cards with the disciplines
  your group believes is being described.

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Math Descriptors

• Solve problems
• Communicate and justify to others how to solve
  problems
• Know how to find ways to reach a goal when no
  routine path is apparent
• Represent a problem using a combination of words,
  notations, and symbols

• Recognize, describe, and extend patterns
• Select, create, and use appropriate graphical
  representations of data
• Visual elements (diagrams, graphs, flow charts,
  models, etc.)
• Translate words into problems and problems into
  words

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Science Descriptors

• Observe, use background knowledge, ask questions,
  interpret evidence
• Discuss and compare ideas with others in
  professional community
• Using evidence to ascertain patterns of evidence
  and models
• Question our understanding of our natural world
  and ourselves

• Critical analysis of claims, procedures,
  measurement errors, data, etc.
• Knowledge, methods of inquiry, and criteria for
  evaluation of knowledge change with time
• Give priority to evidence develop and evaluate
  explanations that address questions in the field
• Ability to understand what mathematical tables
  and figures convey

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History Descriptors

• Read and interpret primary source documents
• Consider and scrutinize the author or perspective
  of texts
• Wrestles with and interprets the past in an
  attempt to make meaning from it
• Understand that accounts are sometimes
  conflicting
• Recognize bias
• Corroborate information across documents

• Thinking through, assessing, and evaluating the
  plethora of political, product, and media claims
• Meanings and understandings shift as new evidence
  comes to light
• Seek to understand internal states and goals of
  agents who acted in events
• Making sense of multiple sources, considering and
  working from evidence, asking questions,
  developing ones own interpretation, writing
  interpretive arguments

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English Language Arts Descriptors

• Interact with a range of texts in a variety of
  genres
• Provide a range of warrantable interpretations of
  complex works
• Understands how imaginary worlds are shaped and
  suspends disbelief to enter imaginary worlds
• Knowledge of goal directed behavior triggered by
  internal states

• Understands and expects to encounter a range of
  interpretive problems embedded in rhetorical
  tools employed by authors
• Make inter-textual links drawing on readers
  knowledge about particular authors and related
  texts
• Use text as means to wrestle with core ethical
  dilemmas faced by humans
• Employs figurative inferencing

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Content 4-Square Directions

• Divide into discipline specific groups
• Use chart paper to create your 4-Square Chart
• Your squares must provide the following
  information
• Square One Who is doing the work in your
  discipline?
• Square Two What are the knowledge producing
  practices in your discipline?
• Square Three How is expertise, or ideas,
  communicated in your discipline?
• Square Four How are ideas challenged in your
  discipline?

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From the general to the specific
General Strategies Cross Disciplinary Strategies Discipline Specific Strategies
Predict Venn Diagram History--?
Question KWL Math--?
Summarize Reciprocal Teaching Science--?
Clarify REAP (read, encode, annotate, ponder) English Language Arts--?
Interpret Frayer Model
Evaluate Cornell Notes
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Next Steps

• Review the Content Area Literacy Standards for
  coaches
• Focus on a specific discipline
• Design a coaching plan for your current
  coaching situation and the specific discipline
• For example, you currently work with the 7th
  grade science team. Considering what you have
  learned and using the coaching standards as a
  guide, what might be your plan for working with
  this team?

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Wrap-Up

• Final comments, questions, concerns
• Contact Information
• Anika Spratley, PhD
• Johns Hopkins University
• ASpratl1_at_jhu.edu
• [phone]