Reading Matters Winter 2018

A Disciplinary Lens on Elementary Literacy and Learning

By Judy Britt, Florida Atlantic University; Kavin Ming, Winthrop University; & Samantha Smigel, River Ridge Elementary

Literacy in an Elementary Classroom Samantha Smigel’s Classroom Beginning with a morning meeting, my students are engaged in reading, writing, listening and speaking. During this first whole group meeting, I go over reading goals and teach a mini-lesson to begin the language arts block. The morning session is a busy time for small and whole group instruction in which my students complete a range of literacy activities with an integrated approach to reading and writing. A Daily 5 routine provides structure for the language arts session (Boushey & Moser, 2006). During Daily 5 , students rotate through small group tasks. For each rotation, I have one group of students working in a small group with me, while others are reading and writing independently, reading with others, working with words, and listening to stories on an iPad. Students complete three Daily 5 rotations each day. The 25-minute small group meetings are spread throughout the day with the first session early in the morning, a session before lunch, and one in the afternoon after recess. During this time, I teach students to infer, visualize, predict, question, use context clues, and use picture cues, all of which can be applied across mathematics, science, and social studies content. Asking and answering questions is uniquely connected to different disciplines. For example, I use questioning when my students are learning about even and odd numbers in mathematics. I ask, “Can the number be divided equally?”This is a way to get students thinking about equal and unequal groups. Students begin asking themselves this question as they count objects and decide if they can split them into equal groups or if they have some leftover. In social studies, we begin each unit by asking an essential question. While studying communities we asked ourselves, “What makes a good community?”The purpose of this question is to have students think about what constitutes a community and consider whether the communities in which we live exemplify the characteristics that we discuss. As we try to answer the question we start asking more questions such as: Where are communities located? What are different types of communities? One student observed the positive effects of questioning by pointing out that with every answer the class found, another question was created which served to foster discussion in the classroom. In each of these questioning strategies, I encourage students to read for meaning, make sense of difficult words, and understand content-specific vocabulary. As I guide my students in completing Daily 5 sessions, I engage them in developing habits of reading, writing and working independently in different content areas.

ABSTRACT —Disciplinary literacy involves reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking in the context of specific disciplines. Advocates of disciplinary literacy promote the need for instruction that recognizes literacy in each content area. Applying disciplinary literacy is fundamentally different in elementary and secondary classrooms. Middle and secondary teachers are content specialists who identify and implement appropriate literacy practices for their field. Elementary teachers are generalists deeply involved in literacy instruction throughout the school day. Using a metaphor of lenses, elementary teachers are encouraged to apply a disciplinary lens as they engage students in learning in each discipline. In this article, we examine how literacy in an elementary classroom provides a fertile environment for introducing disciplinary literacy across the curriculum. Introduction A lens is a metaphor for how something is viewed. Using a metaphor of lenses, literacy scholars Shanahan and Shanahan (2014) encourage elementary teachers to apply a disciplinary lens to learning in different content areas. Disciplinary literacy and content area literacy are terms that are often used interchangeably. Timothy Shanahan (2010) explains that in contrast to general content literacy strategies, disciplinary literacy places an emphasis on specific literacy skills that are aligned with learning in a particular discipline area. Disciplinary literacy involves reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking in the context of specific disciplines. Advocates of disciplinary literacy promote the need for instruction that recognizes literacy in each content area. Applying disciplinary literacy is fundamentally different in elementary and secondary classrooms. Middle and secondary teachers are content specialists who identify and implement appropriate literacy practices for their field. Elementary teachers are generalists deeply involved in literacy instruction throughout the school day. The literacy skills that are so important to learning in the elementary grades are essential to learning in mathematics, science and social studies. The foundation for disciplinary literacy begins in elementary classrooms (Fang & Coatoam, 2013; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2014). In this article, we examine how literacy instruction in an elementary classroom provides a fertile environment for introducing disciplinary literacy across the curriculum. For first year teacher Samantha Smigel, literacy is deeply embedded in her classroom routine. Samantha Smigel shared with us how literacy is woven throughout the day in her second grade classroom. Focusing on literacy instruction in one elementary teacher’s classroom offers direction for introducing disciplinary literacy in all content areas.

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| 26 | Reading Matters | Volume 18 • Winter 2018 | scira.org

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