Category: Teaching

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Teaching

Classroom Libraries: What is In? What is Out? Why does it Matter?

This post is written by Brooke Hardin. Read more about Brooke at the bottom of this post.

Let’s Get Personal

I am a white female who began school in the mid-eighties and entered a mostly white, suburban, blue ribbon-winning elementary school at the precocious age of five and a half. To my knowledge, no one had conversations with me about any differences in my family, and I had no reason to think there were. That is until I entered kindergarten and was met with weekly stories in books and readers where the families portrayed were white (or peach colored as the illustrations showed) and comprised of a mother, father, son, daughter, dog, cat, and possibly a goldfish. No big deal, right? The problem was that by this time, my father had not lived with me since I was two years old, and I had both a mother and a stepmother, both of whom I adored. Let’s not forget, I did not have a dog, cat, or goldfish; in fact, I had had two hamsters, both of which escaped their caged confinement, chewed holes in our carpet, and somehow disappeared. My family dynamic – made up of my mother and me in our townhome, my father, stepmother, half-brother and half-sister in another home that I visited every other weekend, and two stepbrothers that lived out of town – was not found within the pages of the books read to me by my teachers or those that were available for me to read as I moved through the elementary years. In fact, it was not until much later that I saw someone “like me,” the youngest child in a blended family, in a book.

While my story is innocent enough and did not impact my love of reading or success with it, it could have, and it is reflective of what so many students face today in their own classrooms. Their stories, culture, historical backgrounds, family dynamics, and more are absent from the texts in the libraries of classrooms where they spend hours learning each day. Moreover, educational policies limit what is possible for teachers to include in classroom libraries and how they can teach certain topics. At the same time, authors are publishing texts that portray a vast array of stories, online resources covering multiple viewpoints are abundant, and students have access to more information than ever before, given their proclivity for digital engagement. How does a teacher provide a wide-ranging classroom library while following a state or district’s policies on instructional materials and literature? While this is a real challenge, teachers might consider some seminal theoretical and research-based ideas that support the need for diverse classroom libraries.

Why Do Classroom Libraries Matter?

In the last several years, the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks has gained momentum and attention. Books and teaching have the capacity to change lives. Still, to do so, teachers must have the professional freedom to reflect regularly on the literature landscape shaping their classrooms. They must consider the narratives found in their classroom libraries:

  • How does the library shape students’ collective memories of their own + ‘others’ histories?
  • Whose voices seem valued + whose are not?
  • Whose stories are absent or silenced?

Theories like Rudine Sims Bishop’s (1990) idea that texts can act as “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” and Rosenblatt’s (1978) transactional reader-response theory show educators how the use of diverse texts has the power to increase content learning and empathic responses. However, both theories center the reader in the text. Another way to think of literature is to center the reader along a continuum with any text; it either reflects a lived experience or presents the opportunity to show a new or different experience. This then presents an opportunity to learn, think critically, and gain understanding.

Let’s take the following example of a teacher using adolescent historical fiction literature to provide instruction about the American frontier and pioneer life in the early 19th century. A teacher might reach for a classic like the Little House series published by Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1971. While entertaining to some, the series contains racism and portrays an incomplete story of what life was like on the prairie. A more comprehensive unit of study might include Louise Erdrich’s (1999) The Birchbark House, which reverses the narrative of 19th Century Native Americans and shows the life of an Ojibwa family in 1847. Additionally, a teacher might include the book Prairie Lotus, written by Linda Sue Park in 2022, which features the story of Hanna, a half-Asian girl who wants to go to the one-room school, make a friend, and help in her father’s dress-goods shop. Additionally, teachers would include images, diverse primary source documents that impacted people’s lives, informational pieces, and more.  In this way, we do not abandon all classic literature but expand the approach to literature selection (Zapata et al., 2018). This example shows how teachers might think about building their instructional classroom library; that is, the library from which they pull resources for teaching skills and content.

Teachers must also be intentional about the literature students have access to in the greater classroom library, the bookshelf, or the space in the room, where students can personally select texts to read during independent reading time or at their leisure. As shown in research regarding school-aged pupils, there is a direct correlation between reading skill growth and sustained time spent reading (Allington, 2014; Locher & Pfost, 2020). Thus, the classroom library needs to contain literature that appeals to students’ interests, represents a variety of lived experiences, and connects to contemporary issues. Given this, it is likely that the exact controversial topics (i.e., race, sexuality, culture, history, etc.) keeping space in policy headlines will be present in some of the classroom library literature. So, how does a teacher advocate for these materials to remain?

Policy’s Effect and Advocacy Moving Forward

Recent proposed legislation in headlines and bills aims to limit or ban literature that is based on what is deemed as controversial topics, including American history, family, race, and more. However, banning literature and these topics is detrimental to the engagement, critical thinking, and overall learning possible in today’s classrooms. Certain bills go so far as to be explicit about how teachers can and cannot teach certain topics, prohibiting some ideas and prescribing the verbiage for others. For example, teachers in some districts have been told they cannot use literature that talks about race or could be deemed Anti-American. In this way, teachers are being told to teach prescribed content that is likely not wholly accurate and more importantly, is not culturally inclusive of all students.

More than ever, teachers must be wise about advocating for their students’ learning and “following the rules” while also providing thorough instruction and helping students become thoughtful global citizens. When teachers are selecting classroom library literature and instructional materials, they must be critical consumers themselves. Look at your class roster; whose culture is present in the materials? Whose is missing? Does every student have ample opportunities to find a book that represents them in the classroom library? Using interest inventories (Williams, 2022) at the beginning of the school year and using the information gathered to add new texts to instructional libraries and the larger classroom library is another option. Viewing instruction and the selection of materials through the argument presented here might provide teachers a way to build inclusive units of study that task students with critical considerations and keep teachers out of local headlines.

Additionally, consider speaking before policymakers; educators can use the theories calling for diverse books and relevant, multi-sided texts to sustain their pleas for professional freedom and all-encompassing classroom libraries. Finally, teachers facing book challenges or desiring more support for instructional freedom might consult some of the available resources such as the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE)’s Intellectual Freedom Center (https://ncte.org/resources/ncte-intellectual-freedom-center/) and the We Need Diverse Books website (https://diversebooks.org/resources/addressing-book-challenges/), which is full of resources for teachers, parents, and librarians.

References

Allington, R. L. (2014). How Reading Volume Affects Both Reading Fluency and Reading Achievement. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1), 13-26.

Bishop, R. S. (1990, March). Windows and mirrors: Children’s books and parallel cultures. In California State University reading conference: 14th annual conference proceedings (pp. 3-12).

Erdrich, L., & Littrell, N. (1999). The birchbark house. New York: Hyperion Books for children.

Locher, F., & Pfost, M. (2020). The relation between time spent reading and reading comprehension throughout the life course. Journal of Research in Reading, 43(1), 57-77.

Park, L. S. (2020). Prairie lotus. Clarion Books.

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1988). Writing and reading: The transactional theory (No. 416). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Wilder, L. I., & Williams, g. (1971). Little house on the prairie. 1st Harper Trophy ed. New York, N.Y., HarperTrophy.

Williams, K. (2022, October 31). 12 reading interest survey questions to ask students and sample questionnaire. Survey Sparrow. https://surveysparrow.com/blog/reader-interest-survey-questions/

Zapata, A., Kleekamp, M., & King, C. (2018). Expanding the Canon: How Diverse Literature Can Transform Literacy Learning. Literacy Leadership Brief. International Literacy Association.

Brooke Hardin is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Her research interests include writing development and instruction for intermediate and middle grades students, teaching and learning through technology and new literacies, literacy professional development and teacher education, and interdisciplinary approaches to reading, writing, and the utilization of Children’s Literature. Her years of experience as an elementary and middle grades classroom teacher and curriculum literacy specialist frame her research interests and commitment to teacher education.

Photo by Darren Richardson on Unsplash

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Teaching

The Impact of Educational Policy on Secondary History

This post is written by Tori Young. Read more about Tori at the bottom of this post.

As educators, we are masters at adapting to new scenarios and thinking on our feet. Whether it is behavioral challenges in the classroom, changing grade levels or content areas, or being told a new acronym that will guide our students to academic achievement. While the patterns stay the same, change remains the one constant in our world. In a time of attention on literacy policy in our public schools, what do we do as educators when our curriculum is criticized, and our livelihood is on the line? And how do we engage students in the process of not only understanding the necessity to examine policies but also how to do this and why?

In secondary history, many communities have questioned the intentions behind the curriculum presented. Talks of Critical Race Theory and indoctrination have instilled fear in parents and policymakers for the minds of students as they become passionate voices in movements for climate change, women’s rights, and racial equality. As teachers, the impact we have on a student is apparent, and sadly there are few enough instances of teachers abusing that role to teach their own agendas. In a time of great societal change and political bipartisanship, parents have expressed their concern for their children’s beliefs being influenced. As teachers, a lot of this skepticism falls upon us, even though forceful influence is very rare to see and is quickly reprimanded. Yet, we fall victim to the fear for our careers when discussing important, yet sensitive issues. Fear is valid, even if it is a small number that has created cause for concern. Fear should not prevent us, however, from doing our job of teaching true history.

True history is based on facts and first-hand accounts. Primary sources are the best accounts we have of our world before modern media, but a good historian is aware that these diaries and newspaper articles are just as full of bias. Our role is to teach students how to spot perspectives through context and draw their own conclusions based on facts. This skill is what makes not just a good historian, but a great citizen. Evaluating the world and the policies that impact our lives through an unbiased narrative is nearly impossible. Teaching students how to maintain their own beliefs, while also educating themselves with facts and truths is far from indoctrination. Instead, it is the foundation of a true democracy. Our republic is made up of diverse cultures, lifestyles, and needs. Raising a voting population that can make change for their communities while respecting the various opinions and preferences of other citizens is what makes a democracy free and fair. When teaching tough subjects such as religion, slavery, and civil rights, have students follow up the lesson with reflection. Depending on the classroom environment, it may be good to have a discussion so that students can hear and learn from each other’s perspectives. In some cases, it may be beneficial to have students write down their beliefs and receive unbiased feedback from the teacher to ensure that they understand the content while knowing that their views are validated and safe in the classroom.

Photo by Ivan Bertolazzi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/neon-signage-2681319/

As policies in schools change, students do not always have the context. By pointing out instances in history where similar changes have occurred, showing the verbiage of standards and indicators, and creating discussion in the classroom about policy that impacts students directly, they are practicing this critical thinking skill.  By questioning the “why” behind literary policy in our social studies classrooms, students can come to their own conclusions based on the facts and their personal beliefs. This may look like having students recall a previous reading from a social studies or ELA class and having them reflect on the overall message of the author. Then, students can share with a partner what they found and try to spot context – why the author thought the message would be important. Lastly, students can analyze the impact if that message was never received. For example, if George Orwell’s 1984 was never written, would there still be people who believed that the government was completely trustworthy? Why would it matter to question the government? Where do we see examples in history where questioning the government has created change? How might the world be different if governments were never doubted or challenged? Our curriculum may be judged and altered to fit the new narrative of society, but it does not have to be a hindrance. We are always living in history; the context just looks a bit different.

Davis, W. (1925). Tennessee v. John T. Scopes [Black and White Photographic Print]. Smithsonian Institution Archives. https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_386642

Schools have been at the forefront of societal change several times in United States history. Challenging separate but equal through Brown v. Board of Education, questioning religious influence in curriculum with the Scopes Trial, or providing equal opportunities regardless of gender with Title IX, schools have been an environment for questioning society and legislation as the new generation learns about the world that they live in. Having schools targeted and subdued for speaking true history is not a new phenomenon, and it is not a purely American phenomenon. That does not make the changes and adapting any less scary for educators, but it does follow a pattern. Studying history helps us learn from patterns, so don’t panic. Instead, acknowledge the signs of the times, and help your students connect the dots for themselves just like you have been doing all along.   

Tori Young is a high school social studies teacher in Anderson, South Carolina. She is currently working on her Master’s in Instructional Design and Learning Technology at Anderson University.

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Teaching

A Case for Music as Mentor Text Across the Disciplines

This post is written by Melissa Wrenn. You can learn more about Melissa at the bottom of this post.

In recent years, I became a music student. I don’t mean in the way I took piano lessons through middle and high school, but something else. I study the craft—the process of writing songs, creating music, publishing, etc. This is a multi-genre effort. I have watched documentaries about Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.), The Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell, Tina Turner, Joan Jett, Tupac Shakur, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Bee Gees, and countless others. I couldn’t even begin to count the hours I have invested in listening to podcasts about music development and music history. I follow the paths of the writers, the producers, the record labels, and the ranking process, not just the artists. In short, I am a student of the discipline.

Music offers classroom teachers powerful tools for foundational literacy skills when used as a mentor text for writing (e.g., rhyme, figurative language, genre, tone, mood, word choice) and reading (e.g., fluency, author’s purpose, inference). As a discipline, music can also be used to teach students about community, belonging, history, and advocacy. I vividly remember getting a set of CDs with the new social studies curriculum that my district adopted when I was a fifth-grade teacher. The CDs had songs that were written at various points in history and included diverse perspectives and voices.  As I explored the things I could do with them, I began to integrate the CDs into my literacy lessons. Thus, I found that music was a way to help students make abstract ideas more concrete and to say things they didn’t know that they also had the power to say. This shouldn’t be surprising, as adults use music for the same reasons, which can be heard in music across genres or seen in any music documentary.

The most recent documentary I watched was Jelly Roll: Save Me1, which aired on May 30, 2023, via Hulu. In this documentary, I saw one of the most transformative disciplinary literacy practices I have seen or heard about in my extensive music studies. Jelly Roll donated $400,000 to be used for youth projects, including music studios at the juvenile detention center, where he spent several years of his adolescence2. In the documentary, Jelly Roll talks about the detention center’s proximity to the music industry, and the importance of supporting young people on the path to success instead of returning them to the streets without skills. Music speaks to people of all ages, including those who are creating, sharing, and consuming music within the prison system.

The same can be said for people who are experiencing the push and pull factors of other forms of trauma. Tina Turner3 and Nina Simone4 repeatedly performed immediately following domestic violence. In a 1985 documentary, John Bailey5, captured Amir Mohammad’s experiences of creating, sharing, and consuming music as an Afghan refugee. More recently, Amanda Shires6 explored the trauma that she experienced, which became the lyrics for the song, “Cover Me Up,” which was written by her husband, Jason Isbell. This song was re-recorded by Morgan Wallen, and his album with the song about Amanda Shires’ trauma spent more than 100 weeks on the Billboard charts7. There are probably as many examples of this type of relationship between the impact of trauma and music as there are artists.

For classroom teachers, elevating music as a discipline for students to use when sharing their experiences and knowledge may be a powerful, yet under-utilized tool. When I was a fifth-grade teacher, I had a student who needed support with reading, and he was a devout Avett Brothers’ fan. He had worked so hard and made so much progress that I reached out to the Avett Brothers’ manager (you can literally find anything online). About a week later, Grammy-award winning Seth Avett recorded a special, encouraging message for my student, who had developed fluency by reading Avett Brothers’ lyrics.

So, as we are all reeling from the COVID recovery and other global and local tensions surrounding what education means, Jelly Roll serves as a disciplinary literacy model. He illustrates the connection between industry and community in the acts of creating, sharing, and consuming music. His efforts to build the musical disciplinary literacy capacity of youth who are incarcerated, those who may be at their lowest points, and those struggling with mental health, addiction, and more, highlights what one needs to be successful, and sometimes that starts with someone who gives us the tools and models to help us tell our stories in the discipline that speaks to our hearts.

References

  1. Pearlman, B. (Director). (2023). Jelly Roll: Save me. [Documentary]. Hulu.
  2. Newman, M. (2023, June 1). From prison to no. 1: Nashville rising star proves that ‘losers can win.’ Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/music/features/jelly-roll-whitsitt-chapel-interview-1235343219/
  3. Lindsay, D., & Martin, T. J. (Directors). (2021). Tina. [Documentary]. Home Box Office.
  4. Garbus, L. (Director). (2015). What happened, Miss Simone? [Documentary]. Netflix.
  5. Bailey, J. (Director). (1985). Amir: An Afghan refugee musician’s life in Peshawar, Pakistan [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources.
  6. Jones, S. (Director). (2023). Jason Isbell: Running with our eyes closed. [Documentary] Home Box Office.
  7. O’Connell, M. (2023, January 8). Two years ago: Morgan Wallen releases record-breaking ‘Dangerous: The Double Album.” Country Now. https://countrynow.com/two-years-ago-morgan-wallen-releases-record-breaking-dangerous-the-double-album/

Melissa Wrenn, PhD, NBCT

Melissa has been an educator for over 20 years. She is a faculty member at East Carolina University in the Elementary Education and Middle Grades Education Department; she studies disciplinary literacy, teacher education, and classroom discourse. Melissa is also a fan of great documentaries and great coffee.

Cover Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Categories
Teaching

Utilizing Disciplinary Literacy Mentor Texts

Literacy in the Disciplines, 6-12 (LiD) is pleased to announce our next webinar.

One of the greatest challenges secondary educators face is supporting students as they navigate challenging disciplinary texts. In this webinar, we make the case that being more intentional with selecting mentor texts aligned to meaningful disciplinary purposes. We will clarify our definition of “text”, consider what it means to apprentice students into the disciplinary text, and define a process for intentional text selection in service of a problem frame. Resources will be provided to support the application in participants’ contexts.

This webinar was held on June 15 2023. Cost: Free. LiD6-12 is funded by the South Carolina Middle Grades Initiative.

The video for this webinar is available here or embedded below.

This webinar featured Jenelle Williams, Oakland Schools, Michigan.

Jenelle Williams is a Literacy Consultant at
Oakland Schools, Michigan. She joined
the organization in 2017 following 18 years
of experience in public schools at the
elementary, middle, and high school
levels. She has served as a classroom
teacher, International Baccalaureate
Middle Years Programme Coordinator, IB
Educator and Examiner, and adjunct
professor. Jenelle recently stepped into
the position of co-editor of the Michigan
Reading Journal. She holds an Education
Specialist in Leadership and a Master’s
degree in Reading and Language Arts.
Jenelle works with teachers, building
leaders, and central office administrators
throughout Michigan as Co-Chair of the
statewide Disciplinary Literacy Task Force.

Follow and like Literacy in the Disciplines, 6-12 on Twitter

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Teaching

Mentor Texts for Disciplinary Writing Instruction–Not Just for ELA Teachers!

This post is written by Jenelle Williams. Learn more about Jenelle at the bottom of this post.

As educators, many of us can identify mentors–people who have supported us along our educational journey. To mentor someone is both a sacred task and a tall order. In classrooms, text can serve as mentors as well. The purpose of this blog post is to clearly define what we mean by a disciplinary mentor text and to consider implications for effective disciplinary writing instruction. So let’s get started!

This is an exciting time to be an educator, as notions of text are expanding as time and technology move forward. For the purposes of this blog post, let’s agree that text includes anything with encoded meaning. This, of course, can mean printed words on a page, but it can also include many other things, such as symbols, musical notation, football play diagrams, dance performances, videos, audio recordings, podcasts, graphs, charts, and more. In this expanded definition of text, we must also expand our definitions of what it means to read, write, and be literate. For our purposes, being literate in a particular context means a person can consume the encoded meaning of a text, comprehend the meaning, and communicate in ways that are valued by that particular academic discipline or profession.

What is a mentor text?

Mentor texts are typically short, engaging texts provided to students for a particular purpose, including (but not limited to) the following:

  • Acting as a foundation to learn or imitate a specific writing form
  • Teaching students to read with a writer’s eye (e.g., sentence structure or word choice)
  • Demonstrating what good writers do
  • Helping students take risks in their writing and develop their skills (from Teachstarter.com)

The role of multimodality and representation

As educators select mentor texts to use as part of instruction, it is important that, in addition to expanded notions of what qualifies as text, they intentionally include multimodal texts. Multimodal refers to something occurring or being communicated through multiple media of communication or varying forms of expression. For example, a campaign video may have images, music, text, and data all presented in one multimodal text. Students regularly interact with multimodal texts (videos with embedded audio text, for example), and need instruction and practice in order to be critical consumers of these texts.

There is an additional (and necessary) challenge as educators select texts that serve as mentors for students’ disciplinary writing–how to ensure that they are attending to issues of representation. To what extent are authors of various ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives represented? How might we be more intentional to include authors representing historically marginalized populations? To be sure, this requires more time and effort on the part of educators, but it is well worth the effort, as it can provide students with a connection and entry point to learning.

Authentic purpose in mentor texts for writing

In order to truly engage secondary students in authentic inquiry with mentor texts, it is vital that educators provide an authentic purpose for students to engage in mentor texts beyond simply being assigned to do so. It must be clear that the mentor text will serve a purpose and will eventually allow students to communicate their ideas with an audience greater than themselves and the teacher. The following lists some examples of authentic inquiries that would require students to engage with a wide range of texts (including mentor texts):

  • Why does a lot of hail, rain, or snowfall at some times and not others?
  • How can we use mathematical and statistical knowledge and analysis to monitor and predict the spread of disease and use our findings to make and evaluate decisions made at the personal, community, state, and national levels?
  • How can we use poetry to promote social justice in our community?
  • How can we as historians uncover and share stories about our community? Whose stories are often left untold?

Once we have identified authentic purposes for students to engage with disciplinary mentor texts for writing, we need to consider instructional approaches that leverage the power of those texts. Just as we needed to define the term “text”, it is vital that we hold a shared understanding of what we mean by the term “writing”–or, at the very least, a shared understanding of what we mean by writing instruction:

Let’s begin with some non-examples of writing instruction. They include the following:

  • Writing instruction is NOT assigning writing
  • It is NOT over-emphasizing grammar, spelling, and punctuation
  • It is NOT requiring rigid structures (i.e. telling students exactly how many sentences, what kind of sentences, and in what order)
  • It is NOT valuing the writing product over the writing process
  • It is NOT copying notes from lectures or PowerPoints, definitions of vocabulary words, answers to questions straight from the textbook, or formulas for writing

When we are working with educators to strengthen their writing instruction, we emphasize the following practices:

  • Modeling the process of preparing to write, drafting and revising writing, and reflecting on writing
  • Using writing as a tool to support learning and reflection
  • Providing support before and during writing in class
  • Valuing the process of writing just as much as the product

Disciplinary writing begins with an authentic purpose for writing. Members of various academic disciplines and professions use both informal and formal writing in order to process or organize ideas; communicate and share ideas; evaluate ideas; develop and support a claim; explain a phenomenon, process, or solution; entertain; record data, evidence, and observations; solve a problem; and much more. Middle- and high-school students can be apprenticed into these types of disciplinary writing with intentional support.

For example, students in an eighth-grade Social Studies class might engage in inquiry on the following question: What was the human toll during the Civil War? As part of their inquiry, they may read the following disciplinary texts: photographs of soldiers preparing to go to war, data tables on Civil War casualties, and first-person accounts from soldiers’ diaries. Students may engage in informal writing such as annotating texts; note-taking in response to readings, discussions, or teacher-presented information; and constructing an outline and then a first draft of a historical account or explanation. Formal writing may be a historical account or evidence-based argument about the human toll of the Civil War that is shared with an appropriate audience beyond the teacher.

Essential Instructional Practice 4 & additional helpful resources

Essential Instructional Practice 4 from the Essential Instructional Practices in Disciplinary Literacy document is a great place to start for teachers that are interested in strengthening their support of students’ disciplinary writing. Teachers may read the General Practices at the beginning of the document, or they may be interested in selecting the content area section that best aligns with their work. Additional helpful resources are also suggested in the table below.

Multidisciplinary
Learner Variability Navigator
ELAMathematicsScienceSocial Studies
Michigan Middle School English Language Arts UnitsWriting in Mathematics – Annenberg LearnerScaffolding Students’ Written Explanations | AST Beyond Writing to Learn, The Science Teacher (NSTA)Read.Inquire.Write
The New York Times MS HS Writing Curriculum
MusicPhysical Education & HealthVisual ArtsHeritage & World Languages
Lesson Idea | MAEIAWritingAthletes.comLesson Idea | MAEIAThe Nature of L2 Writing | Foreign Language Teaching Methods

The great news is that secondary educators do not have to be writing experts (or even published authors) in order to teach students how to write effectively within and across disciplines. As long as we keep expanded notions of text, multimodality, and representation in mind, along with an authentic purpose for students to engage with a disciplinary mentor text, we are well on our way to modeling and scaffolding students as they create disciplinary texts of their own. We are lucky as well that we have free, widely available resources that can help us shift toward effective pedagogical moves. Let’s get writing, everyone!

Jenelle Williams is a Literacy Consultant within the Leadership and Continuous Improvement unit at Oakland Schools, an intermediate school district supporting the 28 districts in Oakland County, Michigan. She joined the organization in 2017 following 18 years of experience in public schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. She has served as a classroom teacher, IB Middle Years Programme Coordinator, teacher leader, and educational technology coach. An IB Educator and Examiner since 2013, Jenelle leads professional learning workshops and marks e-assessments for the International Baccalaureate Organization. She holds an Education Specialist in Leadership degree and a Master’s degree in Reading and Language Arts through Oakland University. In addition, Jenelle serves as an Adjunct Professor in Grand Valley State University’s Graduate Program and a co-editor of The Michigan Reading Journal, a publication from the Michigan Reading Association. Jenelle is passionate about supporting teachers, building leaders, and central office administrators in the area of secondary literacy, and she is especially excited to be able to support Michigan’s work around disciplinary literacy through her role as Co-Chair of the statewide Disciplinary Literacy Task Force. She can be reached at jenelle.williams@oakland.k12.mi.us, and on Twitter at @JenelleWilliam6 and @GELN612Literacy.

Cover Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash

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Teaching

Exploring Mentor Texts

This post is written by Charlene Aldrich. You can learn more about Charlene at the bottom of this post.

I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of reading to identify important information and to grow decision-making processes.  My mantra is, “Never tell someone what they need to know when they can find out for themselves by reading.”  So, when I saw the book Micro Mentor Texts by Penny Kittle come up in my Facebook feed, I was especially intrigued by the idea that students might not need to read ALL of Romeo and Juliet to become knowledgeable of Shakespeare, his cheeky quotes, and 16th-century literature.

I’m not trying to sell you on this book, instead, I AM trying to sell you on the idea that mentor texts don’t have to be complete works that students gloss over to “complete the assignment.”  Can it be that teachers can provide specific sample excerpts to achieve their literacy goals?

Spelling and Vocabulary

Research has affirmed the idea that successful readers and writers tend to have prolific vocabularies 1.

Useable vocabularies grow through listening and reading, speaking and writing2.  I continue to believe in the developmental nature of language to support literacy development as I watch my granddaughter on her preschool journey to beginning reading.  Her speaking vocabulary includes words and phrases such as “cheeky little rascal,” “plaster,” and “go through” because of her fascination with the very British show featuring Peppa and George Pig!  She may never read them in the same context, but the foundation has been laid for multi-meaning words if she sees these and similar words and phrases in reading selections.

What does this say to educators and about mentor texts?  Reading, writing, and oral language are tightly knit; introducing mentor texts as examples of effective writing “… promotes students to view, discuss, read, and create literature that affords opportunities for spelling and vocabulary development that are engaging, relevant and active”3.

Blog writers from ELA Matters share “3 Engaging Mentor Texts for Middle and High School”.  One that supports vocabulary development is My Name by Sandra Cisneros.  While the language is simple, Cisneros weaves it into rich literary devices such as imagery, simile, and metaphor. Students of all reading abilities see how to use their own vocabulary levels to develop descriptive works that require precise vocabulary.

Beyond spelling and vocabulary 

In addition to growing spelling and vocabulary, mentor texts contribute to the development of other traits of effective writing: organization, conventions, sentence fluency, and voice. Mentor texts are examples for students to follow as they develop their own ideas through these traits4. They can be below grade level to make the traits obvious; they can be on or above grade level to meet the standards that require complex texts. They can include a wide range of styles – from classical literature to graphic novels. Teachers can use them to develop critical thinking and persuasive arguments. Students can read memoirs in preparation for personal narratives. The inclusion of authors and diverse topics can even mentor acceptance and open-mindedness. And never overlook the power and pleasure of picture books for growing storytelling.

Mentor texts are not restricted to the ELA curriculum. As state standards have shown through the inclusion of disciplinary literacy requirements, each discipline contains its own set of unique formats, craft, and technical language. Thus, each content area teacher has the opportunity to include quality mentor texts for students to emulate as they meet the reading and writing needs of each discipline.  What do YOU enjoy reading in your discipline? How can students also find enjoyment in your choice of reading selections of your discipline?

My grandson introduced me to A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen. This book takes readers through life behind the Berlin Wall, beginning with the night it was built.  Social Studies/History courses are meant to provide multiple perspectives to ensure accurate representation of diverse experiences. This historical fiction book opens with vivid language to introduce a school-age girl’s reaction to the lack of freedom that was imminent. “There was no warning the night the wall went up.  I awoke to sirens screaming throughout my city of East Berlin. Instantly, I flew from my bed. Something must be terribly wrong.  Why were there so many?” Individual excerpts from the book can be extracted as a mentor text for writing essays that focus on the value of freedom. Using this text as a mentor, along with showcasing other fictional or nonfiction realities of this time period, can support students’ ability to also write about their own experiences with freedom or war.

Using Model Texts

Students NEED high-quality reading selections that challenge them to grow in their personal literacy skills; after all, literacy is power. In addition to meaning-making, model texts provide examples of effective composition techniques5. Using them effectively becomes the goal.  Robyn English (2021) offers this advice6:

  • Be familiar with the reading selection and what you want it to demonstrate
  • Be purposeful in your use; plan for single successes, not multiple attempts
  • Be knowledgeable of the strategy or characteristic being taught
  • Be flexible, returning to a single text for other purposes
  • Be generous, sharing them as you would any book in your classroom library

In Short

Students need positive role models for growing into responsible adults. Likewise, they need effective models of texts for growing their literacy strength. As English notes in her text listed above, “Mentor texts support a teacher in modeled reading or writing.”

Charlene Aldrich is an instructor in the Office of Professional Development at the College of Charleston. While content-area literacy is her specialty, she also teaches Assessments in Reading, Foundations in Reading, and Instructional Practices as required by South Carolina for recertification. She serves as the Treasurer of LiD 6-12.

Cover Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

Categories
Teaching

Growing as a Literacy Leader

This post is written by Erin Kessel. You can learn more about Erin at the bottom of this post.

What is a literacy leader? In my opinion, it is a highly qualified teacher in literacy instruction who provides valuable resources for other teachers to facilitate quality instruction. Providing highly qualified teachers with the opportunity to fill this role promotes growth in our field, allows these experienced teachers to stay in the classroom, and gives more novice teachers a mentor to support them. Today I will share with you my personal story as a literacy leader and the opportunities it provided me to grow as an educator while also growing others.

In 2020 I was offered an opportunity by my district to become a Multi-Classroom Teacher with a focus on literacy. The Multi-Classroom Teacher position was created in our district for master teachers, a designation determined by classroom observation and student performance data, who then co-taught across multiple classrooms with other teachers and apprenticed them in highly effective instruction. After 12 years in the classroom, mentoring beginning teachers, supervising interns, and leading PLCs, I was ready to grow as an educator and accepted the position. The goal was simple — mentor and model literacy instruction in five 3rd through 5th-grade classrooms where teachers had less than three years of teaching experience.

Through years of learning and applying strategies of Adaptive Schools and Cognitive Coaching, I began with a plan to actively listen to the teachers, identify needs, and establish goals to support them. I spent two weeks simply observing the literacy blocks of each classroom. I recorded objective, anecdotal notes and began to set my intentions for areas of targeted support with each teacher. The following descriptions are the focus areas based on my data for each teacher:

  • Teacher #1 – An experienced teacher assistant transitioning to a teacher with strong small group instruction skills but difficulty designing whole group literacy instruction where students experience a gradual release of responsibility of learning (Goal – To design whole group literacy lessons focused on scaffolding the learning for students).
  • Teacher #2 – A engaging third-year teacher who had powerful literacy instruction methods but lacked knowledge of how to incorporate collaborative learning within her classroom (Goal – To learn about, model, and engage in collaborative strategies).
  • Teacher #3 – A second-year teacher who had the “right stuff” as an educator but had never taken the time to build rapport with her students and felt a lack of community within her classroom (Goal – To build relationships with and learn about students as people including their likes, interests, and home life).
  • Teacher #4 – A compassionate second-year teacher who lacked organization and engagement strategies to encourage her students to want to learn (Goal – To learn about, model, and engage in Whole Brain Teaching strategies).
  • Teacher #5 – A first-year teacher who spent her clinical teaching year virtually due to COVID who lacked sufficient classroom management skills, therefore behaviors and disruptions were consistently affecting learning (Goal – To establish norms and routines in her classroom as well as create a concrete classroom management plan to hold students accountable of their actions and encourage them to want to learn).

After a week of collecting observational data, I set a time to meet with each teacher and have a goal-planning conversation. Within the Cognitive Coaching model, it is the coach’s job to lead the participant/s through the stages of a conversation where they identify their goals and set their own plan while the coach provides some potential strategies. I discovered this group had not been able to collaborate with an experienced teacher since their student teaching and therefore did not have access to guidance, resources, and tools for effective literacy instruction.

As a mentor teacher, I had the experience, knowledge, and resources to support each of these teachers’ goals. I asked the teachers to become observers for two weeks during their literacy block and allow me to facilitate learning in their classrooms while focusing on their specific needs. The teachers used an observer form to stay focused on my facilitation of the instruction specifically tied to their goals. I also attended their planning periods, where we collaborated to develop a library of lessons and resources. I built rapport and trust with each teacher, which allowed us to consistently hold reflective conversations focused on their goals and ways to incorporate the instruction they observed into the lesson plans we created.

(When these amazing teachers choose to dress in my Erin Kessel “iconic” daily outfit, I know I have made connections with my teachers)

I spent two weeks cultivating and facilitating different plans for each class and working with students of all ability levels while incorporating many diverse types of teaching strategies to model options of literacy learning. The following were ways I helped each teacher approach her goal:

  • Teacher #1 – We redesigned her schedule with a specific time set to introduce content, model, and allow students to practice and apply their learning. We also planned — and I modeled — how to provide differentiated opportunities in a lesson during whole-group instruction. We developed a presentation format (PowerPoint) for her lessons that guided her through the gradual release process.
  • Teacher #2 – I intentionally introduced the class to collaboration practices and strategies within the literacy block. Students participated in Learning-Focused Collaborative Pairs, Socratic methods of teaching, Kagan Cooperative Learning strategies, Adaptive School strategies, and other various strategies I have created through my own experiences. As this teacher observed these strategies being applied in her classroom, she saw student engagement increase, students’ understanding of content grow, and more students involved in class discussion. She then utilized the strategies she was seeing modeled.
  • Teacher #3 – Community meetings were established each morning before her literacy block, which engaged students with each other and utilized multimodal methods of literacy to prepare their brains for the day. Multiple community meeting processes were used where students expressed themselves as individuals and learned commonalities with each other. The teacher participated and learned about the students as individuals, and the students learned more about the teacher. The rapport became evident when students began to support each other during collaborative activities. They also entrusted the teacher with more personal information and would seek guidance in non-academic situations.
  • Teacher #4 –  Through modeling and professional development of Whole Brain Teaching, she was quickly able to establish daily routines through fun callbacks, engage in bodily-kinesthetic and verbal learning of literacy curriculum, and create a respect for her attention when deemed necessary. Her classroom management, routines, and classroom literacy instruction benefited from utilizing this program.
  • Teacher #5 – Through consistent use of expectations and norms and a structured schedule, the teacher replicated my modeled methods and saw improvement in the respect her students had for her. Through attending the planning periods, asking questions, requesting modeling of instruction, and assisting in designing literacy assessments, her understanding of literacy curriculum and how to facilitate it increased exponentially. She also benefited from the shared PowerPoint presentations we made during planning to guide her instruction.

After teaching in all classrooms, I began to see the value of my effort. I started noting strategies I used in their literacy blocks were now being used in other core content areas by these teachers. When we met to review our planning conversations, some teachers felt they had met their goal, and through planning conversations, we established new goals. Over the course of two years, I co-taught and co-planned with these teachers.

(As the shirts state, “Together through it all” was our motto as we worked side by side in their classroom every day.)

The experiences I had as a Multi Classroom Teacher and literacy leader within this school began to grow my need to share this role with others. I recently became a teaching instructor at East Carolina University, where I teach the READ courses to education major students. I can share my experiences and grow our future teachers as they explore their concentrations for their education degree. I encourage students to explore our Read Concentration program to help develop our next Literacy Leaders. I have spoken at multiple conferences on the value of literacy leaders and continue to speak on the benefits of this role in every school, especially schools with low teacher retention rates, as that is where they are most valuable and can make the greatest impact.

Erin Kessel is a teaching instructor in the Literacy Studies, English Education, and History Education Department at East Carolina University.  Previously, she was a Multi Classroom Literacy Leader, Facilitating Teacher, and a 4th grade teacher.  Erin’s work focuses on literacy leadership and developing literacy leaders as well as building a classroom community through literacy as she presents at the local, state and national level.Follow on Twitter @kessel_erin

Please cite this work: Kessel, E. (2023). Growing as a Literacy Leader. Literacy In The Disciplines. https://literacy6-12.org/growing-as-a-literacy-leader. CC BY 4.0 license.

Cover Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Categories
Teaching

Writing Learning into Shape: Using Concrete Poetry to Explore & Reflect Content Knowledge

This post is written by Brooke L. Hardin. To learn more about Brooke, please visit the bottom of this post.

What Is Concrete Poetry?

Concrete poetry, sometimes called shape poetry, is poetry whose visual appearance matches the subject of the poem. The words of the poem form a shape or shapes which illustrate the poem’s topic in visual form as well as through their literal meaning. This type of poetry has been used for thousands of years since the ancient Greeks began to enhance the meanings of their poetry by arranging their characters in visually pleasing ways back in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC (Nesbitt, 2023).

In the 1950s, a group of Brazilian poets known as the Noigandres developed a manifesto to define the work of concrete poetry and give us the name. The manifesto states that concrete poetry communicates its own structure: structure = content (Eppley, 2015).

How to Write Concrete Poetry

There are two main ways to create a concrete poem. The first is referred to as an “Outline Poem.” The writer creates an outline of the subject of the poem or of an object that relates to the subject and fills in the outline with words or phrases. The words or phrases used to fill in the outline usually describe the subject or how it makes the writer feel in some way, provide information connected to the subject, or possibly tell a story related to the subject. Some examples of this technique for concrete poetry are provided in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1: Black Hole

Note. From The Day the Universe Exploded My Head: Poems that Take You Into Space and Back Again, by Allan Wolf, 2019, Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press

Figure 2: Buried Treasure

Note. From Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World, by Susan Hood, 2018, New York, NY: HarperCollins.

My son and I recently spent an afternoon at a local bike park. Following the trip, he and I co-authored a concrete poem using the “Outline” technique. The video embedded below shows how I used questioning to help him come up with the words and phrases for the poem while I acted as a scribe. Image 3 shows the final poem we created.

Figure 3: Mountain Bike

Another technique for creating concrete poems is to use the lines of words to make the lines of a drawing. One thing to note about this technique is that the subject does not have to be an object, but it does need to be something that can be drawn with “stick” figures. Examples of these poems are below.

                                                Figure 4: Lightning

Note. From Wet Cement: A Mix of Concrete Poems, by Bob Raczka, 2016, New York, NY: Roaring Brook Press.

Figure 5: Robert’s Four At-Bats

Note. From Technically, It’s Not My Fault: Concrete Poems by John Grandits, 2004, New York, NY: Clarion Books.

Instructional Considerations for Concrete Poetry

When teaching students to write concrete poems, whether using the outline or drawing technique, consider these reminders.

  • Model, model, model! Planning instruction with the Gradual Release of Responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) in mind will help students better understand the cognitive and physical aspects of composing concrete poems.
    • Use inquiry to analyze some exemplars like the ones provided above or those found in books listed in the references to help students take notice of the elements of concrete poems.Select a topic as a class and write a concrete poem together, with students offering the words and their arrangement while the teacher acts as a scribe. Use questioning, such as the type seen in the video above, to help students think about their subject and form written ideas from those thoughts.Invite students to co-author a concrete poem as a pair or small group.
    • Finally, provide opportunities for students to independently write concrete poems, get feedback from peers, and share their final drafts.
  • Concrete poems do not need to rhyme.
  • Concrete poems can be written on traditional paper or digitally. If using paper, suggest to students that they use a pencil when drafting the poems. This allows them to erase and move words around where needed.
  • Encourage students to play with the size, color, and shape of their letters to better capture the essence of the poem’s subject (e.g., I might write the word TTEEEETHH in different shapes and font sizes when writing about a shark). This helps to reinforce the reciprocal nature of reading and writing by providing students a chance to consider the purpose of their craft moves.

Writing Concrete Poetry to Reflect Content Area Learning

Writing to learn and writing about learning are necessary in content-area classrooms. While many argue and I can agree that these are different notions, writing concrete poems can accomplish the aim of both.

Writing, as discussed above, must involve a discussion of ideas, leveraging the social side of learning where knowledge is co-constructed, and misunderstandings can be clarified. Additionally, when and where questions arise to inform written ideas, further research may occur; thus, more learning takes place during the writing process. For example, a student in a 7th-grade science classroom is drafting a concrete poem about a cell as part of a Life Science unit. They may refer to class notes, talk with a partner, or watch a video about cells to (1) draw the outline of a cell and/or (2) write a line about the nucleus – possibly drawing it inside another shape that is made of letters spelling out “membrane,” given that the nucleus is enclosed in a membrane. The writing of the concrete poem has the potential to reinforce learning that has occurred, provide new content, and/or inspire ways to show learning.

Both the reading and writing of concrete poems present teachers in discipline-specific classrooms with innovative methods for motivating students to engage in the content. Given their interesting appearance and brief lines, concrete poems as supplementary texts in units of study to teach a specific topic (see Image 1 about the Black Hole and Image 2 about the female paleontologist Mary Anning, who, in the early 1800s, found complete fossils that laid the foundation for Darwin’s theory of evolution) may appeal to students who are reluctant to engage with textbooks and other longer documents. As an alternative to traditional analytical research papers and essays, writing concrete poems related to learning may motivate students to take a deeper interest in the content to present their learning in a creative way. I would also maintain that crafting a line of concrete poetry deepens comprehension and calls upon sophisticated critical thinking; taking a line from prose (e.g. an article or textbook) and rewriting it in one’s own words to fit a poetic style is rigorous cognitive work. With regards to standards related to research skills and speaking and listening, I would further suggest that students provide a reference list to accompany the poems and give presentations where they explain craft moves and inspiration for certain lines.

As a former middle grades ELA/Social Studies educator, I can attest that using concrete poetry in a content area classroom allows students to reimagine learned content creatively and critically while deepening and extending their understandings and knowledge. Give it a try and share your poems with me!

References

Eppley, C. (2015, January 21). Concrete Poetry of the Noigandres, 1958-1975. Retrieved from http://avant.org/event/noigandres/

Nesbitt, K. (2023). How to Write a Concrete Poem. Retrieved from https://poetry4kids.com/lessons/how-to-write-a-concrete-poem/

Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). “The Instruction of Reading Comprehension,” Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, pp. 317-344.

Children’s Literature References & More to Consider

Grandits, J. (2004). Technically it’s not my fault: Concrete poems. Clarion Books.

Grandits, J. (2007). Blue lipstick: Concrete poems. Clarion Books.

Hood, S. (2018). Shaking things up: 14 young women who changed the world. HarperCollins.

Raczka, B. (2016). Wet cement: A mix of concrete poems. Roaring Brook Press.

Wolf, A. (2019). The day the universe exploded my head: Poems to take you into space and back again. Candlewick Press.

Brooke Hardin is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Her research interests include writing development and instruction for intermediate and middle grades students, teaching and learning through technology and new literacies, literacy professional development and teacher education, and interdisciplinary approaches to reading, writing, and the utilization of Children’s Literature. Her years of experience as an elementary and middle grades classroom teacher and curriculum literacy specialist frame her research interests and commitment to teacher education.

Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash

Categories
Teaching

Discussion Grouping

This post is written by Shannon Bosley. You can learn more about Dr. Bosley at the bottom of this post.

Discussion is a critical part of developing literacy for all content areas in a secondary setting, but it takes practice and planning for those rich academic discussions to take place. Teachers have told me they have avoided classroom discussion for a variety of reasons: time constraints, fears that the discussion could spiral out of control or even lead to disruptive behavior, worries about not having all the answers if additional questions are surfaced, etc. These are all valid concerns. Along with having pre-established norms and expectations, those concerns can all be alleviated with planning, practice, and protocol use.

Once you have decided the purpose of a discussion, created your guiding questions, and determined the protocol to use, you need to think about how you will group the students. (If you are unsure of which protocol to use, check out the School Reform Initiative’s listing of protocols.) These groupings can be affected by the content, the purpose, the protocol being used, the number of students in the class, or even the furniture or structure of the room. As a 25+ year educator, a piece of advice… don’t let secondary students select for themselves; be strategic. Some considerations to think about when planning for grouping are:

  • Heterogeneous groups or homogenous groups?
    • Skill level – Do you want the groups to be students of similar skill levels or a variety? This could also be affected by the protocol you selected. For example, if you selected Socratic Seminar, did all students receive and read the same text prior to the session? If the readings were differentiated, then that may be a factor in determining the groups.
    • Student interest – grouping students of similar interests could help with engagement.
    • Student diversity – grouping students of different backgrounds or genders can allow for unique perspectives to be shared.
    • Group size – Are there certain roles each person has within the protocol? Too many in a group can lead to some students being left out of the conversation.
  • Are there any students who need specific considerations due to an IEP, EL status, behavior plan, etc.? Does a particular student need to be or not be with another?
  • Are there any social dynamics currently happening that could affect the groups? A reasonable question to consider when working with adolescents.
  • How will the groups be communicated to the students? Will there be a list posted on the board or screen? Are students already sorted into named groups and you are utilizing those?
  • Do I need to consider furniture movement for the discussion? And if so, does my classroom management address movement in the classroom?
  • What supports will my students need? Graphic organizer, sentence stems, etc.

If this is the first time to attempt a certain protocol, remember to practice first. Students cannot be expected to be experts on the first try. A practice discussion session focused on a lighter issue such as pop culture topic not only helps the students learn the protocol but you as the teacher can access the interactions of the groupings and make needed adjustments while making sure your discussion norms and expectations are being followed. Take notes on how things went, have students reflect on the discussion, and make changes to the groups as needed.

Students need guidance and practice to engage in academic discussions. It takes time for students and teachers to learn what works and adhere to your norms and expectations. If the first time doesn’t go well, that’s ok! Try again. You could think about a different protocol, changing the groupings, adding a graphic organizer, or revising your guiding questions. Check out the planning checklist below for help in getting ready and reflecting so that your next classroom discussion is even more engaging and productive.

Planning for Academic Discussions Checklist

Planning:Notes:Reflections:
Do I have any IEP, behavior or social needs I need to consider? Does the topic have any impact on how the groups are determined?    
I determined the protocol for the discussion…Have the students used/practiced this protocol?  
How do the desks/tables need to be arranged for the protocol? Do the groups need to be able to see the board/screen?    
How do the desks/tables need to be arranged for the protocol?Do the groups need to be able to see the board/screen?    
What is the best grouping size for this protocol?    
How will I communicate the groups to the class?    
What resources do I need to have ready for use during the discussion? (graphic organizer, sentence stems, etc.)  
Is there any follow-up, exit ticket, etc. required for students to submit?Is there an evaluative tool for me to use during the discussion or after?    

Cover Photo by Kier in Sight on Unsplash

Shannon Bosley, Ed.D., is a 25-year K-12 educational veteran who has served as a middle language arts teacher, school librarian, instructional coach, district technology and curriculum coordinator, and educational consultant. She earned her doctorate in Leadership Studies at Xavier University where she studied reading engagement and leadership effectiveness for school principals. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator (PI) of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Institute of Educational Sciences. Her research project examines the Sustainable Coaching and Adaptive Learning for Education (SCALE) model that Reading Ways uses to bring research-based practices to classrooms nationally. Shannon is passionate about promoting adolescent literacy and continues to research reading engagement and motivation for both adolescents and adults.

Please connect with Shannon on Twitter (@shan_bosley) or via email: shannon@readingways.org

Categories
Teaching

Prisms, Pathways, and Portals: Disciplinary literacies as tools for possible futures

This post is written by Michael Manderino. You can learn more about Michael at the bottom of this post.

“We cannot remake the world through schooling, but we can instantiate a vision through pedagogy that creates in microcosm a transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures, a vision that is lived in schools. This might involve activities such as simulating work relations of collaboration, commitment, and creative involvement; using the school as a site for mass media access and learning; reclaiming the public space of school citizenship for diverse communities and discourses; and creating communities of learners that are diverse and respectful of the autonomy of lifeworlds.”

New London Group, 1996

It often amazes me how prescient the text (quoted above), A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures (1996) was and what it argued for just before the dawn of the 21st century. Now in the year 2023, using terms like 21st-century learning doesn’t resonate much as we are nearly a quarter way into the 21st century. I often question how much we have really taken up from the ideas even extracted from the quote above. While disciplinary literacies have been at the forefront of theory and research around adolescent learning, I believe that we need a future vision of the possibilities of disciplinary literacy. We need more than practices that simply reproduce knowledge.  We need an expansive theorizing of what disciplinary literacies can be or else we will continue to reinscribe old ways of knowing and doing for a future that is yet to be written.  

Despite a need for a widening of thought, we collectively find ourselves presented with seemingly predefined choices for where we need to stand pedagogically.  Dialogues have shifted to debates over everything from the “Science of Reading vs. Balanced literacy, Online reading vs. Offline reading, or the use of the canon vs contemporary fiction.  The pitting of the pedagogical constructs against one another creates a reductionist view of the complexities of teaching and learning.  Rather than reducing complex pedagogical constructs to binaries, perhaps we should be interrogating the possibilities for pedagogical expansion. While simple answers feel more reassuring, they do not account for the beautiful complexity of teaching and learning.

One reductionist view we might interrogate is the narrowing of what counts as disciplinary inquiry.  Expert novice studies have provided invaluable insights into what are core disciplinary practices yet can often be taken up as the singular way to approach disciplinary literacy.  Disciplinary literacy in its early conceptualization offered new ways to think about advancing knowledge building in content-area classrooms.   What follows is a set of possibilities for consideration of what might be taken up in research and practice around disciplinary literacies. Using the metaphors of pathways, prisms, and portals, I argue for the use of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches in disciplinary inquiry.  

Pathways 

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Disciplinary literacies can be pathways to explore through multidisciplinary perspectives. Pathways can be paved, worn by repeated traffic; serve as shortcuts or trails that lead to hidden beauty. Pathways can diverge or converge.  People use pathways to get somewhere or to meander. Sometimes along the path, new discoveries are made, or new paths are forged.   Pathways can serve as a metaphor for multidisciplinary inquiry. One may choose to look at a problem or topic from the lens of different disciplines. Like choosing a path or multiple pathways, inquiry can be shaped by one, two, or more disciplines. While it is critical to understand the beliefs, practices, texts, and tools used in a discipline like science or history, it is also important to see that inquiry questions can be approached from multiple disciplines. For example, we can look at a problem such as food scarcity from the perspectives of geography, economics, agriculture, and mathematics, to name just a few. We need to engage with the world from multiple perspectives that are often shaped across disciplines. Food scarcity is not a simple problem that can be understood or tackled from singular perspectives. If we only hyperfocus on singular disciplines, we may lose the forest through the trees.  

Prisms  

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Disciplinary literacies can also be prisms for seeing new possibilities. Using singular lenses to problem solve or problem pose does not account for the complexity of the problem. Prisms can reflect and refract light to illuminate the full spectrum of colors that are being absorbed. Prisms help us see things in a new light. We can think of interdisciplinary inquiry as a tool for seeing the full spectrum of perspectives around topics and problems. Interdisciplinary inquiry relies on the interconnected nature of disciplinary practices and perspectives. If we expand notions of disciplinary literacy to interdisciplinary, we add the nuances of the comparative and contrastive beliefs, tools, texts, and approaches to understanding phenomena. For example, the role of art, music, and literature provides indispensable insights into complex phenomena that cannot be fully explained through a historical or scientific analysis. By using interdisciplinary inquiry as a prism, students have access to new ways of seeing the world and their role in the world.  

Portals 

CC0 Public Domain

Disciplinary literacies can serve as portals to newly designed futures. During the Covid-19 pandemic, author Arunduti Roy (2020) argued that the pandemic could serve as a portal to new social possibilities. The notion of portals to new dimensions or time/space scales is one that is speculative and hopeful. To see disciplinary literacy as opening portals to solving wicked problems to create more just worlds is a goal that makes learning consequential. Portals also lead to the unknown. Much like disciplines themselves, portals are unsettled terrain and are absent critical voices who are often erased or silenced. To account for these silences and erasures, transdisciplinary research is conceptualized as a way to be inclusive of multiple perspectives not simply from the top down (academia) but also from the ground up (lived experiences). A transdisciplinary approach to inquiry opens opportunities for problem-posing and solving that values indigenous and local knowledge and its relation to disciplinary traditions. This expansion of disciplinary literacies offers opportunities for youth to engage in knowledge production and critique that affirms and sustains the rich tapestry of knowledge that shapes our worlds. For example, a former student and colleague, Diana Bonilla articulated the need for plant biology units to also incorporate the familial and indigenous use of plants for medicinal and culinary purposes in Latinx communities. To keep those practices obscured from disciplinary knowledge reduces our humanity and reason for understanding disciplinary perspectives. Transdisciplinary inquiry opens portals to a more inclusive and just learning environment.  

Provocations for future practice 

I hope the metaphors of pathways (multidisciplinary inquiry), prisms (interdisciplinary inquiry), and portals (transdisciplinary inquiry) provide provocations for future practice. Are there spaces in your curriculum that warrant a multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach? How might we redesign our inquiry questions to open possibilities for interdisciplinary braiding of knowledge and knowledge-building practices? How might we use this space to share ideas and iterate collectively? To me, this is an inflection point in education that we can see as filled with possibilities for drawing on the passions and inquisitive dispositions of youth to expand learning activities rather than reducing learning to a series of disconnected tasks.  Youth deserve opportunities to remake our world and to design social futures in spaces that are lived in and out of school.

Michael Manderino is an associate professor of literacy education at Northern Illinois University.  He taught high school social studies for 14 years and served as a literacy coach, literacy coordinator, and Director of Curriculum of a two-high school district for 5 years.

Follow on Twitter at @mmanderino

Email: mmanderino@niu.edu

Cover Image Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash

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