This webinar features Dr. Christy Howard, Associate Professor in the Department of Literacy Studies, English, Education, and History Education at East Carolina University. She encourages us to be mindful advocates against inaccurate stories, images, and stereotypes about marginalized people.
Click Here to access.
This week we welcome Heather Waymouth and one of her students, Hery Castro as they share the positive effects of rethinking the relationship between disciplinary literacy and equity, expertise, and inclusive education. Read more about Heather and Hery at the end of the blog
I (Heather) came into the field of disciplinary literacy as an excited doctoral student who finally saw a way that my certifications in science and literacy could make sense together. I’d spent years thinking about science as a science teacher and literacy as a literacy teacher, and never the two should mix. That I could now teach students to read science like a scientist and history like a historian felt like putting on a comfortable, old sweater.
Yet, just as my old, comfortable sweater has some holes, so, too, does disciplinary literacy. Heller (2011) and Collin (2014) encourage educators to question what counts as a discipline and if our intent really is to mold students into “little experts.” Saying that we are apprenticing students into the literacy practices of disciplinary experts should cause us to examine who counts as an expert.
That question didn’t meaningfully exist for me until I watched the movie Dark Waters (Haynes, 2019). At the film’s core is a farmer, Wilbur Tennant, seeking to sue DuPont over environmental contamination. He’s reached out to the company several times, they’ve conducted a study of his land and their nearby disposal area, and DuPont’s scientists have claimed there’s nothing wrong. Yet, Tennant has gathered his own data. When his lawyer visits the farm, there’s a poignant scene in which Tennant pulls deformed cow organs wrapped in tinfoil from his freezer, deformed hooves stored in a jar, and a video of himself conducting his own necropsy. However, because Tennant is “just a farmer,” his lived experience and expertise aren’t initially seen as “expert” enough for the law firm to justify taking on his case.
I began to rethink my devotion to disciplinary literacy. Was our focus on a narrow definition of experts and expertise helping to build and maintain the world in which Wilbur Tennant’s decades of intimate knowledge didn’t count? Rather than seek an answer from literacy scholars, I dove into science education research. After all, the newly crafted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were intended to promote equitable learning opportunities for ALL students (Lee, Miller & Januszyk, 2015).
In science, I found a conceptualization of literacy that gave me hope for a more inclusive disciplinary literacy. The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine published a report on Science Literacy which defined it across three levels: individual, community, and society (2016). Here, literacy wasn’t a form of property able to be possessed by some folks and not others. Sure, individuals’ mastery of reading, writing, and oral discourse is a necessary consideration of literacy within this model, but it isn’t the end goal. Considering how communities – especially those historically denied access to quality science education – engage in literacy as collective praxis (Roth & Lee, 2002) by bringing their diverse voices, experiences, and literacies together – provided me with a vision for disciplinary instruction which could introduce experts’ literacies and value other forms of literacy and expertise as equally valid.
Then I found Windschitl, Thompson, and Braaten’s (2018) Ambitious Science Teaching. My heart sang – here was a framework that balanced attention to equity and rigor. Not only that, it established students’ collective sensemaking as the objective of science learning. Throughout my dissertation, I observed a group of middle school science teachers using Ambitious Science Teaching to breathe life into the NGSS and had the pleasure of hearing, in their words, how this type of teaching was creating space for all students to engage in sensemaking. While even in their expert teaching, opportunities existed for a closer consideration of equity as foundational rather than supplemental to science learning, I knew I had found my soapbox to stand upon.
Now that I work full-time preparing pre-service teachers, I do everything I can to further the possibilities for equity and inclusion in disciplinary literacy. I have taken up equitable sensemaking (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2019) as the foundation of my undergraduate class on literacy in the content areas. Throughout the semester, preservice teachers work in small groups to craft a unit plan in a content area other than ELA: science, math, engineering or social studies. We adopt the ambitious science teaching framework (Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2018), understanding that while this framework was designed for science, it can be applied to any discipline. Preservice teacher teams identify an inquiry question ripe for exploration from multiple viewpoints and for incorporation of social justice and equity, such as “Why do we get sick?” Then, they map an explanation of that phenomenon, incorporating multiple viewpoints and opportunities for students to engage with new ideas, rather than be taught (told) those ideas. As my desire is for authentic learning to drive the bus, I don’t introduce standards until after the ideas mapping process has begun. Students map content area standards first and subsequently “engineer” (Moje, 2015) opportunities for literacy development within their unfolding storyline (Reiser et al., 2021).
Considering equity as foundational is often a new concept for my preservice teachers, given that most are white and from middle class backgrounds. We spend several classes learning what it might look like to incorporate perspectives other than our own early in the planning process. The works of three scholars are particularly helpful to us. While students are developing their unit’s question, we listen to Dr. Danny Morales Doyle’s interview with Abolition Science in which he discussed using social justice science issues, like pollution from a local factory, to ground high school chemistry instruction. Several days into unit planning, students use the twelve questions Dr. Gholdy Muhammad outlined in her AMLE blog post to (re)consider the cultural and historical relevance of their unit. To illustrate what an equitable sensemaking activity that draws upon diverse voices might look like, I conduct a fishbowl discussion in which each student embodies a chapter of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass, using three guiding questions: What counts as knowledge/expertise? Whose expertise matters? How do we use the knowledge we are gaining from this text to impact our teaching?
The units my students are ultimately able to build astound me. I’ve seen a math unit on how to affordably feed various sized groups, a social studies unit on why we haven’t yet had a woman elected as president, and all sorts of other units incorporating joyful learning, literacy in service to disciplinary learning, incorporations of diverse viewpoints, and opportunities for students’ identities and experiences to inform ongoing learning. But, as I heard on Reading Rainbow as a child of the 90’s, “You don’t have to take my word for it.” Hery Castro is one of my students currently engaging in planning for equitable sensemaking. I’ll let him tell you what it’s like:
Including equitable sensemaking in my unit plan caused me to reshape my thinking, and put critical literacy first, alongside relatable science phenomena. Although there was some slight confusion on what exactly Dr. Waymouth was looking for, I loved working on my assignment. As a person of color who has experienced difficulties with teachers understanding where I’m coming from, I’ve always known that I wanted more perspectives like mine included in school. Being told that it’s not only possible, but necessary to include them in this science unit (a subject area I don’t intend to teach), was affirming.
By reshaping the question of equitable sensemaking into “how can we have this relate to students’ lives outside of the classroom” and “how can we get kids to think about the impact of these scientific phenomena in communities and lifestyles other than their own”, I realized there are countless answers and options for engagement. We started with a universal question: “why do we get sick?” and broke it into more universally experienced questions like “how do diseases spread?” and “what can we do to prevent them?”
These driving questions are great; however, equitable sensemaking asks that we take a question that could be answered with just a personal tidbit and transform it into something that requires scientific and social research. My group added “why do some diseases affect some communities more than others?” and “How does access impact care?” At this point, I could tell we were approaching equity, as students would get the chance to talk about various perspectives in addition to their own lived experiences.
I found that I used this equitable sensemaking framework as the basis for each question and activity I planned for my unit. If I knew I wanted students to question why certain areas or groups of peoples are affected by a disease more than others, I knew I needed to have a lesson about how disease spreads and one that requires students to dive deeper, asking and answering the critical questions through activity. Repeating this process for each driving question, and crafting more and more activities that build upon the students’ developing understanding of both biological and social science, led to a unit plan that is rich with equitable sensemaking. This balance of social justice and grounded scientific questioning has led my group to craft something that not only reshaped our ideas of teaching, but will allow us to help create a new generation of critical thinkers in not only science, but across all domains.
References
Calabrese Barton, A., & Tan, E. (2019). Designing for rightful presence in STEM: The role of making present practices. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28(4-5), 616-658.
Collin, R. (2014). A Bernsteinian analysis of content area literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(3), 306-329.
Haynes, T. (Director). (2019). Dark Waters [Film]. Participant Media.
Heller, R. (2011). In praise of amateurism: A friendly critique of Moje’s “call for change” in secondary literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(4) 267-273.
Kimmer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants. Milkweed Editions.
Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254-278.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2016). Science literacy: Concepts, contexts, and consequences. National Academies Press.
Lee, O., Miller, E., & Januszyk, R. (Eds.). (2015). NGSS For All Students. NSTA Press.
Reiser, B. J., Novak, M., McGill, T. A. & Penuel, W. R. (2021). Storyline unites: An instructional
model to support coherence from the students’ perspective. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 32(7), 805-829.
Roth, W. M., & Lee, S. (2002). Scientific literacy as collective praxis. Public understanding of science, 11(1), 33.
Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2018). Ambitious science teaching. Harvard Education Press.
As a follow up to her webinar, Brooke Hardin expands on her resources for using multi-modal writing responses to engage students in writing.
In twenty years of teaching English Language Arts, helping students discover their “writerly life” has remained a passion. To live a writerly life means that individuals write often and with a fair amount of ease, that they see their everyday ordinary lives brimming with writing topics, and that they can use writing to reflect their ideas and potentially gain new ones. In order to begin to live a writerly life, one must be motivated to write. As teachers, engaging students in writing tasks can often be a challenge, but certain elements increase both students’ motivation for writing and their efficacy for writing tasks. Student choice in topic, modeling of strategies and techniques, consistent time to share, give, and receive feedback on writing, and invitations to write in varying modes have all been identified as ways to more likely engage students in writing. This post serves to provide strategies related to the latter idea, using various modes for writing and how these modes might inspire students to write and deepen their knowledge of disciplinary content.
What is Multimodal Writing? What Might it Look/Sound Like?
Multimodal texts are print-based and digital texts using more than one mode or semiotic resource to present meaning; mode is defined as a socio culturally formed resource to make meaning (Kress, 1010; Serafini, 2015). Authors have been exploring multimodal response for over a decade and have seen its potential to engage students in personal response and critical analysis of literature, while also developing their appreciation of genres (Dalton & Grisham, 2013). Expanding students’ literacy palette to include the modes of image, video, audio, and writing offers them more choices for how to develop and express their thinking about reading. When readers write about, interpret, or respond in some fashion to their transaction with a text, a new text is produced as the reader-turns-writer; that is, a writer or creator who seeks to express that experience with the text (Rosenblatt, 1994). Writing in a poetic form or creating a digital design as an aesthetic response to the reading positions the reader-turned-writer to adopt an aesthetic stance in which the student’s attention is focused on the lived-through experience of the reading: the emotions, moods, intuitions, attitudes, and tensions connected to the ideas and characters embodied in the text (Rosenblatt, 1994). Thus, one of the benefits of multimodal writing tasks is their potential to deepen comprehension and/or content learning.
One strategy for multimodal writing is called a half-and-half portrait (see Image 1). To create this piece, a student would first “write” the portrait about themselves. The portrait is a visual representation of an individual done by drawing one half of the person’s face using physical features (i.e., hair style, eye color, nose shape) and then filling in the other half of the face with images, quotes, or other ideas that relate to the person’s attributes, interests, life experiences. Once a student has created a half-and-half portrait about themselves, they can apply the strategy to a character from text, historical or present-day figure, or any other person. For example, the physical side of the portrait is created using the features visualized by the reader based on descriptions in the text. The other half of the character’s face uses images and other ideas related to the character and inspired by evidence from the text. For example, students might read the middle grades novel Refugee by Alan Gratz, which portrays the refugee experience of three distinct, fictional adolescent characters. Students reading this novel could further explore and demonstrate their understanding of these characters through the creation of a half-and-half portrait (see Image 2).
Image 1: Personal ½ and ½ Portrait (created by author)
Image 2: Isabel from Refugee (created by author)
In addition to creating the portraits, students can also create video or audio recordings that explain the thinking behind their multimodal writings. Teachers might ask students to discuss both the materials used to create the portraits and the ideas represented in the portraits. In multimodal writing using a visual art form such as this portrait, selection of materials and images or quotes used should be as intentional as word choice is in written texts. An example of my explanation for my half-and-half portrait can be found using this link.
As with any new genre of writing, students need mentor texts they can reference for ideas and inspiration. Picture books, especially those that have been recognized for their illustrations, serve as some of my favorite mentor texts for multimodal writing with visual art (see Images 3 and 4).
Image 3: Illustrations made with stones in Stepping Stones: A Refugee FAmily’s Journey by Margaret Ruurs
Image 4:
Illustrations made with layered collage featuring book pages,
tattered book covers, neon paints, and cloth in How to Read a
Book by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Engaging Students in Writing with Poetry
Poetry is another genre that often engages students in writing tasks. Poetry is subjective and its structure can vary. Some forms, like haiku, have a particular form, but poetry can also be as simples as a collection of a person’s favorite words. The rules of writing become more relaxed in different types of poems, which allows students to tap into their creativity and use their voice to play with words, line breaks, and the appearance of the poem. Many poems are what I call “bite-sized;” thus, they are also less intimidating to write for more reluctant writers.
Definition Poems
Definition poems are a specific type of poetry that follows a form but also holds space for students to use craft moves and have agency with the writing. This form of poetry is inspired by some of the pages from the middle grade novel The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (see Image 5). Written in verse, the novel features several poetic styles, including definition poems, that might serve as mentor texts for students poetic writing. The definition poem invites students to engage in writing while also enhancing their vocabulary knowledge and using learned content to create something new.
Image 5: Definition poem from The Crossover
When teaching students to write definition poems, teachers should use the same principles they would use with teaching any other genre. Reference the mentor text, such as one of Alexander’s poems from The Crossover, and engage students in inquiry by asking them to take notice of how the author wrote the poem – that is, to think about and name aloud the “ingredients” used in the poem and what might be required for someone else to write the same style of poem. For example, teachers would point out how each stanza begins with “As in:” and how the vocabulary term is used in each stanza. Teachers might use a shared writing approach to co-author a definition poem with the whole class and invite students to co-author this kind of poem in pairs before they write one independently. Again, this kind of poem can be used with vocabulary from novels students read and to other content areas. See Image 6 for an example definition poem written about the math term parallel. As seen in the example, the poem offers students the opportunity to sustain their thinking about a word and its meaning and invites them to see how vocabulary terms are relevant to their lives. Additionally, these kinds of poems can serve as a piece of writing in a larger multimodal piece. For example, students might be invited to illustrate each stanza of the poem to add a visual layer.
Image 6: Example definition poem (created by author)
Golden Shovel Poems
Golden shovel poems are a poetic form created by Terrance Hayes and inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “We Real Cool.” To write a golden shovel poem, the writer must do the following:
Inspired by Terrance Hayes, Nikki Giovanni wrote the book One Last Word, which is a book of golden shovel poems about the Harlem Renaissance. Using two of the poems from this book as mentor text (see Images 7 and 8), teachers can help students see how the poem is written and gain inspiration for their own writing.
Image 7: “Storm Ending” from One Last Word
Image 8: “Truth,” a poem written by Nikki Giovanni using a line from “Storm Ending” by Jean Toomer
Teachers should immerse students in reading many different poems, invite them to bring in poems – including song lyrics – that they admire, to gain ideas and inspiration for writing their own golden shovel poems. Again, teachers may want to scaffold this kind of writing and co-author poems with students in a whole group setting before tasking students with writing one on their own. Golden shovel poems are complex but also provide students an opportunity to play with word choice, syntax, line breaks, and be creative in their writing. Inspired by a poem from Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs, I show students my own attempt at this poetic form (See Images 9 and 10).
Image 9: Excerpt from “Luke’s Junkyard Song” by Mary Oliver
Image 10: Golden shovel using the last two lines from “Luke’s Junkyard Song” (created by author)
Final Thoughts
No matter the strategy used, teachers must remember to embrace vulnerability and write alongside of students, both modeling the techniques and making the cognitive side of writing – word choice decisions, art medium choices, etc. – become evident and accessible for students. Writers need to see and hear other writers engaged in writing to discern the process and be inspired. Writers also need room for creativity. Each of the strategies offered here provides space for creativity and the opportunity for students to express themselves while also learning and showing their content knowledge.
References
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London, UK: Routledge.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The transactional theory of reading and writing. In R. Ruddell et al. (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Serafini, F. (2015). Multimodal literacy: From theories to practices. Language Arts, 92(6), 412-423.
This week’s blog is by Beth Shaver as she shares how to develop primary source anthologies in Social Studies and History courses. Read more about Beth at the end of her blog.
When I think about literacy in social studies, my mind is automatically drawn to conversations around the purpose of social studies. There is a consensus that the primary purpose of social studies is to educate our students about citizenship and active participation in our republic (NCSS, n.d.). As teachers, we understand that literacy is a necessity for civic engagement and that literacy, and the social studies, are inextricably linked.
For our students, however, that connection may not be so clear. I imagine that we would be hard-pressed to find a social studies teacher who has not been asked the age-old questions of ‘Why do I have to learn this?’ and ‘Who cares about a bunch of old dead men?’ Honestly, the root of their argument is valid. Falling back on Mark Twain’s musing that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” as a rationale is simply not enough to convince our students that social studies generally, and literacy in the social studies specifically, is necessary or that primary sources are useful.
If we, as teachers, are going to ask students to read, think critically, and be willing to participate in critical discussions, they are going to want to know why. Especially in the modern era when we are competing with cell phones and social media in the classroom, our students need to internalize why social studies matters to them. Ultimately, reading in social studies classrooms must be relevant to our students.
Charting a Student-Centered Approach
While there are many approaches to student-centered, engaging, literacy-based, and relevant lesson plans in social studies classrooms, an approach that I used in my classroom, and had success with, was the individual curation of anthologies. As a White woman who was teaching the African American Studies course, this approach came about because it was important for me that students had the autonomy to research and learn about ideas and issues that were important to them in parallel to the history that they were learning in class. I knew that I did not have the authority or ability to speak to every issue. So, I focused on the history and taught the students how to find voices and experiences of the past in primary source materials, based on what they were interested in and curious about.
Although the anthology originated in an elective course, it can be easily applied in any history-based social studies course and can be scaffolded or extended based on the needs of the individual learner. Application of state social studies standards to this project can be woven in easily with this project as well. As an example, in North Carolina, our social studies standards ask students to trace ideas and themes throughout the eras as they seek to understand change over time through history. The anthology approach embraces this goal by encouraging students to pull threads throughout history that pique their curiosity.
In my class, students had the opportunity to take the course at the academic (e.g., general education) or honors level which meant that within one classroom, I had a wide range of students representing diverse learning experiences and reading abilities. Each of them approached the anthology project as individuals and at their own level, and by the end of the semester, each student had an anthology to present at a meet-the-author event in our school’s media center.
The Anthology at a Glance
The work to begin a course-long anthology project begins at the beginning of the course and requires patience from both the teacher and the students. Each must understand that this type of project requires learning, adjustments, scaffolding, thoughtful preparation, and structure. To me, this work is the most exciting and has the potential for the greatest rewards! Early in the course, lessons around digital literacy and digital history are crucial for student success and can guide students toward recognizing reliable websites and materials for their projects (Manfra, 2020; Wineburg & McGrew, 2019). My diverse group of learners needed to be provided with a digital library of resources that each learner could use as a starting point. While some were confident and able to find reliable resources independently, others required the scaffolding of more concrete places to start, especially in the beginning.
A second consideration early in the course is how students will source and analyze the primary sources they use. Following a format found in many historical anthologies, we started by asking each student to find the title, author, and date of the source that they found. Then, using different scaffolding strategies depending on the source and the student, we modified an Advanced Placement source reading strategy, HIPP+: Historical context, intended audience, purpose, point of view, and the + represented the student’s interest in the document, theme, or history. This allowed students to work towards understanding each source they chose, unpacking it, and learning to express why they found it valuable.
Finally, the most significant portion of this project is the focus on student choice. Each student had the opportunity to either choose a theme for their anthology or to keep it flexible depending on their own goals and interests. We spent time as a class brainstorming potential themes that could transcend time and thinking about the potential that each theme could hold. Taking this approach gave students agency to trace themes and ideas throughout history, taught them disciplinary literacy skills, and allowed them to find a love of history based on their research interests.
In the end, each one of my students completed an anthology that highlighted two to three primary sources from each unit of study in our class. Each one was different. Each one was special. Each one represented an individual’s unique learning.
The file below is an example of an organizer for identifying and understanding key terms in a reading selection.
References
Manfra, M. M. (2020). Digital history 2020. Social Education, 84(2), 118-122.
National Council for the Social Studies. (n.d.). About: The national council for the social studies. https://www.socialstudies.org/about/about#:~:text=The%20primary%20purpose%20of%20social,and%20involvement%20in%20civic%20affairs.
Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11), 1-40.
Elizabeth (Beth) Shaver is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Science at North Carolina State University with a concentration in Social Studies. She has taught social studies for fourteen years between California and North Carolina.
This webinar features Beth Shaver and provides resources for collecting Social Studies resources from multiple perspectives. Click here to access.
This blog is written by Katie Kelly to remind us how and why to teach a more current and accurate history curriculum. Read more about Katie at the bottom of her post.
Looking Back
For far too long, social studies has been taught (if taught at all) through a teacher-centered model comprised of lectures, note-taking, and task-oriented textbook reading. Students are assigned chapters with questions to answer and are later tested on the content. History becomes rote memorization of key dates and figures without meaningful context or deep learning. Therefore, we should not be surprised that many students lack understanding of significant historical events and find social studies both boring and irrelevant. A 2020 survey of adults under forty revealed that ten percent of respondents were unfamiliar with the Holocaust, and sixty-three percent of those surveyed did not know that over six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (Pew Research Center, 2020).
This is frightening and concerning. Not only do we need to ensure that young people are learning history but also that they are learning about it from multiple perspectives in order to weave a more complete tapestry of truth. Dr. Gholdy Muhammad (2020) reminds us to consider how our curriculum and instruction help us understand power, equity, and anti-oppression. Our teaching practices must be responsive to the historical events that shape the present if we aim to help students understand content from marginalized perspectives (Muhammad, 2020).
Teaching Today
Textbooks remain the primary source of social studies content in many classrooms (Brophy & Alleman, 2009). One problem with relying solely on textbooks is that they are designed as an overview of vast periods of time and lack depth and breadth on specific topics. As a result, textbooks often convey oversimplified information and are frequently told from a single perspective that omits the voices and stories of historically marginalized groups (Yearta & Kelly, 2021). This results in a narrow, biased, white-washed curriculum. Sanitized versions of history induce a sense of patriotism while ignoring the complicated past and present (Demoiny & Ferraras-Stone, 2018). As James W. Lowen writes in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2018),“The stories that history textbooks tell are all predictable; every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved… Textbooks exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly upon on national character.”
We cannot ignore our complicated and difficult past if we seek a better tomorrow for future generations. To foster increased engagement in learning a more complete and accurate history, we must build our capacity and willingness to include multiple perspectives and acknowledge that every perspective is true and partial (Hamilton et al., 2020).
Moving Forward
In order to teach a more complete and accurate history, we can incorporate multiperspective text sets including books, articles, primary sources, multimodal resources, etc. featuring the stories and perspectives that have traditionally been silenced or marginalized. Multiperspective text sets help students layer their learning about complex history to develop a more nuanced and accurate understanding of how it influences the present. When students have opportunities to connect the past to the present, history becomes more relatable and relevant to their lives (Kelly et al., 2023).
In our book, Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding Students to Deeper Meaning (2023), we offer a multiple read framework to help students move beyond passive acceptance of information towards a deeper critical analysis of text by questioning the author’s intent, the information included/excluded, how the text positions the reader, and who benefits or is harmed by it. The return read seeks to disrupt and interrupt widely accepted narratives, the writer’s intention, and the reader’s stance to uncover hidden truths. This return read, or critical read, is necessary when examining the ways in which history is presented. As readers deconstruct texts, they think critically about historical and current events to examine power relations revealed in text and mirrored in society (Jones, 2006; Vasquez, 2010).
Sample questions for critical reading:
These questions serve as a framework to help students move beyond the dominant narrative to explore counter narratives and expand their perspectives and understanding of our country’s past and present. History textbooks often center the stories of the victor, the hero, the white male. For example, we think of our founding fathers and our first president and general of the Continental Army who led us toward independence. The Declaration of Independence stated that all men were created equal. We celebrate the Fourth of July with displays of patriotism from waving flags, red, white and blue clothing, parades, and fireworks displays. Yet, history textbooks rarely explain that neither women nor people of color had independence and freedom. In fact, slavery was not abolished for another 86 years when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Even then, it took three years for this information to reach enslaved people in Texas. On June 19, 1865, federal troops traveled to Galveston, Texas, to bring the news of freedom. This day has been commemorated as Juneteenth, and though Black citizens have long celebrated it, it has largely been overlooked until recently. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in the U.S. in 2021 amidst continued activism and the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Teaching about Juneteenth is one way to help students bridge the past to the present to learn the nuanced and more complete truth of this part of U.S. history. This Book Buzz blog post offers a sample text set to help students deepen their understanding of the importance of Juneteenth.
Our country has a long history of centering the power of dominant voices. This perspective is privileged in the curriculum in our schools as well. Therefore, we must work to ensure that multiple perspectives are included when teaching social studies. Consider your own school experiences. What were you taught? What weren’t you taught? Whose stories were included? Whose were left out? How did that shape your beliefs about the world and your place in it? (Kelly et al., 2023).
Critical comprehension requires deeper reading to consciously question the text, the world, and the stories we’ve been told. Critical readers seek a more nuanced understanding by uncovering silenced voices, omitted narratives, and multiple perspectives needed to weave a more informed and complete tapestry of truth.
References
Brophy, J., & Alleman, J. (2009). Meaningful social studies for elementary students. Teachers and Teaching, 15(3), 357– 376.
Demoiny, S.B. & Ferraras-Stone, J. (2018). Critical Literacy in Elementary Social Studies:
Juxtaposing Historical Master and Counter Narratives in Picture Books. The Social Studies, 109(2), 64-73.
Hamilton, D.M., Wilson, G.M., & Loh, K.M. (2020). Compassionate Conversations: How to speak and listen from the heart. Boulder, CO: Shambhala.
Jones, S. (2006). Girls, social class and literacy: What teachers can do to make a difference. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Kelly, K., Laminack, L. & Vasquez, V. (2023). Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding
Students to Deeper Meaning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Lowen, J. W. (2018). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong. New York: The New Press.
Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literature. New York: Scholastic.
Pew Research Center, Jan. 22, 2020, “What Americans Know About the Holocaust”. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/01/22/what-americans-know-about-the-holocaust/.
Vasquez, V. (2010). Getting beyond “I like the book”: Creating space for critical literacy in K-6 classrooms. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Yearta, L. & Kelly, K.(2021). Digital Storytelling to Enhance Social Studies Content Knowledge, Explore Multiple Perspectives, and Advocate for Social Justice. In J. Tussey & L. Haas (Eds.). Connecting Disciplinary Literacy and Digital Storytelling in K-12 Education. IGI Global.
This blog is written by Tori Young and shows us how to scaffold written essays resulting in a video essay. Read more about Tori at the bottom of her post.
Have you ever caught yourself in the never-ending rabbit hole of online video essays? Conspiracy theories, movie plot analyses, theme park history and so many more topics are explained in a thorough manner with research and analysis weaving together ideas and backgrounds you never would have put together. Even if you have not stumbled into this online phenomenon, I can assure you that your students have. Whether hour long YouTube deep-dives, or short TikTok synopsis series, students are being presented with researched information about a wide range of topics even if they do not recognize it. After noticing this for myself, I asked “why aren’t more essays like this?”
Research papers and argumentative essays are the primary form of essay writing used in my history classroom. I want my students to know how to be informed citizens and communicate their ideas and beliefs in a way that is grounded in historical truth and facts. I typically scaffold this process throughout the year using activities based on the content. Typically, I start out with an exit ticket asking students to pick a side on a tough topic (no in between!) and tell me why they chose their stance. Nothing formal just to get them to practice how to take a stance. Slowly I will make them add facts from a document we read in class to back up their positions and eventually start teaching the research process by having them look for reliable sources of their own to support their side. Eventually, all that information can be used to organize and create a well-written paper for social studies.
The broad goals of this process are to teach students how to make informed decisions and communicate their ideas effectively. While a traditional essay is an excellent way to practice those skills, many teachers like me have seen the difficulties for students that come with that ultimate step of writing the paper. For many students, the formal language or length of the writing assignment can be daunting to approach, causing them to shut down before trying. But we look at them confused; they have already practically written the paper with their summaries and research. Why can’t they just fill in the gaps with just a few sentences?
I found myself asking these questions every year. When I asked my students to verbalize their answers, I got great insight and connections to the content from them. They know this content, in fact many of them get passionate about it when it is time for them to argue. As I pondered this, I concluded that most of my students will only share their research and findings about topics verbally in their futures. Why am I not adding a verbal layer of assessment to this process?
This is where the wonderful world of video essays came into play for me and my classes. A video essay takes on the same structure as an essay but uses visual aids and commentary to present the information. Just like a good historical essay, it begins with background information on the topic and a clear thesis. It is then followed by key points that are supported by examples. And lastly, the video concludes with the creator’s main idea and the topic’s historical impact. Video essays help students practice research skills, organizing ideas and examples, but instead of writing, they are practicing presentation skills!
An example of this in my high school US History classes is during our unit on the Antebellum era. There are a lot of names of important people during this period; abolitionists, women’s rights activists, and politicians. I let my students pick from a list of key figures to research to share their life story. I give loose parameters on the assignment, asking students to provide the background of the person’s life, their contributions to Antebellum America, and their lasting impact on the United States. Some students may need more guidance, so it may be helpful to provide examples of information you are looking for such as their birthplace, career, and writings to name a few possibilities. I then ask students to record a two-minute video using WeVideo or Screencastify to present their findings using media to support their discussion.
I have seen my quietest students speak without hesitation in these videos, presenting on topics with great care and speaking skills. The key is that I do not show them in front of the class. Once the fear of being judged by their peers is taken away, students become comfortable with the process. They also begin to get creative with their media. Many will create a PowerPoint to display and follow along with for their video. However, I have seen animations, skits, and eulogies come out of this assignment as students begin to find their creativity with this medium.
Students are still practicing all the skills I need them to learn for my goals, but by incorporating video essays I have seen higher levels of engagement with historical content. This is not meant to take away from the importance of formal writing. While not all our students will go on to university and academia, they will still need to write important emails and apply for jobs. Formal writing is an important skill, but if you also notice students needing an extra step in scaffolding the writing process in social studies then consider video essays. Students will even surprise themselves with how much they know!
Images courtesy of Pexels
This blog is written by Lesley Roessing suggesting that a variety of texts can be used to teach historical events still impacting the world today. Read more about Lesley at the bottom of her post.
No historical event may be as unique and complicated to discuss and teach as the events of September 11, 2001, the day terrorists crashed planes into, and destroyed, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At the time of this event, no child in our present K-12 educational system was yet born, but, in most cases, their parents and educators would have been old enough to have some knowledge of, and even personal experience with, these events, making this a very difficult historic event for many to teach. However, with the devastation and impact of these events on our past, present, and future and as ingrained a part of history these events are, they need to be discussed and understood as much as possible.
An effective way to learn about these events is through story. Powerful novels have been written about this tragedy, for all age levels and, fascinatingly, each presents a different perspective of the events. Some take place during September 11, some following the events, some a few years later or many years later, and a few include two timelines. Many take place from the perspectives of multiple characters.
On September 11, 2021, YA Wednesday posted my guest-blog “Novels, Memoirs, Graphics, and Picture Books to Commemorate September 11th.” In this blog, I interviewed authors and reviewed and recommended 24 texts and six picture books.
Since then, I have read two additional texts:
Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi
“Suspicion of those unlike us is common human behavior. We don’t trust who we don’t know. But yes, 9/11 was terrible, and it really fueled the fire of hatred in this country.” (184-5)
Sixth grader Yusuf Azeem was born in Texas and is an American; his mother was also born in America and his father was a Pakistani immigrant who runs the popular A to Z Dollar Store in town (and a somewhat a local hero after capturing an intruder threatening his store and customers). The family is Muslim, but, understandably, Yusuf is shocked when sixth grade begins with threatening notes in his locker. When one says, “Go home,” he is hurt and confused. Frey, Texas is his home. Surely the notes are meant for someone else.
This is a novel that may benefit from some background on the events of September 11, 2001, since the action takes places in 2021 but, read individually, Ausuf’s uncle’s journal helps to fill in information. The importance of this particular novel is that it demonstrates that, for some of our citizens and students, “Twenty years. So much time. But things haven’t really changed at all.” (48) One of the major events in the story—when a little computer in his backpack beeped and, instead of questioning him and investigating, Ausuf is thrown in jail for twelve hours—is based on a real event from 2015 where Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old, was arrested at his high school because of a disassembled digital clock he brought to school to show his teachers [https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb].
It is vital that our children learn about 9/11 because, as Yusuf’s mamoo says, “History informs our present and affects our future.” (81)
In the Shadows of the Fallen Towers by Don Brown
Don Brown’s graphic novel recounts events following the 9/11 attacks on the Towers and the Pentagon from the moment of the “jetliner slamming into the North Tower of the World Trade Center” to the one-year anniversary ceremonies at the Pentagon, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at Ground Zero. It also covers the fighting of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the capture and interrogation of prisoners from an al-Qaeda hideout in Pakistan.
The drawings allow readers to bear witness to the heroism of the first responders, firefighters, and police as they move from rescue to recovery over the ten months following the attacks and learn the stories of some of the survivors they saved. It is the story of the nameless “strangers [who] help[ed] one another, carrying the injured, offering water to the thirsty, and comforting the weeping.” (23)
We learn and view details that we may have not known, such as “Bullets start to fly when the flames and heat set off ammunition from fallen police officers’ firearms,” (11) the “Pentagon workers [who] plunge[d] into the smoke-filled building to restore water pressure made feeble by pipes broken in the attack,” (36) and former military who donned their old uniforms and “bluff[ed their way] past the roadblocks” to “sneak onto the Pile” to help. (50, 52)
For more mature readers this book adds to the story of 9/11 in a more “graphic” way.
I have taught a unit on NINE ELEVEN through book clubs in multiple schools from grades 5 through 9 in both ELA and Social Studies classes. Children and adolescents have felt comfortable these sensitive and challenging concepts and examining these troubling events and some of the ensuing difficulties, prejudices, and bullying, through the eyes of characters who are around their ages, some readers sharing personal stories in their small collaborative groups. I am thankful for the authors who have allowed our children to experience these events in a safe and compassionate way. I have presented these novels and strategies and lessons for reading through book clubs at local workshops and national conferences. I included my 9/11 Book Club unit as a chapter in TALKING TEXTS: A Teacher’s Guide To Book Clubs Across The Curriculum.
Condensed and reproduced with permission from https://www.literacywithlesley.com/blog posted on September 2, 2023.
Follow her website, created to support educators—teachers, librarians, and parents, at https://www.literacywithlesley.com/
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.
Mentor texts are typically short, engaging texts provided to students for a particular purpose, including (but not limited to) the following:
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.
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):
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:
When we are working with educators to strengthen their writing instruction, we emphasize the following practices:
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 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 | |||
| ELA | Mathematics | Science | Social Studies |
| Michigan Middle School English Language Arts Units | Writing in Mathematics – Annenberg Learner | Scaffolding Students’ Written Explanations | AST Beyond Writing to Learn, The Science Teacher (NSTA) | Read.Inquire.Write |
| The New York Times MS HS Writing Curriculum | |||
| Music | Physical Education & Health | Visual Arts | Heritage & World Languages |
| Lesson Idea | MAEIA | WritingAthletes.com | Lesson Idea | MAEIA | The 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
