Literacy

Beyond the Vocabulary List

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by Camriel Kostreva

What if vocabulary instruction helped students make meaning in a subject rather than simply memorize definitions? 

There are so many words students need to learn, and so many obstacles to teaching them well. As a teacher, I have found two challenges particularly difficult: 

  1. Choosing which words to teach explicitly.  How do we select words that strengthen content learning without taking valuable time away from the content itself? Students enter our classrooms with different vocabularies and prior knowledge, so not every student needs the same instruction. And with so many important words and so little time, vocabulary instruction can easily feel like an interruption to a lesson rather than an essential part of learning. 
  1. Helping students retain and apply what they learn.  Even after a great vocabulary lesson, students may forget the words or struggle to use them independently. Planning meaningful opportunities for students to revisit words while continuing to introduce new ones can feel overwhelming. 

Vocabulary instruction is challenging, but I believe it is worth the time and effort it takes to get it right. Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in reading comprehension and students’ ability to access and learn disciplinary content (Brabham et al., 2012).

As a former high school English teacher and current secondary reading interventionist, I have spent years experimenting with vocabulary instructional strategies and tools. Some were helpful; others felt like a waste of time. Too often, the strategies that looked promising on paper felt disconnected from my instruction, required too many steps, or demanded more planning and instructional time than I could sustainably give.

That changed when I learned about disciplinary literacy and began rethinking my overarching instructional goal.

My goal isn’t simply to teach students a list of words—or even to cover a list of learning objectives. My goal is to help students develop the knowledge and strategies they need to become independent learners and active participants in their academic disciplines. 

Vocabulary instruction becomes much more powerful when we keep that goal in mind. Our job is to help bridge the gap between the knowledge, experiences, and language students bring to the classroom and the ways of thinking, communicating, and making meaning valued within the disciplines they are learning.

So, what does that look like in practice? 

Strategic, Student- and Content-Centered Word Selection

Choosing the right words to teach, and knowing when to teach them, is challenging regardless of the instructional strategy we use. I love words and believe they all have something to offer, but I’ve learned that I can’t teach them all and still keep content learning at the center. 

I’ve found that I get the most out of my vocabulary instruction when I prioritize words that students will encounter in an upcoming text, concept, or learning objective and that offer opportunities for connections beyond a single lesson. These words might include those with common roots and multiple meanings and are essential words for understanding instructional content. 

The key is to select words that do more than help students get through a single lesson. Vocabulary instruction should be integrated within and across content areas,  and it should be comprehensive (Blachowicz et al., 2006; Nagy & Townsend, 2012). We want students to recognize connections between the words they learn in class and the words they encounter elsewhere, gradually expanding their knowledge of language and their ability to learn new words independently.

My frustration with spending so much time on vocabulary without seeing a meaningful impact on students’ content learning began to ease when I gave myself permission to respond flexibly to student needs and let go of the expectation that I had to plan every learning experience in advance. 

Now, I begin with the content I want students to learn. Vocabulary instruction supports that goal; it doesn’t compete with it. 

At the beginning of a lesson, I typically introduce one to three words as a hook or gateway into the learning ahead. As we explore those words, students know to consider a bigger question: How do these words connect to the content we’re learning today?

Students make predictions about those connections, then revisit them at the end of the lesson to confirm or revise their thinking. Inferencing is an important skill in any field, but especially in reading and language learning (Blachowicz et al., 2006), and it’s a core skill students practice as part of my vocabulary instruction.

Words I preteach: These words are central to understanding the upcoming text or concept. They might come directly from the text, or they might be words that help students encapsulate the main idea or topic they’ll be learning about.

Of course, this is only a small part of vocabulary instruction. Much of the learning happens in context, and the words we address—and the time and strategies we use—depend on students’ needs.

That requires preparation, but it also requires flexibility. When previewing instructional materials, I try to put myself in my students’ shoes and anticipate which words or concepts might cause difficulty. I prepare possible ways to address those challenges, then adjust as I see what students actually know.

When we encounter an unfamiliar word, I ask students what they already know. If they understand it, we move on. If they don’t, I’m ready to help.

Words we discover in context: These include words that students find interesting and words I notice they are struggling to understand. As we encounter them, I teach them about the word and draw attention to previously taught words and roots that are relevant, helping students connect new learning to what they already know. Along with inferencing, building students’ morphological awareness and teaching students to think about words across contexts are two other central aspects of my vocabulary instruction. There is a significant correlation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension (Liu et al., 2024). Likewise, helping students create connections between words and contexts promotes the ability to think flexibility about words in order to generalize vocabulary and apply word knowledge in new contexts (Norman et al., 2023).

At first, letting go of rigid vocabulary routines made me anxious. I worried that students would study fewer words and miss opportunities for deeper word study. But I’ve found that when vocabulary instruction is grounded in content learning and responds to students’ needs, my students largely retain vocabulary learning and apply practiced vocabulary strategies independently. 

My students don’t complain about vocabulary anymore. More often than not, they’re excited to share connections between words with common roots and words they’ve encountered in other classes.

For my students and me, vocabulary has become a tool for understanding content rather than a disruption to it.

Keeping Vocabulary Visible & In-Use

We’ve all heard about the importance of repeated encounters with words. Research explores how often students need to encounter a word, the kinds of encounters that support learning, and the intervals at which those encounters should occur (Uchihara et al., 2019; Nakata & Elgort, 2021). We also know that understanding a word isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. A student might recognize a word without being able to define it, understand a word’s meaning without knowing how to use it appropriately, or recognize a familiar word in one context without understanding its meaning in another (Monster et al., 2021).

These are important considerations, but I found myself making vocabulary instruction unnecessarily complicated as I tried to plan and manufacture every encounter with every word. I felt as though I was failing my students whenever I couldn’t keep up.

When I refocused on content learning and meeting students where they were, I realized that many of these encounters began to happen naturally. I just needed to recognize and take advantage of them.

By selecting fewer, more purposeful words and letting student needs guide the rest of our word study, I’ve made vocabulary instruction more manageable. Words reappear naturally throughout lessons and across units. I make a point of highlighting them in texts, using them in my own speech, and encouraging students to use them in theirs. Keeping previously taught words visible in the classroom also reminds us to notice and revisit them. 

Opportunities to retrieve words, elaborate on their meanings, and connect them to new contexts can help strengthen word knowledge (Rice & Tokowicz, 2020). This more flexible approach has helped me create these opportunities for students without having to engineer every interaction. It has also made word study more enjoyable and encouraged students to become curious about language.

Rather than treating vocabulary as a separate task to complete, we make it part of how we learn, talk, read, and think.

Classroom Example: An Expedition for Meaning

This week, my students read a short text of about 600 words titled Lewis and Clark Go West. The lesson had three goals:

  1. Use knowledge of social studies values and goals to analyze the genre and structure of a social science text.
  2. Practice identifying main idea.
  3. Build background knowledge about a topic students are studying in their history course.

Here’s how vocabulary instruction fits into that lesson.

Vocabulary Pre-Teach: Expedition

I chose expedition because it appears several times in the text, captures an important idea, and offers opportunities to explore word parts, morphology, and how knowledge of roots can help us learn unfamiliar words.

I began by writing the word on the whiteboard. Students copied it into their vocabulary notes using a graphic organizer I had provided.

Then I asked them to look closely at the word. Could they identify any familiar words or word parts?

They identified ex- and -ion, and we discussed their meanings and explored other words containing those elements. I then introduced ped-/pod-, a root associated with the foot, and students considered how that connection might help us think about the meaning of expedition. We discussed how word parts can provide clues to meaning without always giving us the complete definition. 

Next, I shared the definition of expedition and gave examples of the word in use. The students then wrote their own example sentences using the newly learned word.

Before moving on, I gave them the opportunity to practice using their new understanding of the vocabulary word and its roots by exploring the word expedite. Students identified familiar word parts and used them to make an initial inference about the word’s meaning. After I shared the definition—to speed up a process—they compared the definition with their predictions and discussed the connection.

With our word study complete, we turned to the bigger question: How might expedition connect to our learning objective or today’s text?

Our learning objective was: “We will analyze the genre and structure of a social science text so that I can make inferences about the purpose of the text and identify the main idea.”

Some students suggested that we were going on an expedition to learn more about social studies or to discover how to identify a main idea. Others noticed the title of the text and used their background knowledge of Lewis and Clark to infer that the word referred to their journey.

Students had made an initial prediction, and they now had a reason to pay attention to how the word connected to the content.

This has become a familiar routine in my classroom, so students know what to expect. The entire activity took about 10 minutes.

Vocabulary In-Context: Responding to Student Needs

Before the lesson, I anticipated that students might struggle with the words intrepid, keelboat, adequate, and impede in the text.

For intrepid, adequate, and impede, I considered how students might break down the words, which familiar word parts might help them, what context clues were available, and where they might encounter the words again. I was especially excited that impede offered an opportunity to revisit a word part we’d discussed during our study of expedition.

Because keelboat was a specialized term that wasn’t central to the lesson’s learning goals, I planned to explain it briefly in context and point out the clues in the text that helped establish its meaning.

 I was correct in my assumption that students would struggle with those words, and I taught them as planned. However, when we encountered adequate, and I paused to ask students what it meant, students demonstrated that they already understood the word, so we moved on. 

This is an important part of responsive instruction: I can prepare to teach a word without assuming that I need to teach it. The goal isn’t to teach every word students might encounter. It’s to identify the words that might interfere with learning and determine what support students actually need.

As we moved through the text, other words and phrases needed attention, including confirmation, catalogued, and blind-devotion.

Several students seemed unsure about confirmation, so rather than immediately giving them the definition, I used a few questions to help them draw on what they already knew.

Me: “What other word does this look like?” 

Students: “Confirm.” “Firm.” “Does it use com-?”

Me: “Yes!” “What does con-, com-, col-, cor-, co– mean?”

Students: “Together!”

Me: “Yes! What does it mean if something is described as firm?”

Students: “To be hard.” “To be strong.” “Like, solid.”

Me: “Right. So, remind me, what does it mean when you confirm something to be true?”

Students: “You give evidence to make something more legit.”

Me: “Exactly. And confirmation is a noun representing that act.”

Students: “So confirmation means proving something is real?”

Me: “You got it! It’s the act of proving that an idea or statement is true. One last question, why does the author write that this was a ‘voyage of confirmation’?”

Students: (looking at the text) “Um, because they had to see if what other people said before was true.”

Me: “So they had to…what?”

Students: “Confirm it.”

This conversation took less than a minute, but it gave students an opportunity to connect familiar language to a new word and use the text to deepen their understanding. Rather than supplying the definition immediately, I used questions to help students activate prior knowledge, examine meaningful word parts, and test their developing understanding against the context. My questioning also helped scaffold understanding of the word, which helped prevent students from giving an inaccurate definition of the word that could create misunderstanding of the word among their peers.

If students hadn’t already learned about the con-/com- word family, I could have simply explained the meaning and asked them for a few examples of other words containing that word part. The point isn’t to force a particular strategy into every interaction; it’s to use what students know to help them make meaning.

We approached catalogued differently. Students already knew catalogue as a noun, such as a list of products in a shopping catalogue. I quickly pointed out that the word was being used as a verb in this text, meaning to record or organize information in a document.

Then we encountered blind-devotion. Students understood both words individually but were curious about what the phrase meant in context. I let them discuss their interpretations and build on one another’s ideas. I was ready to step in if they needed clarification, but they didn’t. Their examples demonstrated a strong understanding of the phrase.

The additional vocabulary conversations took no more than four minutes. Some words needed explicit explanation, some called for a quick reminder, and others provided opportunities for students to reason through meaning together. 

Wrapping Up: Connecting Words to Learning 

After we finished the lesson, students returned to their vocabulary notes. They added a second sentence, using expedition to describe something they had learned from the text and our lesson that day.

Then they shared with a partner whether they had confirmed or revised their initial prediction about how the word connected to the lesson.

This final activity took about two minutes.

Altogether, we spent approximately 15–20 minutes on vocabulary during the lesson. But those weren’t 15–20 minutes taken away from content learning. They were minutes spent deepening students’ understanding of the content, strengthening their knowledge of language, and practicing strategies they can use when they encounter unfamiliar words in the future.

That’s the difference I want vocabulary instruction to make.

Key Takeaways for Educators

  1. Keep content and students at the center. 

Choose words because they help students understand what they’re learning, not simply because they appear on a vocabulary list. Consider what students already know before deciding what they need to be taught. 

  1. Stay flexible and responsive

Prepare for the words students might struggle with, but be willing to adjust. Some words deserve explicit instruction; others need only a quick explanation, and some don’t need instruction at all. 

  1. Keep vocabulary instruction simple and purposeful.

You don’t need an elaborate activity for every word or a rigid plan for every encounter. A well-chosen word and a few thoughtful questions can go a long way. 

  1. Make words part of everyday learning.

Revisit previously taught words, point out connections, and use new vocabulary in your own speech. Encourage students to notice words, ask questions, and experiment with language themselves. 

Reflection Questions for Readers

  1. How could I embed vocabulary instruction more naturally into my content-area teaching?
  2. What opportunities could I create for students to interact with, revisit, and make connections between the words they encounter in class?

References

Blachowicz, C. L. Z., Fisher, P. J. L., Ogle, D., & Watts-Taffe, S. (2006). Vocabulary: Questions from the classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(4), 524-539. 

Brabham, E., Buskist, C., Henderson, S. C., Paleogos, T., & Baugh, N. (2012). Flooding vocabulary gaps to accelerate word learning. The Reading Teacher, 65(8), 523-533. 

Monster, I., Tellings, A., Burk, W. J., Keuning, J., Segers, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2021). Assessing children’s incremental word knowledge in the upper primary grades. Language Testing, 38(4), 532–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532220961541 

Nagy, W., & Townsend, D. (2012). Words as tools: Learning academic vocabulary as language acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(1), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1002/RRQ.011 

Nakata, T., & Elgort, I. (2021). Effects of spacing on contextual vocabulary learning: Spacing facilitates the acquisition of explicit, but not tacit, vocabulary knowledge. Second Language Research, 37(2), 263–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658320927764 

Norman, R., Hulme, R. C., Sarantopoulos, C., Chandran, V., Shen, H., Rodd, J. M., Joseph, H., & Taylor, J. S. H. (2023). Contextual diversity during word learning through reading benefits generalisation of learned meanings to new contexts. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(7), 1658–1671. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221126976 

Rice, C. A., & Tokowicz, N. (2020). A review of laboratory studies of adult second language vocabulary training. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(2), 439–470. 

Uchihara, T., Webb, S., & Yanagisawa, A. (2019). The effects of repetition on incidental vocabulary learning: A meta‐analysis of correlational studies. Language Learning, 69(3), 559–599. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12343 

Camriel Kostreva is a literacy specialist at Lander Valley High School, a rural Wyoming school bordering the Wind River Reservation. A National Board Certified Teacher, she holds a B.A. in English education and an M.A. in curriculum and instruction with a literacy emphasis. After six years teaching 7–12 ELA, she has spent the past eight years as an interventionist and literary specialist. Kostreva became a 2023 Wyoming Teacher of the Year state finalist for building a reading intervention program that helps secondary students close persistent reading gaps and that builds their academic success and self confidence. She co-leads her school’s disciplinary literacy professional development cohorts, participates in literacy-focused committees for Wyoming education, and presents nationally on rural literacy improvement. Publications highlighting her work include “Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning at Mountain Lake High” (Kostreva & Brock, 2024),“Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning in a Rural High School” (Kostreva & Nelson, 2026), and “Big Piney High School:  United Around Common Literacy Instructional Goals and Practices” (Makelky et al., 2026).

From “I Can’t” to “Here’s What I’ve Tried”: Disciplinary Literacy Practices That Support Productive Struggle

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Dr. Terrie Rathburn and Rhett Nettles present From “I Can’t” to “Here’s What I’ve Tried”: Disciplinary Literacy Practices That Support Productive Struggle

Participants explore strategies for making student thinking visible, using errors in learning opportunities, and providing scaffolds to encourage revision.

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Building Inference Skills: Scaffolding Disciplinary Reading

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Stephany Anderson, Ed.D.

If you teach a content-area text, whether it be a novel, a primary source, or a lab report, you have probably watched a student who reads fluently give an answer that is reasonable, personal, and wrong. The student is reading but is also inferring from the wrong knowledge base: their own life experience instead of the discipline’s. This post is about that gap.

I experienced that gap as a reading interventionist working one-on-one with a ninth-grade student assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The text assumes a knowledge base she did not yet have. Reading it with her required me to scaffold two kinds of disciplinary reading: historical (the social codes, hierarchies, and economic conditions of 1930s Alabama that the novel doesn’t pause to explain) and literary (how to read a narrator’s perspective, a character’s choice as a product of setting, a scene as a test of theme). She could read the text, but was being asked to do disciplinary work that no one had taught her to do.

All of us who teach complex texts have to keep that distinction in mind.  In literary study, inference is supplying context that is not stated because it was common knowledge at the time the text was written. In history, it is weighing a source against other sources. In science, it is testing a claim against the evidence. The underlying move is the same across disciplines: recognize what the reader brings, identify what the text assumes, and build the bridge. What differs is the knowledge and the habits of mind each discipline demands. The strategies below grew out of specific points where my student struggled, so I had to teach a disciplinary reading move to address the gap.

1 · Applying historical context to character motives

My student could form opinions about a character’s motives. For instance, she could imagine several reasons why Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird might lie. But she did not understand the historical expectations and power structures that shaped those choices: the racial hierarchy of 1930s Maycomb, the way a poor white woman’s testimony carried a very different weight than a Black man’s, or why honesty could be costly in Mayella’s position. Without that contextual knowledge, her inference was reasonable from her own experience but incomplete within the world of the text. She was applying a personal theory of motive to a historical situation that demanded a disciplinary one.

How QAR addressed it

I planned Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) questions aligned to our daily reading, asked them orally, and used open-ended follow-ups to help her elaborate and support her ideas with both textual evidence and background knowledge (Vaughn et al., 2022). QAR sorts questions into categories:

  • Right There: The answer appears explicitly in the text.
  • Think and Search: The reader combines information found in different parts of the text.
  • Author and Me: The reader integrates textual evidence with prior knowledge to develop an interpretation.

“Author and Me” questions were the most difficult because they required her to do what she was missing: link the author’s craft and perspective to the social and historical knowledge the text does not state directly. Talking through these questions allowed us to pinpoint what she understood, identify which background knowledge was missing, and return to the text with a clearer understanding.

2 · She guessed instead of identifying what she didn’t know

She often wanted to guess and move on rather than acknowledge a gap in understanding, which meant the gap stayed invisible, and neither her teacher nor I knew she was confused until she failed an assignment or test.

How we addressed it

A central part of the QAR work was teaching her to say, “I don’t know yet.” We practiced treating uncertainty as a signal to look for additional evidence or background knowledge rather than as something to hide. Naming a gap is itself a disciplinary habit. Historians, scientists, and literary scholars all pause when they are not certain what the evidence supports.

3 · She made reasonable-but-incomplete assumptions I couldn’t see

A quicker strategy for surfacing inference difficulties was a text-rendering activity (National School Reform Faculty, n.d.). After reading a section, I asked her to identify one word, one phrase, and one sentence — each representing information she considered especially important, none drawn from the same sentence — and then to explain why she had chosen each one. For a literary text, the choice of a single word often exposes a reader’s working theory of theme, character, or tone.

How text rendering addressed it

Her explanations often revealed assumptions that a traditional comprehension question would not have uncovered, which we could then confirm, expand on, or rethink in light of the text. For example, she understood that the Cunninghams lacked money and relied partly on barter, but not how the family was tied to its land through entailment or why the land failed to generate profit during the Great Depression. Those gaps shaped her reading of the scene in which Scout’s personal recognition of Walter Cunningham’s father helps disperse the lynch mob; she needed support to see how addressing one person individually interrupted the group’s momentum and restored a shared humanity. The activity helped us identify the misunderstanding during instruction rather than after she failed an assessment.

4 · The text itself created barriers 

Some difficulties arose from the text: syntax that overloaded her working memory, organizational patterns that were hard to follow, narrative perspectives that obscured meaning, and vocabulary or background knowledge that needed to be taught up front. These are the features that make a complex literary text complex and the ones a struggling reader is most likely to encounter without support.

How AI-supported planning addressed it

Before teaching a text, I asked an AI platform to identify features that might be difficult for a ninth-grade student who struggles with reading. I provided the title and chapter for a novel or pasted the assigned passage for shorter texts. The analysis sometimes flagged:

  • Sentence structures that could overload working memory
  • Organizational patterns that might be difficult to follow
  • Narrative perspectives that might obscure meaning
  • Vocabulary and background knowledge that need to be taught
  • Places where definitions or embedded comments could support comprehension (Lupo et al., 2024)

AI did not replace my knowledge of the student or make instructional decisions for me. It helped me anticipate possible barriers and consider scaffolds before she encountered them. For example, it identified Scout’s point of view as being potentially challenging for a student struggling with inference, since Scout was a child interpreting adult events. The reader cannot take Scout’s reading of the events at face value but must identify the mature scene being described. 

Note that teachers should review AI-generated suggestions carefully, particularly when an analysis involves a text’s narrator, historical context, or literary interpretation; the most useful results come when AI functions as a planning partner whose recommendations are checked against the actual text, instructional goals, and students’ needs.

5 · Adapting these strategies to a larger class

I used these strategies in one-on-one interventions, but each can be adapted for partners or small groups in a larger classroom (Hammond, 2020).

How to adapt them

After carefully grouping students, the teacher’s role becomes circulating and listening closely for evidence of how students are constructing meaning. When a group’s reasoning becomes unclear, the teacher steps in with a guiding question rather than supplying the answer and records key ideas heard on the whiteboard. During the debrief, instead of having each group repeat its full response, the teacher invites students to review the class-generated list and add only ideas not yet captured. Students then discuss whether they agree or disagree and return to the text to resolve differences. This makes inference a shared process of inquiry: students learn not to accept interpretations simply because they sound plausible, but to test them against textual evidence, historical context, and alternative perspectives.

Making Invisible Thinking Visible

Students who struggle with inference often produce an incorrect answer without revealing the thinking behind it. If teachers only see the final response, they may not know whether the student missed an important detail, lacked necessary background knowledge, misunderstood the author’s perspective, or relied too heavily on personal experience.

QAR questions, text rendering, and carefully reviewed AI-supported planning expose hidden points of difficulty and allow teachers to intervene before a misunderstanding leads to a poor test score. In literary study, inference develops when students have repeated opportunities to explain their reasoning, recognize gaps in their knowledge, gather textual and contextual evidence, and revise their interpretations. Teaching students to pause and say, “I don’t know yet,” may be one of the most valuable steps in that process. It transforms uncertainty from something to hide into an opportunity to think more deeply.

References

Hammond, Z. (2020). The power of protocols for equity. Educational Leadership, 77(7).

Lupo, S. M., Reynolds, D., & Hardigree, C. (2024). Tackling tough texts: A research-based guide to 

scaffolding learning in grades 6–12. Guilford Press.

National School Reform Faculty. (n.d.). Text rendering experience. Massachusetts Department of 

Elementary and Secondary Education. https://www.mass.gov/doc/text-rendering-protocol/download

Vaughn, S., Gersten, R., Dimino, J., Taylor, M. J., Newman-Gonchar, R., Krowka, S., Kieffer, M. J., 

McKeown, M., Reed, D., Sanchez, M., St. Martin, K., Wexler, J., Morgan, S., Yañez, A., & Jayanthi, 

M. (2022). Providing reading interventions for students in grades 4–9 (WWC 2022007). National 

Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. 

Department of Education.

Dr. Stephany Anderson is a wife, mother, and grandmother who enjoys rural life in Northwest Wyoming while serving as an instructor for Grand Canyon University and the University of Wyoming. She is a dedicated educator committed to literacy and her students, who began her teaching career in 1999, following ten years of work with at-risk youth. Over nearly three decades in education, she has taught high school Language Arts, Social Studies, and Reading Intervention; coached drama, speech, and debate; and mentored students in Model UN, History Day, and Junior History. She served as her district’s secondary literacy specialist and instructional coach in her final years in public education while contributing to state-level standards reviews, district-wide literacy initiatives, and mentoring the next generation of educators through the Wyoming Teacher Mentor Corp.

Today, Stephany enjoys networking across districts to provide evidence-based literacy work that is collaborative, locally led, and lasting. She holds an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and a 7-12 Literacy Certification from the University of Wyoming. A National Board Certified Teacher, she has earned several accolades, including the Arch Coal Teaching Award (2012), a Fulbright TGC Fellowship (2014), and Wyoming History Teacher of the Year (2021).

August Webinar: Recommitting to Coherence in Disciplinary Literacy Implementation

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Please join Dr. Janelle Williams as she leads participants through the current state of disciplinary literacy implementation. She and her audience discuss common barriers to coherent implementation, as well as practical suggestions for starting well and maintaining momentum.

Session notes:

LiD Webinar with Jenelle Williams, Ed.S.-20260820 2323-1Download

Empowering Black Youth Through Competitive Business Learning

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Throughout human history, competition has served as an essential catalyst for growth and development. It is widely recognized for enhancing cognitive functions, promoting reasoning and analytical skills, by engaging individuals in situations that challenge their adaptability and problem-solving abilities. Within the African-American community, traditional competitive experiences have often been rooted in athletic pursuits. While sports indeed offer significant cognitive benefits, such as fostering strategic and creative thinking, it is worthwhile considering additional avenues that may be equally or more effective in advancing cognitive development. One such approach, which I have utilized extensively to shape high school students, is the business case competition.

To provide context, business case competitions are collaborative, team-based events where students devise and present solutions to genuine business challenges before experienced professionals. Participants conduct thorough research and develop practical recommendations within a dynamic group environment. In relation to cognitive development, these competitions address three key areas:

  • Abstract Thinking: The capacity to generate ideas beyond conventional data and perspectives.
  • Metacognition: An awareness of one’s own thought processes achieved through reflection.
  • Problem Solving: The ability to navigate challenges by designing actionable solutions.

Abstract Thinking

Business case competitions confront students with multifaceted problems that demand abstract thought. Participants must interpret extensive information concerning a company, its industry, and external factors. This complexity encourages creative, out-of-the-box thinking and requires a broad perspective to craft innovative solutions. The business sector frequently relies on original concepts that transcend established modes of thought, motivating students to deliver such insight.

Metacognition

Cultivating the ability to reflect on one’s thinking processes is vital for navigating life’s intricacies. Recognizing and adapting personal cognitive strengths and weaknesses promotes resilience in the face of evolving circumstances. Case competitions require methodical analysis to formulate effective solutions. Students not only justify their approaches but also communicate them to seasoned professionals, receiving constructive critiques that refine their thinking and support ongoing intellectual growth.

Problem Solving

Participation in business case competitions markedly strengthens students’ problem-solving skills. Confronted with intricate, real-world business dilemmas, students are required to systematically analyze a wealth of information, discerning critical issues and underlying causes. This process involves evaluating multiple variables and perspectives to construct well-reasoned, actionable solutions. By engaging in this rigorous exercise, students develop a disciplined approach to addressing multifaceted problems, preparing them to navigate challenges both in academic settings and future professional environments.

Beyond cognitive development, this project allows students to demonstrate disciplinary understanding in ways that mirror the authentic practices of the business field. In tackling real organizational challenges, students must interpret data, assess market dynamics, evaluate operational constraints, and craft strategic recommendations — the same analytical processes used by professionals. Their learning becomes visible through the creation of deliverables that reflect industry standards, such as executive summaries, financial models, strategic frameworks, and persuasive presentations. By engaging directly with the tools, language, and decision-making structures of the discipline, students move beyond theoretical knowledge and instead enact business thinking in context. This authentic performance reveals a deep, applied understanding that traditional classroom tasks rarely capture.

Business case competitions serve as powerful platforms for fostering essential cognitive skills among students. By engaging in these challenging events, students enhance their abilities in abstract thinking, metacognition, and problem-solving skills that are crucial for academic achievement and future career success.  The dynamic and collaborative nature of these competitions not only sharpens students’ intellectual capacities but also prepares them to face complex, real-world challenges with confidence and creativity.  Empowerment that remains with students for life.  Is that not the point of education… 

Practical Approach for a Classroom (Small Scale):

This project allows students to show what they know by doing the actual work of the discipline. Instead of completing worksheets or answering isolated questions, students take on real business challenges that require them to analyze information, evaluate options, and develop solutions. They must think like business professionals—considering audience, feasibility, and impact—while using academic language and evidence to support their decisions.

Their understanding becomes visible through what they produce and present. Students create proposals, explain their reasoning, and defend their ideas in front of others, often receiving feedback like what professionals’ experience. This process pushes them to refine both their thinking and communication. As a result, students are not just learning about business concepts, they are actively applying them in authentic, meaningful ways.

For teachers looking to begin embedding a business logic mindset in their students, the following quick lesson provides an accessible starting point.

Objective

Students will analyze a real-world business scenario and develop a recommendation supported by evidence.

Learning Targets (Post for students)

  • I can identify a problem in a business scenario.
  • I can use evidence to support a practical solution.
  • I can explain my thinking using academic language.

Materials

  • Business scenario (teacher-created, local business, or article excerpt from sources such as Harvard Business Review)
  • Chart paper or Google Slides
  • Sentence frames (provided below)

1. Warm-Up (5–7 minutes) — Hook

Prompt:
 A local business is losing customers. What could be the problem? What should they do?

Students:

  • Think → Pair → Share

2. Mini-Lesson (10 minutes) — Model Thinking

Teacher introduces a short business case (ex: café losing customers).

Model aloud:

  • Identify the problem
  • Use evidence
  • Propose a solution

Model Sentence:

“The business is struggling because ___. One piece of evidence is ___. Therefore, they should ___.”

3. Guided Practice (15–20 minutes) — Team Challenge

Students work in small groups:

Task:

  • Identify the problem
  • Analyze 2–3 pieces of information
  • Create a solution

Provide Sentence Frames:

  • “The main problem is ___ because ___.”
  • “One piece of evidence is ___.”
  • “This suggests ___.”
  • “Our recommendation is ___ because ___.”

✔ Encourage:

  • Partner talk before writing
  • Shared responsibility in groups

4. Presentations (10–15 minutes) — Authentic Performance

Each group presents:

  • Problem
  • Evidence
  • Solution

Audience listens and responds:

  • “I agree with ___ because ___.”
  • “I would add ___.”

5. Quick Assessment / Exit Ticket (5 minutes)

Students respond individually:

“What was your group’s solution, and what evidence supports it?”

Elliot Neal serves as Director of the Leaders of Tomorrow Program for the National Black MBA Association Charlotte Chapter, bringing over four years of experience in leadership development and youth engagement. In this capacity, he directs a high school leadership development initiative designed to prepare students for academic, professional, and personal advancement. He also has multiple years of experience designing, developing, and leading teams of high school students for participation in national business case competitions. His work reflects a sustained commitment to mentorship and community impact, with a focus on cultivating students’ analytical skills, professional confidence, and long-term leadership capacity.

Social Justice as Discipline Reconstruction

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Unit co-designed by Katelyn Zarr and Jessica McCullough

On a color-coded anchor chart are the ways historians read, write, and think: they interpret primary and secondary sources, identify bias, compare and contrast accounts, and ultimately synthesize information from multiple sources to create accurate narratives and timelines (Lent, 2017). While a concise (and visually appealing) resource, these practices cannot be taken exactly as they are, especially in K-12 schools. Underpinning these practices is the fact that the sources, accounts, and information to be interpreted are often one-sided, missing or entirely misrepresenting perspectives. What is required of educators [and students], then, is that the disciplines themselves are approached as pathways to social change, by which their texts, practices, and ways of knowing are continually questioned and reconstructed.

In our fifth-grade Causes of the American Revolution History Unit, this took the form of seeking out the perspectives of Black Americans, which were limited within district-provided textbooks and readily accessible primary and secondary sources in online databases. The very process of hunting for inclusive texts opened up a conversation between me and my fifth-graders: Why are only some perspectives prioritized, and, in turn, how can we amplify the voices of Black Americans when studying United States’ history? The snapshots below not only capture our search for multiple perspectives but also our reflections on the importance of doing so.

Questioning disciplinary texts can lead to the construction of inclusive and accurate pictures of history. When examining the Boston Massacre as one ‘cause’ of the American Revolution, for example, I noticed that our district textbook centers Paul Revere’s engraving, “The Bloody Massacre,” where British soldiers are depicted armed, against a row of white colonists, some wounded, some reaching to help one another, and some fleeing the square. While a biased depiction of the event itself, as many colonists, too, threw rock-filled snowballs at the soldiers, a key participant, Black American Crispus Attucks, is missing from the scene. I searched for alternate depictions of the event, pairing Paul Revere’s engraving with John H. Bufford’s, “Boston Massacre, March 5th, 1770,” which places Crispus Attucks front and center (Museum of the American Revolution, 2021). After joining the illustrations in a text set, my role in questioning texts, fifth-graders then compared and contrasted the accounts through a socratic seminar – drawing upon both to establish colonist and soldier involvement, infer deeper meanings, such as Attucks’ actions as a symbol of protection and independence, and contextualize the 13 Colonies as rooted in racism, a system perpetuated even in the media. By questioning which texts were included, and later, their contents, students were able to compare and contrast accounts to make sense of an event in its entirety and its connections to society at large.

Questioning disciplinary texts can amplify the joy and brilliance of Black Americans throughout history. Students’ inclusion and discussion of Attucks as a champion of independence and positive, social change left us eager to extend this work into writing. Using teacher, student, and librarian collected texts on Black Americans from the Revolutionary Era, including Crispus Attucks, Salem Poor, and Phillis Wheatley, students crafted biographies of their chosen ‘Revolutionary Hero.’ Only, when constructing the narratives or timelines of their hero’s role in the Revolution, students asserted the importance of learning from them today: Wheatley’s poems a means of social justice that can be continued today, Attucks an example of what it means to be a patriot, and Poor a symbol of unwavering bravery. By seeking out multiple accounts of history, students reconstructed the discipline by creating texts that amplified the perspectives and contributions of Black Americans that should have been included all along.

This Causes of the American Revolution Unit simply puts into action the pursuits of Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, where she asserts criticality, or examining and disrupting power structures, as a non-negotiable of teaching and learning (2023). Not only does criticality build empathy, connection, and perspective, but it allows us to understand the world [and the disciplines] entirely – to seek and sustain social justice. Beautifully, this often looks like pushing the disciplines themselves. As my fifth-graders engaged in reflective discussion on their reading and writing in consideration of multiple perspectives, they shared things like, “Why isn’t it [history] always done this way? Otherwise, we wouldn’t know the full story!” Their comments demonstrate the power of criticality as well as the brilliance and readiness of students to change the disciplines in the pursuit of racial justice.

References

Muhammad, G. (2023). Unearthing joy: a guide to culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning. Scholastic Inc.

Lent, R. (2017). Disciplinary literacy: a shift that makes sense. ASCD Express, 12(12).

Museum of the American Revolution. (2021, March 5). Boston massacre and propaganda: changing depictions of Crispus Attucks. https://www.amrevmuseum.org/boston-massacre-and-propaganda-changing-depictions-of-crispus-attucks. 

Jessica McCullough is a fifth-grade teacher in Southeastern PA. She is certified in grades 4-8, all subjects 4-6 and English Language Arts and Reading 7-8. She is currently a literacy M.Ed. student at West Chester University of PA with research interests in critical and disciplinary literacy.