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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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.
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.
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:
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
This blog is written by Doris Walker-Dalhouse and Victoria Risko to advocate for strong literacy instruction that benefits all students, with a particular emphasis on literacy instruction for students living in poverty. When we think of strong literacy support for some of our most vulnerable students, we are keenly aware that initiatives to provide educators with professional development to support children living in poverty are being cancelled at the federal level even though progress with such programs indicate progress.
Stay tuned — registration information for their upcoming webinar will be coming soon, and we can’t wait to continue the conversation with you!
Literacy Instruction for our Most Vulnerable Students
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 1 in 7 school-age children lives in poverty, which has a major impact on their education. Approximately 16% of U.S. children (11.4 million) lived in poverty in 2022-2023, with a 13.4% poverty rate for school-age children (5-17). In 2026, there are indicators that the number of students living in poverty may be even greater with high, persistent child poverty rates paired with proposed or enacted federal funding cuts that threaten to reduce services for low-income students.
National and local statistics indicate that overall children living in poverty continue to perform poorly on class assignments and mandated tests and they often have low participation in class literacy activities. These children most frequently live in inner city and rural areas or they may be children living in homeless shelters. It is likely that these students are racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse (Najarro, 2022). And while poverty cannot be traced to singular causes (e.g., racism, low paying jobs, insufficient health coverage), we are keenly aware that income equality within the last decade — world-wide — has widened the gap between those families that are challenged for food and housing security and those that are benefitting from increased wealth (Desmond, 2023).
There is no doubt that educators who teach in high poverty areas face multiple challenges and these challenges include underfunded public schools where teacher tenure and retention are lowest, teacher turnover is high, and resources are limited. There is a long history associated with underfunded schools and resources in both rural and urban high poverty areas. As Gorski (2018) and others argue, “privilege begets privilege”. Students privileged to attend well-resourced schools with stability of educators in place long term are on a trajectory to receive continuous supports that are needed for all students, but frequently not available or sustained in high poverty schools.
Instructional Inequities
A “sameness” of instruction for all students conflates equality (e.g., belief that fairness requires same for all) with equity when diverse histories and experiences require differentiation. (Wells, 2011). Not only is instruction not differentiated for students’ capabilities and needs, but frequently there is a lack of culturally relevant materials (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002), most notably the use of texts and materials in which students do not see themselves or their communities (Ascenzi-Moreno & Quifiones, 2020). A “Null Curriculum” (Milner, 2017) developed in some states, with punitive actions against schools that address racism, racial histories, and cultural differences, denies explicit attention to students’ histories and identities. Milner (2018c) argues that students are not given a “fighting chance to maximize their capacity and humanity”. Additionally, intervention programs, such as Response to Intervention (RTI) that is widely implemented, have inadequate investigations of their effectiveness and response to inequities (Artiles, 2015).
Weak and Failed National Policies
There is a long history of disappointing outcomes of federal funding intended to support the learning of students living in poverty. A “deeply flawed policy legacy of overemphasizing standardized-test scores” (Najarro, 2022, p. 3) is the product of the dominant, White middle-class culture in the United States. Over-reliance on standardized tests fail to provide information about students’ interests, their feelings of belonging, how well the instruction represents students’ cultural backgrounds, and what additional resources and opportunities may be needed (Najarro, 2022).
Among weak or failed programs are the following. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001), with the associated Even Start Family Literacy Program, overall failed to improve K-3 literacy instruction for students living in poverty (St. Pierre, Ricciuti, & Rimdzius, 2005). Similarly, funding efforts (e.g., Gates Foundation, and Title 1) for high poverty schools have had virtually no impact (Noguera & Wells, 2011). The hard work required by national laws to address inequities—giving all students a level playing field with additional resources and opportunities as needed– has been “crumbling” (Najarro, 2022) for at least the last decade.
Addressing Inequities
Addressing inequities, especially as they relate to impoverished students and communities, is a world-wide issue and is met with different responses. One approach has been to provide equal input for all students, such as providing equal funds for schools or the same curriculum for all. Described as taking an equality approach, the emphasis is placed on giving all students the same opportunities to succeed. In contrast, an equity approach, is grounded in the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to differentiate instruction, provide additional resources and opportunities when needed, and build on students’ culture and traditions while expanding their knowledge and experiences.
Starting in 2016, there was an expansion of an equity focus—multiple districts in the United States, for example, reported heightened interest and proposed actions at the district level to address DEI (Najarro, 2022). Unfortunately, the word “equity” became a trigger for pushback as early as 2018 (Sawchuk, 2022). This pushback, both legislative and public, represented fears of losing “strong programs” for those who were already succeeding in schools.
Initiatives to provide educators with professional development in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are being stopped in their infancy (Illeana Najarro, Education Week, September 6, 2022) even though progress is reported. Added to the push to eliminate DEI initiatives are book bans that began to appear in March 2023 and were put in place in 86 school districts across the U. S. Specifically, these bans focus on books with LGBTQ characters, characters of color, and books that address inequities associated with diversity, race, and racism. Najarro (2022) argues that these initiatives represent legislators’ and special interest groups’ retaliation against apparent progress in meeting DEI goals.
This issue of providing curricula that is relevant – relevant to students’ culture, their histories, their interests, and their instructional needs – is crucial for teachers to address if we expect to stem “learning poverty”. Amid movements to abandon or lessen the impact of changes erasing diversity represented among our students, educators can either be overwhelmed or take these actions as an “urgent message to forge ahead”.
Goal for Instruction: Addressing Disciplinary Literacy and Teaching What is Relevant to Students’ Culture, Histories, Interests, and Instructional Needs
To meet this goal, we describe three instructional actions (a) that sustain students’ cultural histories, (b) while advancing their knowledge and literacy development, and (c) addressing their questions and needs. Each of these actions are developed more fully in our text, Equitable Literacy Instruction for Students in Poverty (Walker-Dalhouse & Risko, 2024).
1.Culturally Sustaining Disciplinary Literacy (Rachelle S. Savitz & Janelle Williams, 2024). In their 2024 example and through multiple other publications, Savitz and Williams describe methods for enhancing both disciplinary reading and writing, and positioning students as knowledgeable and active participants in their learning. Aligning with national and state standards, units of instruction focus on content that is both relevant to students’ prior knowledge and interests and that advances academic learning. For example, instruction might focus on “monitoring and minimizing human impact on the environment”.
Taking a problem-solving approach, students engage in generating questions about “equitable access to clean water in their community and globally”. The topic of clean water is particularly important in Michigan (where this instruction occurred) with its issue of problematic conditions related to water quality (e.g., Flint water crisis, infestation of zebra mussels, Nestle corporation’s use of water, etc.). Inquiry questions generated with students might include: How people are taking action on equitable access to clean water in my community and globally or How do we decide if information provided is trustworthy and credible on environmental issues such as clean water (Savitz and Janelle Williams in Walker-Dalhouse & Risko, 2024, pg. 33).
Texts are purposely selected to demonstrate a wide range of perspectives and evidence related to claims about clean water. Students examine scientific texts, analyzing claims and evidence provided, and consider what can be learned from a range of perspectives and challenges that scientists face. Disciplinary writing (that meets writing standards) engages students in taking up authentic perspective and problem-solving methods that address potential water hazards. Letters of advocacy with proposed methods of change or problem-solving methods are written to community agencies and community leaders. Class discussions expand students’ knowledge and abilities to express their understandings of the issue and potential problem-solving methods. Throughout these applications connections are made to students’ lives, their neighborhoods, and their decisions illustrating how science and technical advances related to clean water are connected to their lives.
2. Disciplinary Learning through Multimodal Story Telling (Blaine E. Smith, 2024). Blaine Smith demonstrates how story telling with digital multimodal composing supports science learning for middle school students. With Smith’s guidance, students generated ideas to integrate visuals, sounds, and text when composing a science narrative. Prior to composing their own texts, students read multiple texts, including web-based science texts, gaining scientific knowledge about selected topics and issues – issues that were relevant to the students and their communities. For example, learning about climate change and its effect on local farmers engaged students in robust conversations about changes, theories related to these changes, and their impact.
Students also examined published multimodal texts and then engaged in learning how to be intentional in their use of visuals, sounds, and annotations to convey important information. Students engaged with complex scientific issues while learning how to express their newly learned science knowledge in a variety of formats that were meaningful to them and their peers. Class discussions and added readings supported students’ knowledge development and perspective taking, enhancing their learning as they generated connections to issues that affected them and their communities.
3. Embedding Skills and Strategy Instruction within Authentic Contexts across the Grades for Multilingual Learners (Pacheco, McKee, and Lai, 2024). Pacheco, McKee, and Lai demonstrate how a text focusing on character education can engage multilingual students in thinking about the challenges they face as newcomers in a school and community and the actions they take to resolve their dilemmas. They describe how Ms. George (a sixth-grade teacher) whose students (from six different home countries) engages in text discussions. Asking students to reflect on difficult decisions in their everyday experiences and how their actions are similar to characters within the texts is a focus of their text discussions. And when holding these text discussions, students are encouraged to use their home languages as needed to represent their thinking.
One example shared by Pacheco and his colleagues focused on the text, Little Things are Big Things (Colon, 1961). Ms George and her students analyzed the text using a graphic organizer to identify “what makes a good decision” and “what are good actions” when facing conflicts. Connections to students’ personal lives and decision making and how individuals historically have worked toward goodness (even when faced with racism as in the Colon (1961) text supported the students’ personal growth in overcoming difficult environments in which they live while advancing their disciplinary knowledge and text comprehension.
Across the above examples of disciplinary instruction, these principles guide their implementation:
Conclusion
As educators, we must dignify our economically marginalized students by making visible their multiple interests, histories and capabilities. Instruction described in this blog offers three examples that demonstrate a commitment to honor students’ culture and traditions while expanding their disciplinary knowledge and experiences.
Doris Walker-Dalhouse, PhD, professor emerita at both Marquette University and Minnesota State University Moorhead, is a former 4th -6th grade teacher in high-poverty schools including the Marva Collins Preparatory Program at Linlee School in Lexington, KY. She served for four years as the Director of the Sudanese community-based reading clinic for K-refugee students (Moorhead, MN) funded by the Otto Bremer Foundation and is a member of the Marquette University Autism Initiative. Her co-authored books include Be That Teacher! Breaking the cycle for struggling readers (Risko, 2012) and Equitable Literacy Instruction for Students in Poverty (Risko, 2024) and an edited book Culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies: Honoring students’ heritages, literacies, and language (Cantrell and Lazar, 2022). She is a past member of the Board of Directors of ALER, IRA, and LRA; past coeditor of the Research in the Classroom column (The Reading Teacher) and is President of the Reading Hall of Fame.
Victoria J. Risko, EdD, a professor emerita at Vanderbilt University, taught in the language, literacy and culture program within the Department of Teaching and Learning. A former 1st and 4th grade teacher, Dr. Risko collaborated with educators across the grade levels and in high poverty and racially diverse schools. A past president of the International Literacy Association and the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers, Dr. Risko has published in numerous journals and research handbooks. She is co-author of several books, including Be That Teacher!: Breaking the Cycle for Struggling Readers (with Walker-Dalhouse, 2012), Reading Assessment to Promote Equitable Learning (with Elish-Piper and Matthews, 2022), and Equitable Literacy Instruction for Students in Poverty (with Walker-Dalhouse, 2024). A recipient of several national and international awards for contributions to research and literacy education, Dr Risko is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame.
Presenter – Dr. Daris McInnis
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.
By Sarah Ryan-Purcell
“I teach in an all-white classroom and so I don’t have any of your books in my classroom”
(Brooklyn Academy of Music Organisation, 2017).
As I listened to author Jacqueline Woodson share this quote from an unnamed educator during an interview on “difficult” subjects in young people’s literature, I felt exposed. I taught in an all-white classroom in Ireland last year. I don’t recall placing or using a single book by a Black author in my classroom. At the time, I might have reasoned – subconsciously – that such texts are more relevant in the American context. Suffice to say, I’ve come a long way.
My reading list is not the only thing that has changed since I commenced my Masters in Literacy Education at West Chester University, Pennsylvania. I have developed a whole new perspective on how knowledge is constructed, whose voices are represented, and what it means to prepare our students to participate in a diverse, yet unequal, world.
I discovered Woodson’s picture books in the first semester of my Master’s program as Dr. Daris McInnis challenged us to select a ‘risky text’ which we could use as a read-aloud opportunity to engage in critical literacy with our students. I chose Mason’s (2010) These Hands, an intergenerational book in which a young boy named Joseph learns how his grandfather united with fellow Black labourers to protest racism in the workplace. Thanks to their actions, Joseph’s hands – and other hands the same colour as his – can do “anything in this whole wide world”! The choice felt risky, particularly for me. Since arriving to America, I have felt discomfort when discussing race with BIPOC students. I imagine that the students might be thinking, “Who does she think she is, teaching us about something she knows nothing about?”. However, over the past few months, I have learned to embrace this vulnerability. By allowing the students to see me learning alongside them, I shift the classroom dynamic. Authority becomes shared and knowledge becomes co-constructed. Enter: critical literacy.
I started the read-aloud with a guided discussion of the front cover, using visual thinking strategies (VTS, 2021). One child excitedly exclaimed, “my skin!” as she pointed to the boy on the front cover of the book. Another student remarked that the boy’s skin colour would probably be a significant aspect of the storyline because “it always is”.
That comment lingered with me.
Why is race “always” central when Black characters appear? Why are there so few books where Black children are simply present—neither celebrated nor victimized, but existing as fully realized protagonists? The answer, no doubt, lies in power. Perhaps an increase in publications of such books would mitigate the sense of ‘otherness’ that is still apparent in today’s society. I was particularly uncomfortable discussing the contents of the fifth page, as I wondered aloud why the grandfather had not been allowed to mix the dough in the Wonder Bread factory. The students, though young, were keenly aware that this was a restriction placed on Black people by their white employers. At this point, we began to discuss instances of power in the story. Most of the students participating in this read-aloud were Black, and I felt a sense of guilt on the part of white people for the injustice represented in the story. The students readily noted that white people wouldn’t eat bread baked by a Black person, even if the Black workers were allowed to bake it. I felt almost as though I was further oppressing them as I prompted them to consider why white people wouldn’t eat bread baked by a Black person. They concluded that white people believed Black people ‘had germs’ and would ‘make them sick’. The students were not only offering their opinions. They were engaging in interdisciplinary meaning-making, drawing connections between history, social studies, and personal knowledge. Upon reflection, I realize the impact of that discussion in helping these students to own their history and learn about the oppression of their relatives in the not-so-distant past. However, in the moment, I felt as though I was unearthing generational trauma.
Our read-aloud session was an embodiment of critical literacy as the students interrogated historical social practices and analyzed dynamics of power in society (Lewison et al., 2008). However, one important aspect was absent from our discussion: taking initial actions to promote social justice. Consequently, my next step is to consider how I might develop this standalone read-aloud lesson into a critical literacy unit plan on racism and workplace discrimination. Racism is not simply a topic to be covered, but rather anti-racism and inclusion are values to be instilled across the curriculum, values which the students can uphold beyond their formal education. In reflecting upon this read-aloud, I am prompted to identify ways through which I could support my students to “disrupt the commonplace” and promote social justice in small but meaningful ways (Lewison et al., 2008, p.9). This is a question I do not yet have an answer to, but I shall pursue the answer across my career.
In conclusion, engagement with this risky text read-aloud challenged me to step out of my comfort zone as a teacher. By leaning into discomfort and allowing students’ voices to guide our discussion, I witnessed the power of risky texts to illuminate social injustices, leading students to connect historical oppression with contemporary realities. This experience has demonstrated that teaching about race and inequality is not simply a “nice to have” in the curriculum but is rather a moral necessity. As a result, I am committed to creating spaces where all students, particularly those from marginalized communities, feel valued and empowered to challenge the status quo.
I have come to understand that what is not in the classroom library can often tell you more about the classroom environment than what is available for reading. Furthermore, when educators embed dimensions of critical literacy into their classroom practice, they not only nurture critical thinkers but rather empower both themselves and their students to be agents of change.
References
Brooklyn Academy of Music Organisation (2017, June 21). Jacqueline Woodson on “difficult” subjects in young people’s literature. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcRwYLHcyzc
Lewison, M., Leland, C., & Harste, J. C. (2008). Creating critical classrooms: K-8 reading and writing with an edge. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mason, M. (2010) These hands. Haughton Mifflin Harcourt.
Visual Thinking Strategies (2021) VTS, available: https://vtshome.org [accessed 03 May 2021].
by Dr. Shari Revels-Davis
Growing up, history class always felt like a timeline of dates, names, and events to memorize. Textbooks presented historical accounts as settled truth—rarely revealing that history is constructed through sources, perspectives, and power.
When Black history is taught this way, students often receive a simplified version of complex struggles and resistance movements, stripped of grassroots voices and community leadership. History books also record only the story of the oppressor, not that of the oppressed. For example, Ron DeSantis, the current governor of Florida, stated in his defense of the presentation of slavery in the history books, as well as annexing the AP Black History high school courses and eliminating other courses that are considered “DEI” by the white population.
DeSantis defended Florida’s 2023 Black history standards, which included a requirement to teach that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”. He argued that this clause, which suggests some enslaved people used their skills to their advantage, was intended to highlight the “resiliency” of Black Americans and was written by scholars.
Instead of taking the oppressor’s word on how historical events occurred, disciplinary literacy shifts history instruction from memorization to investigation.
By engaging in the authentic practices of historians, students learn to question narratives, analyze evidence, and uncover stories that have long been marginalized or erased.
The Discipline Lens: How Historians Build Knowledge
Historians do not simply read for information. They:
These skills are essential for understanding Black history purposefully and honestly.
The Problem with Textbook Narratives
Traditional historical texts often:
For example, the Civil Rights Movement is often portrayed as a few peaceful protests led by famous figures, while ignoring decades of organizing, youth activism, and local leadership.
So what does this look like in practice? Instead of replacing the textbook, we can place it in conversation with other voices. A primary source counterstory investigation allows students to analyze whose perspectives are centered—and whose are absent.
Classroom Strategy: Primary Source Counterstory Investigation
Step 1: Provide a textbook account of a historical event (e.g., voting rights, desegregation, Reconstruction)
Step 2: Pair it with primary sources such as:
Step 3: Students analyze using inquiry prompts:
Step 4: Students construct a revised historical account that includes multiple voices.
Student Impact
Teachers I work with report that inquiry-based history instruction leads to:
Students move from passive consumers of information to critical interpreters of the past.
Concluding Thoughts
History is not neutral. It is shaped by the voices we amplify and the ones we overlook. When we present historical struggles like the Civil Rights Movement as a handful of peaceful protests led by a few famous figures, we unintentionally flatten decades of organizing, youth activism, and local leadership into a simplified storyline. Our students deserve more than a highlight reel.
As educators, we have the opportunity—and responsibility—to complicate the narrative. By inviting students to examine primary sources, question dominant accounts, and seek out counterstories, we teach them that history is not something to read and forget but something to investigate and explore. We help them see that change is collective, contested, and ongoing.
Doing history in this way builds more than content knowledge. It builds critical thinkers who understand that whose story is told matters—and that they, too, are part of the historical record in the making.
By Dr. Elke Schneider
What is visual literacy?
Visual literacy (VL) is a well-defined discipline that requires critical, aesthetic, and socio-emotional interpretation skills based on individual comprehension of visual images. These are all essential for being a successful literate citizen that can handle the massive visual flood of information related to image-rich digital media. For one, VL skills include the ability to identify and interpret messages explicitly or implicitly given through still images (photos, posters, drawings, paintings, sculptures) or moving images (videos, films, TV shows, performances). Critical, aesthetic interpretation of how visual features such as colors, visual perspectives, or specific art media (i.e., watercolors, collages, sketches, charcoal drawing) impact a reader/viewer emotionally is a crucial VL skills component. The expressive side of VL skills refers to the ability to create visual images that present information in either still images (drawings, sketches, graphic organizers/charts, photos) or moving images such as short video clips. According to research, both receptive and expressive VL skills are best taught explicitly.
Why do we need to explicitly focus on developing visual literacy skills?
In this day and age, the non-stop availability of visual imagery via digital devices presents students’ brains with the task to quickly, accurately and critically interpret massive amounts of visual imagery surrounded by no, minimal, or much printed texts. Therefore, it is paramount to assist students in learning to carefully filter through so much visual information so they do not fall prey to manipulation and misinterpretation of implicit or explicit messages embedded in visual materials. Moreover, research has shown that educators require more explicit training in strengthening students’ visual literacy skills. For middle and high school students, VL skills are essential in every subject area and thus are included in middle and high school ELA standards.
What are wordless picture books?
Wordless picture books (WLPBs) are books that present information solely through visual images. Some images may include wording as part of an image such as a poster with a message. Only book flaps and covers include traditional printed text such as book title, author name, publication information, and a summary about the book. Examples of WLPBs appropriate for middle and high school students are shared in Table 1. They include selective ideas for disciplinary integration in ELA, social studies, science/geography.
Table 1: Examples of WLPBs for VL practice
| Book reference | Content description | Ideas for use in content areas |
 Tan, S. (2007). The arrival. Arthur A. Levine Books. ISBN: 978-0439895293 Virtual version: short https://youtu.be/vAay4myoEDE?si=KVj4wH2VR9mxl6pT | Through detailed imagery in red charcoal drawings, readers learn about the emotional and physical hardships of one immigrant’s journey who in the end reunites with his family. Over 60 detailed images of immigrants of all ages in the end pages allow for varied, adolescent-appropriate critical aesthetic, social-emotional reflections. | Social studies: migration history of the United States; relating images to historic events (i.e., WWI, II imprisoner treatments) ELA: sequence of events for one or several characters, identifying emotions orally and in writing, cause-and effect, impact of different visual perspectives and aesthetics on the interpretation of visual information Geography: identifying criteria for, cause and effects of ports of migration, drawing cause-effect graphics for geographic locations Science: Using facial expressions of characters of various generations to discuss aging processes and causes; |
 Wiesner, D. (2006). Flotsam. Clarion Books. ISBN: 978-0618194575 Virtual version: https://youtu.be/3MTKWnxzqvM | In intricately detailed, often fantasy-driven water-color images, readers follow a teen who discovers an old camera at the beach that reveals lives of those who owned it in the past. | Social Studies: Identifying details of photographs for historic fact interpretations ELA: Usingimage details, practice describing details of sequence of events, items and characters with reasoning, or cause-effect, meaning discoveries of factual and fantasy elements. Geography: Researching where the camera was prior to getting to the teen with reasoning based on photographs in the camera. Science: Researching flotsam items from the story and others that can be studied scientifically; discussing the impact of water, salt/nature on certain materials over time. |
 Wiesner, D. (2011). Tuesday. Clarion Books. ISBN: 978-0395870822 Virtual version: https://youtu.be/JtQ4DdzCZMA?si=aI2OrD-T2nE9wulJ | On a Tuesday night, frogs fly on lily pads to town to visit the town causing confusion before returning to their pond. The next week, pigs seem to be doing the same. This fantasy is illustrated in colorful, realistic watercolor technique displaying expressive, detailed animal and human faces. | Social studies: Impact of the unusual on communities; cultural symbolism of frogs/pigs ELA: Discussing fantasy elements and their explicit or implicit message through colors, perspectives and actions in visuals; personality studies of characters; symbolism Science: Discussing the importance of gravity; researching what dreams are and how imagery gets created in the brain; life cycles of frogs |
 Banyai, I. (1998). Zoom. Puffin Books ISBN: 978-0140557749 Virtual version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgi-RCEjOLw | Via detailed, colorful images, readers are taken in surprising image sequences from a farm to a city, a ship, and an island providing ample practice | ELA: Making predictions with supporting details and reasons; making hypotheses based on retracing evidence Science: Discussing how hypotheses are made, on what revising hypotheses is based, and how hypotheses are tested based on detailed images Geography: Discussing where on earth the different sites could be and how they could relate using details provided in the images Social studies: Discussing differences, similarities and historic events that influence community lives; discussion of time period based on details in imagery |
 Banyai, I. (1998). Re-Zoom. Puffin Books ISBN: 978-0140556940 | Readers are taken on a twisted image journey from an Egyptian pyramid to a jungle and a beach by zooming out of color-and-detail rich images that invite predictions turning page by page. | ELA: Making predictions with supporting details and reasons; making hypotheses based on retracing evidence Geography: Discussing where on earth the different sites could be and how they could relate using details provided in the images Science: Experiencing how hypotheses are created and tested based on interpreting images; comparing jungle habitats to desert habitats in Egypt; discussing how perception is impacted by angles of selections if imagery; Social Studies: Engaging in Egyptian culture studies based on detailed images and beyond |
Why are wordless picture books useful in middle or high school?
Public misconceptions about WLPBs include that they are only appropriate for young children and not challenging enough to working for adolescent students. Moreover, explicit VL skills do not need to be taught explicitly. These misconceptions contradict research findings that highlight how interpreting WLPBs contain an intricate amount of explicit and implicit information that requires developed VL skills to comprehend. Furthermore, it entices middle and high school students to apply varied sophistication in oral and written engagement with these WLPBs. Research also points out many benefits for middle and high school students:
Ways to foster active use of visual literacy skills using WLPBs
For each of the VL skills areas, namely aesthetic skills, affective skills, critical thinking, and text comprehension, the following tables provide a) ideas for questions to activate students’ in-depth engagement with a WLPB (Table 2), and b) sentence frames with simpler and more complex structures for students to use to share their interpretations including dialog structures to discuss similarities and differences in story interpretations (Table 3). The sentence and dialog structures can be available to students on flip charts, table tents or flash cards to use during discussion time with each other or in response to teacher questions.
Table 2: Questions to activate critical engagement with visual imagery
| VL Skill area | Ask students … |
| Aesthetic skills | how the author created a certain mood (i.e. suspense, fear, worry, excitement, joy) with colors, perspectives, item or character details and how that impacts the reader/viewer. to identify how the author created the images in a page or in the whole book why they like or not like certain images what question/s they would like to ask the illustrator? Why? |
| Affective skills (compassion, emotions, relation to self, world, others) | how they experience characters, events and why they feel like that how they or others they care about were in the situation of certain characters in certain situations and why. how they would change the story for a different or the same main message. to relate to a character, story event, emotion presented based on a personal experience or what they have watched on TV/in movies before. to create questions about a story step, character. |
| Critical thinking | to give reasons for opinions/interpretations and prompt for direct connection to details in the WLPBs. to compare and contrast their interpretations with those of peers. Prompt them to get reasons that relate back to details in the imagery and their personal experiences. to predict, or revise a previous idea to make connections to other readings or learning experiences in other disciplines in school, or outside of school or world events what they sense (smell, hear, taste, feel) when they look at certain pages and why that might occur to share what the story means them personally and why. |
Table 3: Sample sentence frames for discussions that foster VL
| VL Skills area | Sentence frames for students |
| Aesthetic skills | Simpler structures: The color/s make me feel…/ wonder if… /realize that… I like the image on page…. because… I feel I look at the page from (above, below). This makes me feel… More complex structures: I think the author used …. (water colors, thick paint, chalk, different paper) to make the reader think that…/feel as if…. The top down/bottom up/eye-to-eye level perspective causes an impression of…./makes the viewer experience….. The color/s of… evoke the feeling of… because… |
| Affective skills (compassion, emotions, relation to self, world, others) | Simpler structures: The detail from image reminds me of … (something in my world, another character in a story/historic event, current event) I feel for…. because…. If I were in this situation, I would…. More complex structures: The expression of…/event on this page causes me to think about … This story makes me want to …. help… by…..ing…. I can relate to… because I saw/read about… that…/I experienced something similar when…. |
| Critical thinking | Simpler structures: I wonder/would like to know why… /if… I like/don’t like what…. did/happened because…. I predict/conclude that… because More complex structures: Seeing…(detail from image), I wonder if/why/when… Looking at (detail from image), I predict/infer/conclude that… I agree/disagree with how … (character action) because…. |
| Story comprehension | Simpler structures: This page/story is about…./tells me that…. First, …. (action in story) and then…… (next action), then (next action). Lastly, (last action, resolution).… More complex structures: The main message of the story is…. I conclude this because…….catches my attention because…. Looking at… (detail from image), I get the impression that…. I think this story wants me to realize that…. T he story begins with….Then, …..Afterwards, … because…, the story continues with…, … Finally, … (more variety of transitions and sentences) |
| Dialog structures | Expressing Agreement I agree with you because I felt/thought…. I also wondered about…/asked myself why…. I also interpreted…. to mean… Expressing Difference Interesting. I see this totally differently. I understood (evidence from story)…. to mean.…. because… I understood/reacted to …. differently. For me, …… because…. As opposed to your interpretation/prediction/inference/reaction, I …predicted/inferred/ thought/felt…. because… I hear you- but I see … (character/problem/…) differently. For me, … because…. Comparing- contrasting When I compare your interpretation to mine, I see we overlap in…. But we see… differently. While you think…, I think…… Why do you…? How come? Even though I agree with you on…. , I interpreted…. differently because… For example, … Compared to what you said about…., I concluded…. Asking for clarification What exactly do you mean when you say….? Let me see if I understand you correctly. You are saying that….. Am I understanding this correctly? You mean to say….. Summarizing a peer’s comment So, in sum, you think…. because…. So, from your perspective, … because…. So, your group interpreted… Therefore, you…. Referring to a section in the book (to provide evidence) I infer/predict/ conclude that… I say that because on page x…. On page x/, do you see how the illustrator….? That makes me think/conclude/predict/infer that…. That gives me the feeling that… On the right/left top/bottom/in the middle of page…/, I noticed that… The…. on page x in the middle caught my attention because… This makes me think/predict/conclude/infer that…. |
by Jason D. DeHart
“You spend too much time on the Internet,” a student said to me one day. She was in midst of a conversation with some of her peers using a recently coined bit of young adult jargon. When I joined the chat with knowledge of the term, she shared this admonition.
Teaching adolescents is both challenging and enriching. As in my time navigating my own period of adolescence, students are engaged in connected experiences that follow multiple streams of conversation – fandom, affinity, digital gaze, and more – all with the notion of community and belonging in mind. There is an always-changing multimedia flow of trends and treasured knowledge, often disseminated by digital platforms and what appears to be word of mouth.
Considering the literacy lives of the youth I work with daily, there is a clear sense of multiple channel navigation. Elements of identity weave together cultural practices and notes from popular culture. Youth are, indeed, like buoys among the stream of social media and technological message, including wider avenues of jargon and trend. They are purveyors of this wide range of culture, as well as curators of the space – whether they are fully aware of this aspect of their agency or not.
Spaces of Joy and Fandom
As Riesco and Goering (2025) recently explored, the anchor of popular culture continues to be part of adolescent practices. These changes in popular focus and language are fascinating from a researcher’s perspective, as well as a source of joy as an educator. This attention toward youth as the center of popular culture is hardly new – indeed, the mall culture of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as changing forms of music consumption have tracked with young people from the origin of the commercial. As a youth myself in the 1980s and 1990s, I was first the focal point of animation and branding that included popular characters; as an adult now reliving those days, I am a target of nostalgia branding. This is the sense of agency that companies do not necessarily consider when they are engaged in transmedia branding – they are handing their power over to youth, whose role is then to take up a particular trend and exercise this focal point of pop culture for so long as their engagement affords.
Indeed, language is always changing and the markers of what it means to be current are in constant flux. The popularity of comics is one site of further joy, as these texts were part of my literacy practices as a young reader and composer. While stakeholders in the film industry grapple with superhero fatigue, digital comics and manga continue to be mainstays of popularity (Benatti, 2024; Lowe, 2024). Students in my classroom autonomously engage with web comics during independent reading times, as well as graphic novels about popular characters like Blue Beetle and Plastic Man.
Critical Approaches and Boundaries
This collective sense of branding and messaging across multiple streams of meaning carries with it a series of significant questions for educators, especially those concerned with literacy. Rather than ask the question of how to stay relevant, I am curious about what is already continuously relevant about our pedagogy and about the series of actions and practices which result in or add to literacy development.
These practices are not limited to reading. Last year, I partnered with the media specialist at my school to engage in a grant-funded project that allowed students to read historically-based comics, select comics for their own reading choice, and then create one-page comics in response. Students were exposed to the range of stories, from superhero narratives to memoir, and their comics reflected this variance. Some composed responses included fantasy elements, while others documented friendships and other grounded experiences. In terms of composing, some students planned and developed their responses with traditional tools (paper, pencils, markers), while others used AI to brainstorm and plan their work and digital tools (Canva, Pixton) to create their responses.
My students are poised with a teacher whose positionalities exist alongside a variety of borders – completely up for popular character study alongside or even instead of the canon, yet (appropriately) critical of the ways that technology can be used to subvert multistep processes. I am an educator who is always interested in the step of thinking that occurs between teaching/assignment and turn-in.
Sometimes this means that I critique the material with which I am asking students to engage. Literacy is part of a wider ecosystem for adolescents, not an end. Older readers link engaged reading with topics that are relevant and interesting to them. VanderVelden and Apedoe (2025) recently explored the relationship of reading motivation and learning environment for adolescents, noting one particular area of importance. This area was inquiry – that is, readers needed to be engaged in an inquisitive set of discovery and problem-solving practices in order to be motivated. The purpose of the reading activity had to be clearly and clearly situated.
The Present and the Future
I continue to ponder and explore the best ways to teach my students. At times, I anachronistically reference prior trends to be ironic. At other times, I link my practices (like attending comics conventions) with student interests.
Literacy is also an expansive set of practices and interlinking set of ideas (Roberts et al., 2025). Effective reading and writing practices are linked within the wider space of conversations and culture, and they are reflective of the ways that people actually compose in daily life. This includes the digital and visual. I find that my identity as an educator in a cusp generation helps me bridge these links; that is, I remember what it was like to have one computer in the classroom, and to be expected to read the segmented literature presented in textbooks and answer the perennial questions at the end of the passages. I also remember what it was like to suddenly have computers at home, and I recall how these shifts only grew through the advancement of smaller, personalized technology.
I am not the teacher I was in 2007 when I embarked on my career, and I have no doubt that my instruction will change, refresh, and update along with the practices of my students as they continue to root and flow with questions of engaged citizenship, popular culture trends, and I contemplate what it means to be the educator that my students need me to be.
References
Benatti, F. (2024). Innovations in Digital Comics: A Popular Revolution. Cambridge University Press.
Lowe, S. (2024). Book review: Manga in libraries: A guide for teen librarians. The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, 5, 254-258.
Riesco, H. S., & Goering, C. Z. (2025). Italian brain rot and skibidi toilets: Students’ joyful literacies in an ELA space. English Journal, 114(6), 23-31.
Roberts, C. A., Wilhelm, A., Allred, B., & Hudson, R. F. (2025). Expanding literacy: Caregiver experiences with literacy engagement for their children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Exceptional Children, 91(3), 281-302.
VanderVelden, T., & Apedoe, X. (2025). The Relationship Between Situated Reading Motivation and Perception of the Learning Environment for Adolescent Students. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 69(3), e70023.
