• These articles are within the discipline of educational research: how are they organized? What do you think is the purpose behind their organization? (i.e., why include a “Methods” section?”)
• How do the authors define literacy and why? Based on this definition, what do they observe in the classroom? 
• How might this examination of literacy inform your own observations in your field experiences? 

Define inquiry, kidwatching, and responsive teaching? How are they related to one another? 

What kind of “naturally occurring data” can you collect in your field experience?  

These acts of scripting, reminiscent of the cool kids’
writing with clothes, reveal significant ways in which
personal narratives of literacy relate to how writing,
reading, sharing, and creating multilayered understandings of self and others take on new meanings.

, Kirkland, D. E., & Jackson, A. (2009). “We real cool”: Toward a theory of black masculine literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3), 278-297.

The academic research I will be writing on this week is “We Real Cool”: Toward a Theory of Black Masculine Literacies by Kirkland and Jackson. This paper explores the literacy practices of black males 11-14 and how this contributes to their perceived statuses of “cool kids”. It states literacy as a social and cultural construct that includes different words and symbols. The authors set forth a theory about how literacy shapes black male’s sense of self and their perceptions of others as “cool”.

This article is written in the style of a traditional psychological research paper. It starts with defining important concepts in the title: “Defining Literacy” (279), “Framing Coolness” (280). The purpose of defining these concepts allows readers to understand the use of these words in their research and helps form their theory of black male literacy. If one does not understand how these words operate in the paper, they will have trouble following the main theories presented. Then, the authors present their “Methods”, including “context”, “the cool kids” , “data collection”, “data analysis”, “personality of the researchers” and “results”. Setting forth a clear method, along with providing specific examples of how the data was collected and analyzed, along with a description of the subjects and the researchers provides validity to their academic writing an sets up the paper as a legitimate research study, and evaluates the subjects and researchers and any bias they may have. The authors also use specific writing and drawing samples from their subjects to demonstrate the thoughts and attitudes of black males in relation to literacy. The specific samples clearly illustrate the results that the researchers collet and provide validity to the author’s argument. Lastly, they end with a section on the implications of their study where they explain the purpose of their research and how it effects society as a whole. This serves as their “reason for being” that we have often used in our own writing in content area reading class. It is an important of research papers and projects because it demonstrates the impact the study has on literacy and education as a whole.

The authors define literacy as

“a cultural practice that is embedded in social and cultural
phenomena, such as coolness (Dyson, 2003; Freire &
Macedo, 1987; Gee, 2001; Mahiri, 2004)”

They include “oral forms” with visual, gestural, and other symbols (Kirkland and Jackson 279). This is an important definition because it includes forms of literacy we do not always consider: visual symbols, gestures, and forms of communication (slang/dialect). This will inform my research project because it will open my definition of literacy to one that doesn’t just include the physical reading of words on paper. It will allow me to view literacy as a cultural model that includes all aspects of student’s life and how they communicate with each other.

Kidwatching is defined as

 “Watching kids with a knowledgeable head” ( Goodman 9).

In kidwatching, teachers observe how students participate in classroom activities, and taking note of how the students learn and explore new ideas. This practice is used as a type of formative assessment that will track and support students in their understanding and learning patterns of the content that is being taught.

Inquiry is defined as the search for answers or solutions to a specific question or problem.

Responsiveness in education is defined as

“An approach to teaching that comprised of a set of well-designed practices intended to create safe, joyful, and engaging classroom and school communities. The emphasis is on helping students develop their academic, social, and emotional skills in a learning environment that is developmentally responsive to their strengths and needs.“

https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/about/principles-practices/

The responsive classroom includes:

• Interactive modeling
• Teacher language
• Logical consequences
• Interactive Learning Structures

This blog post has helped me organize the types of “naturally occurring data” I want to use in my research project that explores project based assessments. It has opened my mind to different pieces of data I can use to organize and analyze my results outside of strictly written assessments or texts. By including important cultural aspects of my participants, I can make my results more meaningful to the world of educational literacy.

In Schleppegrell’s paper, she argues that Academic language is defined as “a set of linguistic registers that construe
multiple and complex meanings at all levels and in all subjects of schooling” (1). She starts her argument by taking a specific sentence from an actual textbook and picking it apart using her definition of academic language. She explains that each phrase that is used is part of a clause that defines the sentence’s meaning. She uses this example to demonstrate that academic writing can be interpreted in many different ways. This is an effective argument because she uses specific examples from the actual texts she is writing about to inform meaning.

The evidence is worded in a way that anyone reading the paper could explain. . Much of her evidence emphasizes interpretation: she introduces her examples as open to interpretation. Schleppegrell uses a variety of interpretations to inform her arguments and makes them as relevant as possible to people with different interpretations of her arguments. An example of this is when Schleppegrell writes:

“This exemplifies how understanding the textbook language requires some interpretation”

Schleppegrell is very clear in the connections between the ideas she sets forward and her ideas about textbook language and academic writing/language.

Scheleppegrell 2

In Schleppegrell’s section about Illustrating Register Variation: Two Texts, Scheleppegrell uses two texts and examines their register variation and shows through specific and concrete examples the different types of registers. She also presents criteria for her claims, which is arguably the most important and convincing evidence.

“The linguistic patterns in focus concern the ways academic registers present agency, make logical connections, develop cohesive reference chains, and present an author’s interpretive perspective.”

(Scheleppegrell 7)

1. Research Question: How do students and teachers respond to Project Based Assessments (PBAs) compared to traditional assessments?
2. I chose this research question to base my project on because at my high school, there was a big push for teachers to assign Project Based Assessments (PBAS) over giving traditional assessments such as tests or quizzes. I want to explore this topic because I am interested in improving assessment to accurately reflect student knowledge. I would like to know how students and teachers perceive this type of assessment as compared to tests or quizzes. In high school, my classmates and teachers would complain about having to assign these projects because of the extra effort and grading that these projects required. I am interested to see how students and teachers in my specific school respond to this new type of assessment and the positives/negatives of assigning projects to measure student learning. I feel like this question is important to educators to explore and evaluate for themselves so that they can decide how to appropriate assess their students while still keeping them engaged in their learning. Weighing the pros and cons of both types of assessments, along with student input, can help teachers gauge the level of student understanding. It is often argued that written assessments only require memorization and surface level knowledge that is simply written down and promptly forgotten. According to Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956), the lowest level of cognitive understanding is remembering and understanding. The highest level of cognition includes creating a product of their learning. I am interested to see if student work accurately represents the higher levels of cognition, or if projects are given that only require remembering. I also hope to explore how teachers can make written assessments more effective for the highest levels of learning. 

2. My research site is an urban school that is part of a larger city school system. My focal participants are Ms. X, and the students in her 4th and 5th grade science class. My research site is an urban school in the south side of a city in Western Pennsylvania. I plan to interview an equal number of students in the 4th and 5th grade sections so that I could possibly compare and contrast the data. I hope to explore if there is a possible distinction between the 4th and 5th graders’ attitudes toward the assessments they are given, and if they have a preference toward PBAs or more traditional types of assessment. 

3. I hope to collect several pieces of data to explore my research question. I want to collect student assessments (without names for privacy concerns) and projects so that I can evaluate both of these assignments for effectiveness. Since I am in Teaching Science for Grades 4-8 this semester, I plan to use science assessments so that I can connect my learning and experiences from Teaching Science to Content Area Reading. I want to evaluate science projects that are given and tests/quizzes/other written assessments so that I can compare and contrast their effectiveness.   I also plan on using field notes and student/teacher interviews so that I can explore their differing or similar attitudes about the types of assessments given in the classroom. 

1. Example interview questions: 
   1. Do you prefer projects or written tests? Why?
   2. Do you feel like you learn more when you complete a project or take a written assessment? 
   3. Do you learn better by creating, or by writing?

• What are the strongest arguments for and against taking a disciplinary approach to teaching reading at the elementary levels?
• What Discourses, social languages, genres, and/or cultural models help to shape your focal discipline? 
• Think back to experiences in your focal discipline—how were you taught? Do you believe your teachers exposed you the processes by which experts created knowledge in your focal discipline? 

In this blog post, I will be arguing for a disciplinary literacy approach to different texts in K-6, and explain how these texts supplement, not take away, from the Common Core.

The argument against Disciplinary Literacy is that elementary school students do not have the cognitive ability to process and analyze an informational text. Many educators believe that hands-on activities helps engage younger students, and that this hands-on application is the best way to learn.

The strongest argument for disciplinary literacy, according to Shanahan & Shanahan (2014), is that elementary school students are aware enough to know that different people have different perspectives about, for example, historical events. Exposing elementary through middle school students the skills of reading a disciplinary text can act as a scaffold so that students can learn and improve upon their disciplinary literacy techniques. By the time students get to middle school, being able to read, analyze, and apply different types and genres of texts is part of the Common Core curriculum. The sooner students start working with texts, the better they become at reading disciplinary materials. Working with texts with elementary school students doesn’t need to be complicated; disciplinary literacy can be as simple as having students read different genres of books (Nonfiction, fiction, plays, etc.) and perhaps discussing the difference between them.

I hope to be an English/Social Studies specialist. Some things that are essential to this focal discipline are the elements of a story, the different genres of texts that are read, and the social language of writing literary or analytical pieces.

Junior and senior year, I had the same English teacher. I believe this class is what shaped my interest in one day teaching English. Our teacher taught us how to write literary analysis pieces and taught us the proper language and set up of a research paper. We were constantly asked to analyze literary critics in our own research papers and literary analyses. I believe the exposure to the experts in the literary world helped shape me into the writer I am today.

In this post, I will make an argument for a style of teaching that incorporates disciplinary practices and inquiry based learning.

When watching the True/False equations video, the thing that stood out to me the most was the teachers’ anticipation and understanding of student ideas. The teacher acted as the discussion mediator, and lead the lesson toward a deeper understanding of math. This is an effective strategy as a teacher, in this example it’s a math teacher, of how to deepen student understanding by focusing on the rational thinking and justifying their arguments. This is an important disciplinary practice that will make math students (in this example) better prepared for higher levels of math. For example, being able to justify their reasoning is an important disciplinary skill of math that will greatly help students when they move on to Geometry, for example, because an essential part of Geometry is “proofs”- a written justifications for the steps they followed to solve the problem. If students are exposed to this practice earlier in a math classroom, for example, they will begin to understand the important concepts of solving a math problem: by writing out their justifications and walking through the different steps they used.

The reading rockets website is an important piece of technology that helps teachers integrate more disciplinary practices in their classroom through literacy resources. Teachers can access this website for activities, lessons, and even how to teach reading or how to help struggling readers. Under the “fun stuff” section of the blog, there are fun games, readings, and activities that help students improve their literacy skills while also staying engaged. I will use this tool in my classroom if I have students that need more support when it comes to reading and literacy. This website is an excellent tool for teachers who don’t necessarily know how to approach literacy issues that their students may have.

Inquiry based learning is a style of learning that has been found to be extremely valuable to students. Inquiry based learning is learning that is centered around posing questions and scenarios to deepen student understanding. This type of learning is essential to disciplinary literacy because it emphasizes the important aspects of the disciplines for students. When students must answer questions or scenarios when they are learning, they are forced to see themselves as the “expert” in the “field” to answer the question. For example, a teacher asks how many different ways the class can solve a type of equation. Students then answer and look at the problem as though they were a mathematician. When students put themselves in the shoes of an expert and look at a problem or question through a certain set of lens, their understanding of the content deepens.

In this week’s blog post, I will be examining disciplinary literacy practices across two subjects: history and physics. I will make an argument for teaching practices that support all students so that they can learn to communicate effectively across any discipline in life. I will also give an example of content, content area, and disciplinary literacy in my own teaching and learning experiences. Lastly, I will lay out a plan for disciplinary teaching across subjects.

Mr. Franchi is considered an expert educator, and teaches high school history, civics, and economics. In Rainey et al (2018), one of his history lessons is analyzed under the lens of disciplinary literacy. Mr. Franchi used historical literacy practices to teach his students how to read, interpret, evaluate, and analyze a primary or secondary source. He set forth a protocol for reading a historical documents, and then assigned each student to an “artifact” to analyze independently. Students used the the historical literacy practices that they had been using throughout the school year. He asked students to answer a certain question from the perspective of the author of their artifact, and supported student learning on how to analyze a historical post for the main arguments. Mr. Franchi then facilitated a debate between the students from the point of view of their assigned authors. He supported student learning by supervising the debate and offering feedback to students. Ultimately, he is helping to build their historical literacy skills in writing and in debate. He ended the lesson by asking students to characterize the different arguments of their historical figure. Then, Mr. Franchi supported student learning by helping them explore the divergent perspectives and dynamics of the time, especially between different peoples.

Mr. Coupland is a high school physics teacher. He presented students with a demonstration of a physics concept. He supported student learning by having students discuss how to frame an experimental question in groups. Then, he offered the class sentence frames that could be used to form an experimental question. Mr. Coupland used these sentence frames to show students a specific formula for writing a scientific statement, and taught students the specific literacy practices that scientists use to communicate their findings. He also told his students that this formula was typical of scientists, and scientific papers used this formula to analyze and communicate their findings. He then assigned an essay assignment that explored the physics concept demonstrated by Mr. Coupland. The purpose of this essay assignment was to support student learning how to construct an arguement in physics, and Mr. Coupland even gave them the specific techniques that needed to be included in the paper such as posing a question and addressing misconceptions. He is teaching students how to argue like a scientist, so that they can better analyze, interpret, and communicate their findings like the experts in the field do.

Disciplinary literacy was key to the history and physics class we just visited. It is important to teach disciplinary literacy in a way that supports all students and teaches them how to communicate effectively in any discipline they choose to persue in life. It is essential to a student’s understanding of the historical debate (the dynamics discovered from the divergent opinions) and the understanding of the physics concept (as a fact, that can continue to be argued back and forth). It’s important across all disciplines because it encourages students to think and process information in the same way the experts in the field do. When students frame themselves as an expert, it is easier for them to learn and apply the information they examine.

When I was observing a math classroom last semester, the content in my learning experience was solving word problems. The content area was math, 5th grade to be exact. I saw many examples of disciplinary literacy in this math classroom. The teacher assigned a project on word problems to be completed in class and at home. The teacher put questions on the worksheet that helped support student learning of how to analyze a word problem. These questions asked the students to explain how they solved the problem (without numbers) in their own words. This practice supports student learning on how to communicate and analyze their findings in a math word problem. I noticed that after this assignment, students started to frame their questions and answered in the format that the project questions had asked. Learning how to “speak like a mathematician” actually helped the students in my class understand and apply the process for solving a word problem, because they could explain the solution and their process in their own words (with practice).

Disciplinary literacy across subjects is a 4 prong approach. It starts with engaging students in the text. For example, having students in the history class read the text and analyze the main argument engages students with the text as they practice historical literary techniques. The next step is Examining Words and Language. For example, students making sense of unfamiliar words using context and historical clues contributes to a deeper meaning of the text. After Examining Words and Language, then Evaluate with Ways of Words. To evaluate with ways of words, a student must understand how disciplinary literacy effects the text. Learning how to write and communicate in a historical, mathematical, scientific, or literary discipline is how to evaluate ways of words. In this practice, evaluating the language and mechanics of writing such as syntax, structure, etc. can help students understand how to communicate and analyze the text better.

“To be metadiscursive means that people not only engage in
many different discourse communities but also know
how and why they are engaging, and what those engagements mean for them and others in terms of social
positioning and larger power relations “

(New London Group, 1996)

The Difference Between Content, Content Area, and Disciplinary Literacy.

Content, Content Area, and Disciplinary Literacy are all interconnected, but different, concepts.

Content is simply what the text is about. The example that Wolsey and Lapp use is that “content is the what” (2017). It is simply the subject that is being written about. Content Area is the specialized area of education. For example, Social Studies is a content area. Content area is how the content is presented in school. Disciplinary Literacy is how reading and writing are used in each specific field. It is specialized to each subject or content area. It includes processing information beyond the content, and involves learning the jargon and academic language of the discipline, understanding it, and applying knowledge of the language and techniques used. Understanding, applying, and learning the different techniques that experts use within their field to communicate with each other and the public about their findings are all part of practicing disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is a key part of explaining and understanding content across content areas.

What does “Metadiscursivity” have to do with disciplinary literacy? Why is it important?

“Metadiscursivity” is an approach to disciplinary literacy. It’s an approach in which disciplines and subject areas are crossed. It’s about learning to how to apply literacy in one area to another subject area.