How can I

(1) engage newcomers in my discipline in cycles of inquiry?

I can engage newcomers in my discipline in cycles of inquiry by not basing mathematics on specific interpretations, but instead help them to create different strategies for studying and interpreting word problems. I feel as if learning math is hard and discouraging when you continuously don’t know how to do the problems. Newcomers will be able to be engaged if they first learn how to study for math and interpret word problems because this will help them to correctly complete problems. Correctly answering and continuously doing well is encouraging, motivating and will engage newcomers in my discipline.

(2) Engineer and scaffold their success?

I can engineer and scaffold their success by introducing different reading strategies grounded in transactional reading. It is important that I, as a future educator, encourage my students and newcomers to math, to bring their own knowledge that they have to the classroom. I can have them compare their own real life experiences to things in the textbook such as word problems. They can also engage in a dialogue with the author and transform the author’s meaning and interpret it to their own (Pearson & Fielding, 1991). The three strategies in the article I read were based off of transactional reading. These strategies are Say Something, Cloning an Author, and Sketch-to-Stretch. The Say Something strategy “is based on the assumption that a reader’s comprehension results from an evolving dialogue with both the text and other readers” (Borasi et al 1998). Cloning an Author is when “readers are asked to stop reading whenever they choose and to write what they regard as important ideas on cards. After they have finished reading the text in this manner, they are asked to arrange their cards to show the relationships among ideas” (Borasi et al, 1998). Finally, the strategy Sketch-to-Stretch has students actually draw out their interpretations of the text and then share their interpretive drawing others. Incorporating these strategies in the classroom will help students learn. All students learn differently and having the students try all of these should help them find one that works for them. Once they find a strategy that works, they will learn better, do well with the discipline and will then be more engaged.

Borasi, R., Siegel, M., Fonzi, J., & Smith, C. F. (1998). Using transactional reading strategies to support sense-making and discussion in mathematics classrooms: An exploratory study.Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 29(3), 275-305.

• 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?”)
• The Kirkland et al article was organized by first stating what they were planning to observe and the main question(s) they were planning their research around. Next, it gave background information on the group as well as the definitions of what they were planning to collect data from. Then they collected data and analyzed it and showed the audience the data they received. Finally, they gave their results and interpreted their results.
• How do the authors define literacy and why? Based on this definition, what do they observe in the classroom?
• The author’s central literacy they were defining in the article was “cool talk”. They did this because they were looking for themes and patterns that linked black males and “cool talk”. Based on this definition, they observed that there are patterns and symbols in the classroom that connect black males, or “cool kids”, “cool talk”, but that this language separates them from others. 
• How might this examination of literacy inform your own observations in your field experiences? 
• I feel as if this examination of literacy can inform my own observations in my field experience because I can observe students and the way they are “grouped” or separated based on their ethnicity.

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

Inquiry- an act of asking for information. It is a way for teachers to stand alongside their students and reflect and revise their teaching (Mills et al 3).

Kidwatching- technique of observing students to learn more about them

Responsive teaching- process of stepping in and out of a learning activity to support the student’s individual needs

Inquiry, kidwatching and responsive teaching are related to one another because they are all a way of collecting data in natural ways, whether it be formal or informal and upfront or by observing. Kidwatching and responsive teaching are examples of inquiry. All three are ways for teachers to get to know their students, which in the long run will accelerate their ways of teaching and improve their student’s learning and literacy.

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

The “naturally occurring data” that I collected during my field experience was observing classrooms, watching and listening to the student’s conversations in the halls vs. in class, as well as the teacher’s conversations in class with their students vs. with other faculty. Additionally, I took notes, interviewed my teacher and read their textbooks.

Tuesday’s reading(s):

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

Thursday’s reading(s):

Mills, H., & O’Keefe, T. (2011). Inquiry into assessment strategies: From kidwatching to responsive teaching. Talking Points 22(2), 2-8. retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/TP/0222-may2011/TP0222Inquiry.pdf

What claims do they make?

One of the main concerns of the author was that a lot of high school students graduate at a basic or below basic level and in order to raise these levels, disciplinary literacy must be embedded into content area instruction. They mention in the article about how disciplinary literacy will help academic achievement. To incorporate disciplinary literacy into the classroom, Hillman adds to the article that one must “link experts’ advanced skills to the beginning skills of students as apprentices in the discipline” (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989; Schoenbach, Greenleaf, & Murphy, 2012). Hillman states that mathematical literacy is not mentioned in the common core standards, but that it should be explored and disciplinary literacy in math should be pushed more. Hillman also argues that there are challenges of mathematical literacy such as the way that students use reasoning while problem solving. The second article I read was arguing about how the role of literacy is ignored in math and how teachers mostly just teach the students what they need to know, rather than having them try to think deeper about why they are doing what they are doing.

How do they support those claims? — aka what kind of evidence? What do you notice about the way the evidence is worded?

Hillman uses plenty of evidence while supporting her claims- Gee is one of them! The evidence used are all facts or opinions from other researchers and she uses them to back up her claims. The study in Shanahan et al’s article mentioned how they surveyed students in different disciplines (math, science and history) and compared them rather than took results from students of different academic proficiency (this study was done previously).

Hillman, A. M. (2013). A literature review on disciplinary literacy: How do secondary teachers apprentice students into mathematical literacy? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(5), 397-406.

Shanahan, C., Shanahan, T., & Misischia, C. (2011). Analysis of expert readers in three disciplines: History, mathematics, and chemistry. Journal of Literacy Research, 43(4), 393-429.Wimmer, J. J., Siebert, D., & Draper, R. (2017). Digital mathematics literacies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(5), 577-580.

What do you notice about either video? How do they each relate to the concepts of disciplinary literacy and/or content area reading? What are the affordances and limitations of each approach? 

The video on List-Group-Label relates to the concepts of disciplinary literacy in various ways. First, they start at a basic level, where the whole class says words that remind them of the topic or are related to the topic. This topic can be compared to the “content”. Then, the teacher groups the words into different categories within the main topic, which in a sense can be seen as the content area of that broad topic. Finally, they label the groups based on the reasonings of the words grouped together. This might be similar to disciplinary literacy because it is going deeper into the categories. There are affordances and limitations to this approach. In the video, the teacher was grouping the words based off of her opinions of what she thought. This allows for freedom and creativity, however, could lead to students grouping things very randomly with no reasoning. In the Tedd video, I found it very important that the teacher asked many different students which answer they got and did not tell them the right answer or if they were right or wrong, but instead had them explain why they did the math problem they way that they did. This made them think deeper about the problem.

For what purposes will you access the reading rockets website? And for what purposes will you access the Tedd website? 

The reading rockets and the Tedd website will be purposeful in my future because I can watch other teachers and their teaching styles/strategies. They can be beneficial for me, so I can see what I would like to use or try not to do when I am teaching. It was also interesting to see the different ages of the students and their reasonings as well as the different school subjects.

The required reading that I chose was focused on math. Different studies and experiments were set up to test the importance of reading and reading strategies in the math content area. One of the findings said that the different reading strategies that they implemented resulted in students’ sense-making and discussion skills to improve.

Borasi, R., Siegel, M., Fonzi, J., & Smith, C. F. (1998). Using transactional reading strategies to support sense-making and discussion in mathematics classrooms: An exploratory study.Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 29(3), 275-305.

• What are the strongest arguments for and against taking a disciplinary approach to teaching reading at the elementary levels?
• There are many strong arguments for and against taking a disciplinary approach to teaching reading at the elementary levels. To begin, in Shanahan’s article, she stated that just reading can only go so far. Summarizing and contextualizing is easy, but there is no advancement after that if disciplinary literacy is not taught. I believe that disciplinary literacy should be taught in elementary school. I agree with Shanahan when she says that elementary school should prepare students for disciplinary reading.
• What Discourses, social languages, genres, and/or cultural models help to shape your focal discipline? 
• Discourses and genres help to shape my focal discipline of math. The discourses that help to shape my discipline is not only the definitions within textbooks, but written and real life examples, as well. There are genres that also help. For example, English and being able to read and write plays along with my discipline of math. If a student did not know how to correctly read a word problem, there would be no way of setting up a formula to find the solution.
• 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?
• Thinking back to experiences in math, I was taught in many ways, which makes sense because I had many different teachers. I do not believe that my teachers exposed me to the processes by which experts created knowledge in my focal discipline. I say this because I feel as if they themselves do not the processes by which experts created this knowledge.

Shanahan, C., & Shanahan, T. (2014). Does disciplinary literacy have a place in elementary school? The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 636-639.

Spires, H. A., Kerkhoff, S. N., & Graham, A. C. (2016). Disciplinary literacy and inquiry: Teaching for deeper content learning. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 151-161.

Gee, J. P. (2001). Reading as situated language: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(8), 714-725.

• What did Disciplinary Literacy teaching look like in a history and physics class? What might it look like in other school subjects? 
• Disciplinary Literacy teaching in a history class looks like being able to identify patterns and themes throughout the historical timeline. While in a physics class, Disciplinary Literacy looks like students having to know the formulas, but must also be able to apply the formulas. To do this, one must know the learn the content, know the big ideas and apply it to scientific processes. In other school subjects, such as math, Disciplinary Literacy can be very similar to in physics because, as Houseal says, “in mathematics students are encouraged to solve problems that involve mathematical ideas but are not necessarily grounded only in mathematics. The goal is to provide students with skills and critical thinking to analyze the givens and solve problems. Computational and mathematical literacies require students to understand whether the answer works within the context and to generalize to other contexts” (Houseal 3). This can be compared to physics because in physics, students have to solve problems on paper, but must also understand what their answer means.

• Apply the concept of content, content area, and disciplinary literacy to your own learning/teaching experiences. How do each of these concepts lead you to different interpretations of your observations?
• Content, Content Area and Disciplinary Literacy can be applied to my own learning experiences such as physics. Each of these concepts leads me to be able to interpret my observations because, to begin I am not good at physics. I can see that I know the content and content area of physics because I know what the subject is, what is generally being taught in it and I am even able to learn the formulas and be able to work out some problems on paper. The part where literacy discipline comes in is that I do not actually know physics because I cannot actually think of ways to apply the formulas to real life situations or be able to interpret the data.  

• How does disciplinary teaching look across the different school subjects? 
• Disciplinary teaching can be seen across the different school subjects in various ways. For example, science and math is based on being able to interpret and analyze data. English focuses more on finding themes in plots and history is finding general themes across the historical timeline.

Rainey, E. C., Maher, B. L., Coupland, D., Franchi, R., & Moje, E. B. (2018).  But what does it look like?  Illustrations of disciplinary literacy teaching in two content areas.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(4), 371-379.

Houseal, A., Gillis, V., Helmsing, M., & Hutchison, L. (2016). Disciplinary literacy through the lens of the Next Generation Science Standards.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(4), 377-384. 

What is the difference between Content, Content area and Disciplinary Literacy? 

Content, Content Area and Disciplinary Literacy are all very different. Content is “the what”, meaning that it is the point that is trying to be put across by the author. While Content Area is the subject being taught. Disciplinary Literacy can best be described as when students have to know the content of a certain subject as well as how reading and writing are used in that subject- almost like a combination of both Content and Content Area.

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

Metadiscursivity is when individuals engage in many discourse communities and know why and how they are engaging. This relates to disciplinary literacy because it can be compared to students that have to engage in many different subject areas and also have to know how reading and writing are used in each area. This is important because without the engaging factor, there is no point- it would basically just be going through the motions and not actually learning anything.

How does Moje’s disciplinary theory compare and contrast to Gee’s perspectives on reading and language?

Moje’s disciplinary theory can be compared and contrasted to Gee’s perspectives on reading and language. Moje’s and Gee’s perspectives are compared and contrasted because Moje believes that young people cannot actually read without having knowledge of the content while Gee would say they do not need to actually be able to understand what they are reading. Although the young person may be able to read the words of a book, Moje would say it is not reading and Gee might believe that it is.

Wolsey, T. D., & Lapp, D. (2017). Literacy in the disciplines: A teacher’s guide for grades 5-12. Chapter 1. New York, NY: Guilford. 

Moje, E.B. (2008).  Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy teaching and learning: A call for change.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(2), 96-107