MODULE 2:
CONTENT-AREA
LITERACY
2: Unit 1
1, Session 1
Unit Module
1, Session
Adolescent Literacy – Professional Development
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TEACH
“DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC” LITERACY SKILLS?
An Introduction for Middle & High School
Content-Area Teachers
Module 2: Unit 1, Session 1
Essential Questions
 Module 2 Question
What role can content-area teachers play in helping
adolescents acquire general and discipline-specific
literacy skills?
 Unit 1, Session 1 Questions
How is “disciplinary literacy” different from “teaching
reading”?
What does “disciplinary literacy” mean in terms of
content-area instruction?
How can we further content-area goals by thinking
about “disciplinary literacy”?
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Warm Up
Read an excerpt from Shanahan & Shanahan’s
article “Teaching Disciplinary Literacy”
Text-Rendering
What might “teaching disciplinary literacy” look
like in your school?
What might this look like in the future?
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Moving Beyond
“Every Teacher Is a Teacher of Reading”
Disciplinary
What do these three stages of
literacy instruction mean for us?
Intermediate Literacy
Basic Literacy
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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What Does “Basic Literacy” Mean?
 Skills such as decoding and
recognizing sight words
 These are literacy skills acquired by
most students in the earliest grades
Basic
Literacy
 These skills are the necessary
building-blocks for more advanced,
specialized reading skills
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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“Basic Literacy” in Secondary School?
 Most middle and high school students
will have acquired these basic skills
 The small number of students who
need help with decoding/phonological
skills may need to see a reading
specialist for remedial help
Basic
Literacy
 Content-area teachers might note
gaps in basic skills, but most likely will
not “teach” basic skills regularly
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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What Does “Intermediate Literacy” Mean?
 These are more complex skills that
are common across most reading tasks
Intermediate
Literacy
 Comprehension, making inferences,
knowing common word meanings, basic
fluency
 Strategies for improving these
common skills might be shared by all
content-area teachers
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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“Intermediate Literacy” in Secondary School?
 Middle and high school students are
primed to learn common reading strategies
that can be applied across many contexts
Intermediate
 General comprehension strategies (e.g.,
questioning while reading, note-taking,
predicting, summarizing, etc.)
Literacy
 These are the skills and strategies that
then can be tailored to each discipline
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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What Does “Disciplinary Literacy” Mean?
Disciplinary
Literacy
 These are the highly-specialized skills
needed to read, interpret, synthesize, etc.
within each discipline
 These are the skills that experts within
each discipline rely upon to understand
and communicate knowledge
 These skills build on general/common
skills and strategies, but are more
narrowly tailored
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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“Disciplinary Literacy” in Secondary School?
Disciplinary
 Middle and high school students are
ready to begin learning discipline-specific
reading skills/strategies
Literacy
 The goal is to teach content more
effectively by adapting general reading
skills/strategies to subject-specific tasks
 General comprehension strategies
(e.g., questioning, note-taking, predicting,
summarizing, etc.) can be tailored by
each content-area teacher
Adapted from Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 44.
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Tailoring a Strategy
How might we share the teaching of an
intermediate skill/strategy, such as
“summarizing,” across content areas?
How might we tailor “summarizing” to meet
particular disciplinary goals?
Let’s look at (and then begin to adapt) a
simple summarization strategy from Adlit.org
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Wrap-Up
Things to Remember:
Content-area teachers are not “reading
teachers” per se.
The focus is on teaching CONTENT while being
aware of discipline-specific literacy skills.
Students will need to understand scientific
notation, mathematical symbols, primary
documents, timelines, figures/graphs, poems,
etc.
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References
Jacobs, V. A. (2008). Adolescent literacy: Putting the crisis in
context. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 7–39.
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.
Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary
literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy.
Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59.
Module 2: Unit 1, Session 1
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