English Language Development
in the era of Common Core
Spring RESA Session 2013
Disciplinary Literacy
• Content area teachers outside the ELA
classroom emphasize literacy experiences in
their planning and instruction.
• Students learn through domain-specific texts in
science & social studies classrooms
• Rather than referring to the text, students are
expected to learn from what they read in the
text
Defining Disciplinary Literacy
• Disciplinary is anchored in the specifics of individual disciplines.
• Each discipline has its own unique knowledge and its own ways
of inquiring, investigating, reasoning, representing, and forming
driving questions in the field.
• What do historians consider when they read a text?
• How do scientists write a text to be understood by others in the
field?
• How do artists or engineers or musicians read and write within
their disciplines?
Why it Matters?
• Literacy is deeper than reading and writing
• Content areas require students to engage with
multiple texts in varying ways
• The needs of diverse populations require
expanded understandings of the scope of
literacy
Why it Matters (cont.)
• There are multiple ways by which a person can
be literate
• Different disciplines require different literacy
actions
Comparison of Content-area Literacy to
Disciplinary Literacy (Shanahan, 2010)
Content-Area Literacy
Disciplinary Literacy
Reading experts
Wide range of experts
Generalized skills
Specialized, discipline specific skills
Use of reading and writing to learning
information
Use of literacy skills to make meaning
within a discipline
Geared toward remedial students
Geared toward all students
Often encourages use of literary texts
Focuses only on discipline-specific texts
Graphics are ignored or taught generally
Graphics are specific to the discipline
DPI Disciplinary Literacy
On-line Module (NC Education)
Introduction to CCSS Literacy in History/Social
Studies; Science and Technical Subjects
https://center.ncsu.edu/nc/enrol/index.php?id=
1551
Contacts
Ivanna Mann Thrower
ESL/Title III Consultant
NC Department of Public Instruction
919-807-3860
ivanna.thrower@dpi.nc.gov
Charlotte “Nadja” Trez
ESL/Title III Consultant
NC Department of Public Instruction
919-807-3861
nadja.trez@dpi.nc.gov
ESL Website http://esl.ncwiseowl.org/