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The term disciplinary literacy is a term that we are hear more and more in our professional learning communities, and we are also seeing a lot written about the topic in educational journals. Disciplinary literacy acknowledges that disciplines such as science and social studies require specialized skills and ways of consuming and creating text (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Students must develop the necessary literacy skills to think, read, and write like scientists and historians. However, according to Shanahan and Shanahan (2014) there isn’t a great deal of difference in the types of text primary students engage with in the various content areas. Therefore, what can we do at the early elementary grades to prepare our youngest students for the diverse textual demands they will encounter as they move through the grade levels? In this article, I suggest some practical ideas that primary teachers can consider as they prepare students for success with content specific material in their classroom and the years beyond. practical ideas primary teachers can consider as they prepare students for success with content specific material in their classroom and the years beyond.
Text flexibility, the ability to comprehend various types of text, begins with engagement and text engagement begins with exposure. We can begin by exposing our students to a wide variety of both digital and printed texts. These include fiction, faction (Texts which are written to share information but told through a narrative format.), and informational texts in the classroom. However, we have to move beyond exposure to diverse texts and directly engage our students with them in order to develop text flexibility. We can engage our students by discussing how they approach the texts. For instance, they need to read and listen to a text about a talking frog very differently than they read a text about the life of Ruby Bridges. We need to ask questions about how the texts differ, how the purpose for listening/reading differs, and why the authors wrote the texts. Students need to be aware even at the earliest grades that we approach texts differently.
Reap the Benefits of Local Text
Maloch, Hoffman, & Patterson (2004) refer to local text as text created by those within the classroom while imported text includes texts brought into the classroom. As teachers, local text is an easy and excellent way to create a meaningful, print-rich environment while increasing the amount of informational text with which our students engage. Local text can include graphs of students’ favorite ice cream flavors, maps of their school, a word wall where they post favorite words, or even a time where students document what is occurring with the plants they are growing. While we view a print-rich environment as an excellent way for preschoolers and kindergarteners to develop vocabulary, we want to make sure we continue to use local text throughout
Preparing Our Youngest Learners to Develop Disciplinary Literacy Skills