As I was reading through the articles "Effective Literacy Instruction" and "Who Are Adolescents Today?" I was reminded of how important it is to relate the content we teach students to their experiences, cultures, backgrounds, and interests. The idea is that the students will become more engaged in the lessons, find more meaning in them, and become more motivated in their classes. I know this has been a common theme in many of our classes, but it doesn't hurt to emphasize it again. I think this is one of the most important aspects of teaching.
The article "Doing and Teaching Disciplinary Literacy" provides us with a strategy (disciplinary literacy) to help engage and give meaning to the content student's are learning. According to the author Elizabeth Birr Moje, "Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized literacy practices of a given domain" (256).
At the beginning of the article I had a good feeling about the effectiveness of implementing disciplinary literacy in the classroom. I saw how it can give meaning to certain disciplines that students have a tendency to find unimportant and useless in their everyday lives.
As I continued to read, I started thinking about the realistic possibility of implementing this type of framework into a school curriculum. On pages 271-272 Moje explains the different resources teachers need in order to effectively use disciplinary literacy in the classroom. Among other things, her plan calls for "standards to be finely tuned to reflect the expected shifts in development and learning of young people over time" (272), schools to "coordinate student learning and development across the grades" (272), and teachers to talk and plan across grade levels and disciplines.
I would be interested to hear from you all how realistic you think it is to implement disciplinary literacy into a school in the way Moje describes.
In my opinion, the standards have not been developed sufficiently enough to support this framework Since finely tuning the standards is the basis for this framework according to Moje, how can it work if the standards don't support it? I think there are ways around the standards and teachers can work with them to create a curriculum based on disciplinary literacy, but if it is so reliant on outside factors (in Moje's view), doing it will be very difficult. I think that it's possible to implement aspects of disciplinary literacy in a classroom without following Moje's exact guidelines. However, because of the challenges that come with using this type of framework, I can see how teachers would be hesitant to use it.
A few questions I thought of in response to this article are,,,
What are some ways to implement disciplinary literacy in classrooms right now?
Have you seen aspects of disciplinary literacy in any of your fieldwork?
What steps do you think need to be made so that this type of education is more prevalent and achievable school-wide, not just in a particular classrooms?
Hey Amanda,
ReplyDeletegreat post! I think all the points you mentioned, I agree with you all the way. I really enjoyed the beginning paragraph where you talk about this theme of including culture and backgrounds into the content and I believe that's a great reminder for us as we go into this teaching year and when we become teachers in the future!
With Moje's view of implementing this idea of disciplinary literacy, I can see it being difficult to pursue, especially with these different tests, the lack of resources within the cities, and just the lack of motivation in students as well. I think with the correct teachers, the perseverance from the teachers and staff, the school system can really make a difference and be able to give the students the different classes and activities that will really help them out in the long run. Having classes that can fulfill a wide variety of interests from the students then it would be done in a heartbeat and we would be able to see these schools make a difference in these students' lives. But like how you mentioned at the end of your post, it is a little bit scary to use and with the different challenges that stir up would be very difficult to implement. But that's why we, as future teachers, will have all this knowledge and we will make a difference in the city and all schools around!
I think what you said about having the right teachers and the perseverance from the entire school is key to the success of disciplinary literacy. If schools can achieve that, I believe it's much more possible to implement it into each classroom. There is still the fact that the standards aren't quite up to par, but with hard work and dedication, I believe it could work!
DeleteHey Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the first point that you made in your blog post. I think that making our lessons relatable to our students is half of our battle and is very important for them to retain the information we give them and to be able to apply it to their own lives. The term "disciplinary literacy" and the definition that was given in this reading is slightly still confusing to me, so I would have liked to see it put in simplest terms. I also do agree with you that the standards could still use some work to be able to implement disciplinary literacy into a school the way that the author describes.
I agree that it was challenging to understand the term disciplinary literacy the way Moje described it. I'm glad I wasn't the only one! When she started relating it to culture, that really threw me off too. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the standards once/if disciplinary literacy becomes more mainstream.
DeleteHi Amanda!
ReplyDeleteI also agree and think that lessons and standards should be related to student learning. I haven't yet seen disciplinary learning in my field work experience. But, I would definitely incorporate it into my discipline. For instance, I would expose students to different literacy strategies that can help them as they read science texts. I would ask them to pic strategies that they can relate to best, and use them as they are reading and note taking.