Disciplinary literacy in elementary school, a controversial subject, in my opinion, should be implemented, or at least introduced. As stated in Shanahan’s article, disciplinary literacy is “the specialized ways of reading, understanding, and thinking used in each academic discipline” (p. 636). In order to prepare children to produce knowledge, I believe it to be essential to introduce this way of critically thinking and teaching.
It can be argued that children must first learn basic learning strategies – summarizing, questioning, etc. I do not disagree with this. I believe that children must first be able to learn on a basic level before advancing to a more challenging way of learning. With this being said, once they master these basic skills (in the early elementary levels), I see no harm, but instead benefit, in incorporating disciplinary literacy skills in the higher elementary levels. In my opinion, I see no point in summarizing story after story once the skill has already been introduced and mastered. For me, I see a lot of repetition with these basic skills. Summarization is a basic skill – once you can summarize a basic text, it is quite simple to summarize a longer, more complex text, right? It is the same skill used on a different text – “summaries tend to neglect the nuanced information central to discipline-appropriate understanding” (p. 637). So once learning hits this point of repetition, why not take learning to the next level?
It is essential for students to understand that interpreting texts, writing, etc. is not the same across disciplines. Shanahan says that “we should teach students the way reading in various fields differs rather than only expecting students to apply the same general lens across everything they read” (p. 637). History, for example, focuses on interpreting old data, while science focuses on interpreting new data. The reading and understanding of old data is drastically different than that of new data. With this being said, interpretation and reading differs across content areas. This is not something, as teachers, we can ignore if we want our students to be successful in their learning.
Being able to read and interpret becomes essential across every discipline – but reading and interpreting is not concrete. For example, like mentioned in the article, vocabulary is a simple way to incorporate disciplinary learning in early grade levels. If you look at a scientific word, most are derived from Greek and Latin words. These Greek and Latin words can often correlate with Greek mythology found in literature texts. There are benefits in connecting Greek vocabulary in science with Greek vocabulary in English, but they are distinctly different – “students need to understand how and why such words are used in various disciplines” (p.638).
As a future teacher, I see great importance in teaching disciplinary literacy in grades as early as elementary. Once the basic learning skills are mastered, is becomes imperative to begin to teach students the reading skills necessary for them to think critically.
Content Area Reading 