Disciplinary Literacy at BBMS!

What are characteristicsof the HCPSS Literacy Team?The Literacy Team is a community of learners who spend time together on a regular basis building an understanding of Common Core Standards and Howard County instructional expectations.

Central Office curricular leaders provide guidance and insight regarding how the standards apply to their specific content areas.

Participants take their understanding of standards and curricular expectations back to their schools where teachers there too are building an understanding of Common Core Standards and Howard County instructional expectations.

What is disciplinary literacy?Point #1: You are NOT going to be teaching reading in your classroom!Point #2: Disciplinary Literacy is not just using “generic reading and writing strategies to learn about science, math, history and literature.” McConachie and Petrosky, Content Matters, 2010

Point #3: Disciplinary Literacy is the use of discipline-specific practices to access, apply, and communicate content knowledge.  

Content Knowledge, Experience, and Skills

Read, Write, Listen, Speak,

and Think

Disciplinary Literacy

Howard County’s Vision:

Disciplinary literacy identifies reading behaviors whichengage students in INDEPENDENTLYcomprehending, as well as critiquing, increasing levelsof complex text with DEEP understanding usingSPECIFIC demands in each discipline.

SO…our job is two-fold1. We must get our students ready for the new

curricular demands that call for increased reading with higher text complexity!

2. We must reach the students who come to us with various levels of proficiency in reading!

Why disciplinary literacy?Each discipline has specialized:

Ways of thinkingLanguage and vocabularyTypes of text to comprehendWays of communicating in writing

Why disciplinary literacy?

We now need to provide students with opportunities to grapple with complex text and sources independently.

What does teaching a lesson that incorporates disciplinary literacy look like?

We are not throwing out everything we have always done…we are restructuring and fine-tuning. We are veering off the path most traveled.

Close Reading ofComplex Text

Similar situations in all classesStudent centered with discovery modelsClose readings of complex textCollaborative environment Unique strategies applied based on type of

reading based on contentReadings from varied sourcesModeling by teacher of what it means to read

like a …Discussions of thinking process