Disciplinary Literacy

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Why it works

Research on disciplinary literacy finds that as students advance, generic reading strategies matter less than the specialized ways experts in each field read and write: historians source and corroborate, scientists read for evidence and argument, mathematicians read precisely. Content teachers teaching these discipline-specific habits build both literacy and content understanding.

The research: Shanahan and Shanahan on disciplinary literacy.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

The core activity: teach one disciplinary habit

Teachers leave having planned to teach one discipline-specific reading or writing habit explicitly.

Pick a text or task in your subject.
Identify how an expert in your field reads or writes it: sourcing, evidence, precision, argument.
Plan to teach that specific habit explicitly, not a generic strategy.
Plan how students practice it with your content.

Teach them to read like an expert in your fieldThe most powerful literacy move a content teacher can make is teaching the discipline's own ways of reading, writing, and reasoning.

Facilitator notes

Identify your discipline's literacy practices.
Teach them explicitly; it is content, not an add-on.
Model expert reading in your field.

Generic strategies are not enoughAs texts specialize, 'make a prediction' matters less than teaching how experts in your subject actually read and reason. Teach the discipline's habits.

Adapt it

Elementary: early discipline habits, reading like a scientist in simple ways.
Secondary: full disciplinary reading and writing.
All settings: content teachers teach their discipline's literacy.

Participant handout

One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

K12 Academics · Professional Learning

Disciplinary Literacy: read like an expert

Each field reads differently: sourcing, evidence, precision, argument, taught explicitly in content.

A text or task in my subject:
How an expert in my field reads or writes it:
The specific habit I will teach explicitly:
How students practice it with content:
Why it is content, not an add-on:

Make it stick

Teach your field's literacy:

Teach your discipline's reading and writing habits.
Model expert reading.
Bring a disciplinary-literacy lesson to the next PLC.

Common questions

Isn't teaching reading the English teacher's job?

Not at the content level. As texts get specialized, every content teacher is best placed to teach how to read and write in their discipline. Generic strategies are not enough.

What does disciplinary reading look like?

A historian questions the source and compares accounts; a scientist reads for evidence and claims; a mathematician reads every symbol precisely. Each is taught differently.

Doesn't this take time from content?

It is content. Teaching students to read and reason like an expert in your field is how they learn the field deeply.