Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

Grams , calories , servings , sodium , and Daily Value (DV) —to name only a few—are all not only vocabulary words but also discipline-specific concepts about which students must have a working understanding if they are to comprehend the text. We also note the discipline in which a chart like the one above is read will influence the purpose of reading: In health, students might be asked to determine the effect on athletes of eating the food described above. Reading might then become an exercise in evaluating the relationship between sodium levels and hydration levels necessary for aerobic activity. In science, however, students might set their own purpose for inquiry, asking, “Why can’t my dog have pretzels?” Such inquiry might lead students to analyze the differences between human and canine anatomy and their respective capacities for digesting sodium. Upon first glance, the text seems to be merely a chart for displaying factual data, yet comprehension of the chart varies depending on the disciplinary lens readers bring to a text. Using Interdisciplinary Lenses to Enhance Comprehension and Meaning The final text we present here continues to underpin that disciplinary texts are often multimodal in nature, as is the case with this predominantly visual political cartoon. It is also useful because it allows us to showcase two more disciplinary perspectives on texts—this time from social studies and the fine arts. While different disciplines’ views of a text and the disciplinary literacy they enact can sometimes be hard to reconcile, as the English and math examples particularly point out, there are also instances where different disciplines’ use and reading of a text can intersect and enhance one another, providing a deeper context for comprehension. For example, we can consider the political cartoon, “The Plumb Pudding in Danger,” from both a historical and an artistic perspective: 

support secondary students’ reading and writing, we risk leaving students ill-equipped to deal with texts that are not necessarily literary or narrative; (2) some strategies, such as visualizing and making inferences, are useful across disciplines, but they are used for different purposes and employed in different ways across disciplines; and (3) disciplinary expectations affect the strategies that readers choose to use to make sense of text. After these texts have been introduced, we often introduce a third: a nutrition label for pretzels. We include this text because it helps educators to stretch their interpretation of what can rightly be called a “text,” and because charts are often read in disciplines in which literacy is often considered marginal (i.e., Physical Education, science), although it is not. Charts and Non-traditional Texts in Content-area and Disciplinary Literacy Charts and other multimodal texts (i.e., graphs, infographics) are prevalent in the disciplines, and it is essential students learn to read these non-traditional texts as they would those that use words as the only mode of communication. As with word-based text, charts and other multimodal texts can be read from the standpoint of both content area and disciplinary literacy (Dobbs, Ippolito, and Charner-Laird, 2017; ILA, 2017). From a content area literacy point of view, good readers use strategic knowledge to realize chart reading differs from narrative reading. Good readers might set a purpose for reading and preview the chart by attending to its “text features,” identifying the title, the column headers, and unfamiliar vocabulary. By previewing the text, readers can establish a schema for reading: compare and

Reading Matters Displinary Literacy Matters

contrast ingredients and generate questions based on unfamiliar vocabulary. The purpose informs an active reading strategy, possibly highlighting, in preparation for an after reading discussion or summary. By using reading and writing as tools for content area literacy, students engage in the process of constructing content knowledge (McKenna & Robinson, 2014).

Figure 3 Food and Drug Administration. (2020)

Yet, as was true of word-based texts, this chart can be read using disciplinary literacy strategies as well. In particular, this chart points to the ways reading comprehension is supported by discipline-specific content knowledge. We use this chart to consider the discipline-specific content knowledge one must bring to the task of reading even texts with few words.

Figure 4 “Plum Pudding in Danger” (Arbitrage, 2020)

To make meaning of this cartoon from a social studies perspective, readers might need to utilize content area literacy strategies, such as setting a purpose for reading/viewing and

Literacy Matters | Volume 21 • Winter 2021 | 81 |

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