Reading Matters Winter 2019

ELA Science Overarching Issue In 2015, Berkeley County, South Carolina, experienced devastating floods. Farms, homes, businesses, and infrastructure were severely damaged. Inquiry Question How was the news reporting and political response biased? Are FEMA’s flood zone designations equitable? How did New Deal era construction projects Math Social Studies

are equitable. Disciplinary purpose and the inquiry we explore with students is certainly influenced by questions and texts and ways of creating knowledge within the discipline. And, given the impact of these floods on the mid-state region, the questions explored within student lives and communities also matter. Thus, engaging adolescent readers with texts depends upon finding the inquiry sweet spot which exists at the intersection of the lives of students and unsettled, daily questions valued by disciplines. This inquiry sweet spot is worth exploring with students and provide authentic reason to use texts. See Table 1 to the right.

How should farmers use the relief funds they receive to repair damage to their fields? You have been hired by the SC Farm Bureau to develop recommendations for the farmers on how to use their relief funds to improve future production. Soil analysis data, interview recordings with local farmers, aerial photographs of farms before and after the flood

influence the effects of the 2015 flood in South Carolina? You have been asked to create a museum exhibit exploring the New Deal’s impact on the 2015 flooding. Carefully select artifacts and prepare a written justification for your exhibit. U.S. Geological survey results from the 1930’s, articles on New Deal initiatives in SC, FEMA reports about the 2015 flood

Reading Matters Place Matters

Performance Task

You are a consultant hired by a small farmers’cooperative in SC. Using Aristotle’s appeals, produce a multimedia ad responding to state politicians and seeking additional funding. Press conferences, news coverage of the flood, short stories about floods

You are an analyst hired to challenge the FEMA flood zone designations. Develop an argument including a mathematical model and results to determine if data supports current zoning. Modeling software (e.g., Excel), topographical maps, flood zone maps, population density maps

Sample Texts

Prioritized Habits of Mind

Citing evidence, rhetorical strategies Interpreting data, developing scientific questions Table 1 How Various Disciplinary Literacy Classrooms Could Approach the Same Scenario Modeling mathematically, interpreting results Sourcing, corroborating

But how are students expected to apply learning from chosen disciplinary texts beyond a single lesson or class period? While authentic inquiry influences engagement in disciplinary reading, a performance task provides students with an opportunity to apply disciplinary knowledge and habits of mind to a complex task reflective of the problem-solving strategies valued by the discipline (Houseal, Gillis, Helmsing, Hutchinson, 2016; Smagorinsky, 2015; Wineburg & Reisman, 2015). Thus, while any discipline can use the South Carolina flooding issue, tasks valued in a specific discipline represent appropriate performance tasks where students can demonstrate disciplinary knowledge, reasoning, and writing, whether it be a written justification for a museum exhibit in social studies, a multimedia ad in English applying Aristotle’s three appeals, or a mathematical model challenging FEMA’s flood zone designations in South Carolina (see Table 1). With disciplinary inquiry grounded in the lives of students, teachers can create a rich context for thinking with disciplinary texts by designing a complex task mirroring the products used by disciplinarians to communicate, critique and justify solutions—which impact student lives and communities. Choosing Appropriate and Complex Disciplinary Texts But which texts are appropriate? Ms. Washington selected audio interviews of farmers, along with the photographs and data sets, so students would have multiple authentic perspectives describing the science of the flood damage to the farms. The possibilities exist for using a wide range of texts to support student inquiry. However, an engineer is as unlikely to use a novel to explore flood damage as a novelist is to use topographic maps or charts of PH levels to write about government corruption. Teachers need to select disciplinary texts which help students build disciplinary

knowledge and accomplish disciplinary tasks but apprentice students into those particular disciplinary text and discourse practices (McConachie & Petrosky, 2010; Moje, 2011). Teachers should consider how texts align with the performance task, provide multiple perspectives or data, and may be sequenced together for student use. Additionally, teachers should understand what makes a particular text complex paying attention to prior knowledge demands, language demands, organization, genre and modes of communication (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2012). More than lexiles, which suggest that a text’s complexity is static, the complexity of a text is dynamic, representing the relationship individual students have with the unique features of a text. A text can be complex to one student and not to another depending on how familiar a student is with the text type, how much prior knowledge a student has about the topic in the text, how comfortable a student is with the organizational pattern of a text, and how familiar a student is with the type of language used within a text. Therefore, Ms. Washington thought the audio interviews of farmers would be accessible for her students, but several students had difficulty recognizing scientific concepts from the interviews, as they were unfamiliar with farming or even basic gardening. When students lack background knowledge, have limited experience acquiring disciplinary information from the genre, or when concepts are delivered too quickly or with too much specialized language, the text becomes complex for her specific students. Providing Appropriate Modeling of Disciplinary Thinking for Students As Ms. Washington noticed Sabra and her peers struggling with the soil data, her instinct as a teacher was to simply tell

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