Power Tools
30 Critical Disciplinary Literacy Strategies for 6-12 Classrooms
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Published: October 2023
9781975505561
$37.95
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Published: October 2023
9781975505554
$150.00
Publisher: Myers Education Press
7" x 10"Language: English
Virtually all national standards now require students and teachers to understand the particulars of disciplinary literacy. But recently emerging scholarship suggests that disciplinary literacy is, by itself, an incomplete and potentially problematic approach to secondary literacy instruction. By asking students to “think like” or even “be like” experts, students may receive implicit messaging about whose knowledge is—and isn’t—valued.
Critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) creates space for, and highlights connections between, critical literacies and disciplinary literacies. CDL acknowledges disciplines as unique communities with their own specialized (and often exclusionary) skills, norms, practices, and discourses, but deviates from conventional applications of disciplinary literacy by responding to the ways in which power systems and the analytic skills needed to understand them work differently based on the disciplines at hand. A CDL instructional approach acknowledges that applying the critical literacy skills of “reading the word and the world” to understand the power dynamics of vaccine distributions requires a different skill set and strategy approach than looking at textual representations of masculinity in Romeo and Juliet.
Written by a team of educators with over 70 combined years of classroom experience, Power Tools: 30 Critical Disciplinary Literacy Strategies for 6–12 Classrooms offers readers research-based, multidisciplinary, ready-to-implement disciplinary literacy strategies from critical literacy lenses. The book sets itself apart from other strategy textbooks by offering creative strategy implementation that calls attention to power systems. Educators can learn, for example, how they might employ read-alouds to explore the global refugee crisis, or use the exit ticket strategy to help students reflect on the relationship between race and COVID statistics/experiences.
Power Tools: 30 Critical Disciplinary Literacy Strategies for 6–12 Classrooms provides standards-aligned lessons that both challenge and extend traditional engagement practices to build a more just world. Each chapter includes:
- An overview of each strategy, situated within the research of best practices;
- Two disciplinary examples for each CDL strategy (e.g., an example of a CDL think-aloud in seventh grade math and tenth grade ELA classroom). Chapters provide resources such as examples of student work, discussion prompts, dialogue between teacher and students, and reprintables;
- Ideas for addressing resistance to CDL instruction.
Preservice and in-service teachers, as well as teacher educators and researchers, looking to do and support justice-oriented work in disciplinary spaces will find value in the book.
Power Tools is an ideal text to implement in courses such as Disciplinary Literacy, Secondary Literacy, Content Area Literacy, Methods/Strategies for Teaching Social Justice, Multicultural Education, ELA methods, Science methods, Social Studies methods, and Mathematics methods.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1 Fishbowl Discussion
ELA*: Toxic Masculinity in Romeo and Juliet
Math: Conic Sections
2 Think-Aloud
ELA: Gender Norms in A Room of One’s Own, Serena Williams’ Vogue essay
Math: Percentages in Relation to Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Food Production
3 Questioning the Author
Math: Questioning Deadly Force Statistics
SS**: Unpacking the Supreme Court Hearing on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
4 Cornell Notes
Science: Reading Race across CDC COVID Data
ELA: Unpacking Persuasive Speaking in Political Speeches
5 Biopoem
Science: Writing about the Impact of Henrietta Lacks
SS: Remembering Emmett Till and Evaluating Injustice
6 RAFT
ELA: Questioning Perspective in Huck Finn
SS: Exploring Immigration Policy in the United States
7 Six-Word Memoir
ELA: Considering Positionality in Of Mice and Men
SS: Jewish Resistance and Stories of the Holocaust
8 Venn Diagram
ELA: Double Consciousness in The Hate U Give/W.E.B. DuBois’ Writing
Math: Comparing and Contrasting Problem-Solving Techniques
9 Verbal and Visual Word Association
Science: Connecting Vocabulary to Henrietta Lacks
SS: Studying Settler Colonialism
10 Gallery Walk
ELA: Book Banning
Math: Negative Numbers and Varied Representations on Number Lines
11 Interview Me
Math: Interviewing Inequalities
ELA: Toni Morrison/The White Gaze
12 Mode Translation
Proof Positive: Presenting Mathematical Proofs in Various Formats
SS: Shifting Power Structures in Ancient Rome
13 Stop and Jot
Math: Lateral Area, Surface Area, and Volume for Prisms
Science: Reading Nonfiction Texts
14 Drawing on the Text
Science: Types and States of Energy
ELA: Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb”
15 Peer Review Circle
Science: Lab Reports and Procedures (Scientific Process/Method)
Math: Constructing a Graph
16 Puzzle Pieces
SS: Exploring Perspectives on the Vietnam War
Math: Productive Struggle
17 Read-Aloud
SS: Introduction to the Somali Civil War and Somali Refugees
ELA: 1984, The Elf on the Shelf, Nonfiction, and Surveillance
18 Mentor Text(s)
SS: Policy Briefs in Practice
Science: Exploring Openly Licensed Mentor Texts
19 Text Set
SS: Exploring the Haitian Revolution
Science: Unpacking the 17 Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations
20 Zoom In
SS: Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki
ELA: Historical Fiction and Art
21 Which One Doesn’t Belong
Math: Fraction Patterns and Belonging
ELA: Considering Perspectives across To Kill a Mockingbird
22 Notice and Wonder
Math: Data Visualization
Science: Gender Diversity in Science
23 Exit Ticket
Math: Thoughts, Questions, and Epiphanies About Graphs
ELA: Studying POV in All American Boys
24 The Answer Is___, What’s the Question
Math: Voting Statistics
Science: Marine Biome
25 Headline Stories
Math: The Storylines of Numbers
Science: The Living Planet Index
26 Poster Carousel
Social Studies: Native Americans & Treaty Rights in Washington State
Science: Scientific Research
27 KWL
Social Studies: Key Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement
Science: Environmental Justice
28 Socratic Seminar
ELA: Censorship, Racism, and To Kill a Mockingbird
Math: Number Systems
29 Human Continuum
SS: Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act
Math: Rational Numbers and the Politics of Mathematics
30 Double Entry Journals
ELA: “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Women’s Rights and Mental Health
SS:
19th Amendment and BIPOC women
* English Language Arts
**Social Studies
About the Authors
Index
Reviews & Endorsements:
"There is huge value in seeing how well known strategies can be used for incorporating a critical literacy orientation across disciplines. The explanations and examples provided for each strategy are detailed enough for teachers to use with their students and clear enough for teachers to embrace as inspiration for their own critical practice."
Hilary Janks, PhD, Professor Emerita, University of the Witwatersrand
"This book presents a trove of research-based strategies that teachers can use to promote thoughtful, productive engagement with texts, helping students learn to read carefully, critically, purposefully, and with an informed skepticism across genres and content areas. With powerful examples and accessible descriptions for each strategy, the book is an exceptionally practical and timely resource for anyone interested in disciplinary literacy instruction."
Zhihui Fang, PhD, University of Florida
"'But how do we do this?!' Too often, educators are provided the what and why of justice-oriented practices without the requisite direction for incorporating these practices into their own instruction. Power Tools offers a robust response to this always-apt question through its presentation of critical disciplinary literacy. Opening the book with a succinct explanation of concepts, purpose, and audience, the authors make a clear argument for the implementation of critical disciplinary literacy in content area classrooms, borne out by the specific strategies and subject-specific examples that follow. This book puts the power of justice-oriented work in teachers’ hands and, with its guidance, teachers have the power to enact it in their classrooms."
Melanie Shoffner, PhD