Redesigning Reading in and for the Disciplines

Abstract

Challenges associated with reading in the disciplines are well documented. In this article, we report on a small‐scale study that was part of a larger school‐university design‐based research collaboration focused on improving literacy learning in Australian high schools. We discuss Paired Wide Reading (PWR), an instructional innovation designed to increase opportunities for adolescent learners to read engaging and relevant texts within disciplinary lessons. Mean pre and post‐test reading comprehension scores revealed statistically significant improvements of twice the expected rate of gain for participating Year 9 students. Highlighting the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration among teachers, findings also suggest PWR's cumulative effect on measures of student reading comprehension. Students exposed to PWR across several curricular areas made the greatest gains. Additionally, teachers who infused PWR into their disciplinary lessons found it to be engaging, enriching and effective. This study underscores the potential of school‐university collaborations to redesign instruction in impactful ways.

Developing responsive disciplinary literacies for student teaching in social studies

“…This partnership resulted in an interdisciplinary lesson that layered social studies and music standards to teach skills of historical analysis of primary source documents. They used a “smart text set” (Glasswell et al., 2022), including the music of Sam Cooke, to teach musical elements (rhythm, melody, musical expression) and history of the 1960s. Through this lesson, students answered questions of “ How do the musical elements impact the meaning of the lyrics in the song?…”

“…For this class, Sydney created assignments that were scaffolded dependent on reading and writing strengths, an important goal for CRP (Colwell et al., 2021; Gay, 2010). She created digital “smart text sets” (Glasswell et al., 2022) of multilingual articles, in this case Spanish, and adjusted Lexile levels. Each student would have an individualized Google Doc with guiding questions to use as they read through the content.…”

“…Co‐teaching with an MLL educator helped Sydney to adapt DL to include best practices for MLLs, and become an advocate for both her students and her content. As an English speaker who spoke fluent Spanish as a second language, her own linguistic systems were an asset to her abilities to adapt DL practices through translanguaging (Hernandez Garcia & Schleppegrell, 2021), individualized “smart text sets” (Glasswell et al., 2022), and one on one responsive teaching for MLLs. This placement successfully extended Sydney's working theory of literacy developed in teacher education coursework, and facilitated her development of culturally and linguistically relevant DL practices.…”

“…For example, the use of reading stances, including the practice of “reading like a historian” (Wineburg & Reisman, 2015) has been shown to improve student academic learning in history while boosting literacy skills. Paired wide reading approaches that organize curriculum around “smart text sets,” designed to differentiate topics, as well as levels of text complexity, have led to improvements in adolescent reading abilities and motivation for reading (Glasswell et al., 2022). Despite their effectiveness, these approaches are not yet widely used in secondary social studies classrooms.…”