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Running Head: Final Reflection

Philosophy of Disciplinary Literacy

Chalsey Slaughterbeck

Arizona State University

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Final Reflection
Final Reflection

Going into this class, I wasn’t really sure what disciplinary literacy was. I had heard the

term used loosely in my other education classes, but I never really had a strong understanding of

what exactly disciplinary literacy was. Now, as I reflect on what I have learned throughout the

entire semester, I have come to realize that literacy plays a key role within teaching, and

specifically within the content area of English. To me, literacy in the content area of English

means that students can read, write, speak, and listen based on a specific purpose. Although other

content areas also depend on students to be literate, ELA asks that students be given a specific

purpose and be able to respond accordingly.

To give more of an example on what this looks like, take the author’s purpose. This is a

concept that asks students to read a text, analyze why the author is writing this text, and who this

text could be written for. Depending on the answer to this question, it can change the entire

meaning of the text completely. Having this ability is literacy applied at its best within my

content area. Students are able to read any text that they are given and be able to understand why

it was written, what this text does, and who this text was written for. Having this skill would be

very beneficial to have both inside the classroom and outside. Let’s say that the student is given a

work contract to look over before taking the offer. This student, even though they aren’t very

familiar with legal documents, would be able to analyze the contract to get the exact information

they are wanting to get.

To take this even deeper, learning how to respond to these texts adds to the student’s

overall literacy progression. It is one thing to just be able to read and understand a text, but it is

another to apply what you’ve read in order to form a response. This is where other forms of

literacy such as writing, speaking, and listening come into play. I have found that, especially
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Final Reflection
before I took this class, literacy is often assumed as just being able to read. People define literacy

as the ability to read and write, when it is so much more than that. Being able to speak, write, and

listen also play a key role in literacy and within the ELA classroom. After reading these texts, the

students can have the ability to respond to them through giving a speech (speaking standards),

listening to their peer’s responses (listening standards), or even through an essay (writing

standards). The possibilities are endless, and incorporating more than one form of literacy into

activities and assessments is extremely important when building a student’s disciplinary literacy.

To conclude, I have learned a tremendous amount of strategies and practices relating to

literacy and disciplinary literacy during this semester. Through our modules, and especially

through the interdisciplinary lesson plan we created, I have been able to incorporate more

literacy focused content within my discipline. The things that I have learned in this class are

resources and strategies that I will take with me into my own classroom someday. As I reflect,

English has become so much more to me than just teaching my students how to read and write.

English has become a class where I can really teach my students literacy skills that they will be

able to take with them to their other classes, their work, and anywhere else outside of the

classroom.