Reading and Representing Across the Content Areas: A Classroom Guide

by Amy Alexandra Wilson, Kathryn J. Chavez, Celia Genishi, Donna E. Alvermann

Overview

This groundbreaking work redefines traditional ideas of what a “text” should be, incorporating new kinds of multimodal texts to revitalize instruction within and across disciplines in the secondary classroom. The authors provide examples of innovative representations to aid learning in earth science, language arts, mathematics, and social studies classrooms. Each chapter focuses on a specific content area, outlining learning goals, relevant national standards, types of representation that enrich learning, and teaching strategies for developing critical literacy specific to that discipline. Reading and Representing Across the Content Areas is a powerful application of creative, multimodal teaching principles for meeting challenging standards.

Book Features:

• Guidance for explicit instruction in reading, writing, and representing in each discipline
• Examples of classroom activities that build skills related to state and national standards.
• Ideas for using a wide range of printed, digital, embodied, and three-dimensional texts.
• Images of student work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807755679
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	07/11/2014
Series:	Language and Literacy Series
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	14.20(w) x 20.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Amy Alexandra Wilson is an assistant professor of language and literacy education at Utah State University. Kathryn J. Chavez is a professional development leader and literacy specialist in the Tucson Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Foreword Marjorie Siegel vii

1 Introduction 1

Why Provide Disciplinary Literacy Instruction on Multiple Representations? 2

What Is a Text? 4

Disciplinary Literacy Instruction as Instruction in Representation 6

2 Reading and Representing in Earth Science 18

Reading and Representing in Three Dimensions and Beyond 20

When Materiality Matters: Interpreting Labs, Physical Models, and the Natural World 26

Multimodal Representational Competence and Scientific Argumentation 39

Supporting Multimodal Science Literacy Through Think-Alouds 42

Chapter Insights 44

3 Reading and Representing in English/Language Arts 46

Image, Music, Speech, Writing: Producing Digital Narratives in English/Language Arts 48

Embodied Representation in English/Language Arts 56

Multimodal Representational Competence and Persuasive Compositions 60

Supporting Multimodal Literacy Through Think-Alouds 70

Chapter Insights 72

4 Reading and Representing In Mathematics 73

Symbols and Speech: Developing Representational Competence with Numbers in Mathematics 75

Picturing Mathematics: Literacy Instruction on Visuals 82

Multimodal Representational Competence and Mathematical Argumentation 92

Supporting Multimodal Numeracy Through Think-Alouds 96

Chapter Insights 99

5 Reading and Representing in Social Studies 100

Photographs, Maps, Graphs, Cartoons; Reading Images in Social Studies 103

Embodied Representation in Social Studies 111

Multimodal Representational Competence and Argumentation 116

Supporting Historical Thinking on Multimodal Texts Through Think-Alouds 125

Chapter Insights 127

6 Reading and Representing Across the Content Areas 128

Embracing Students' Diverse Representational Practices 130

Representational Instruction Grounded in Design 132

References 137

Index 145

About the Authors 151

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book hits the ball out of the park!”
—Patricia L. Anders, University of Arizona

“Destined to become a classic in disciplinary literacy.”
—Victoria Gillis, University of Wyoming

“Just in time for the challenges posed by the Common Core State Standards.”
—From the Foreword by Marjorie Siegel, Teachers College, Columbia University