For this assignment, you should design a lesson or short unit so that it will support students’ disciplinary literacy learning in your current professional context. Then, try it out with your students and reflect on how it went. You should only select this option if you are able to complete a full cycle of lesson design, lesson enactment, and lesson reflection by December 3rd.
Part A: Design a lesson or short unit that will engage students in a disciplinary literacy within a disciplinary inquiry cycle. Incorporate:
- Ways to engage students in disciplinary inquiry
- What will students be investigating?
- How will they investigate it?
- What texts will they read and write?
- Ways to support students’ success
- How will you support students’ disciplinary reading and writing?
- How will you support their disciplinary talk?
- Ways of assessing students’ learning
- How will you gather information about what students are learning?
- How will you gather information about how their disciplinary reading, writing, and reasoning is developing?
Part B: Justify your lesson design. Why have you made the specific decisions that you’ve made? How did you draw from and adapt the ideas in the class readings? Length: 3 pages.
Part C: Enact the lesson or unit in your classroom. Attach a sample of student work here (scanned documents are fine).
Part D: Reflect on how your lesson/unit went. To what extent did students have opportunities to engage in a disciplinary inquiry cycle? How did you support their disciplinary literacy practices? What evidence do you have of student learning and engagement? What would you do differently next time? What questions does this experience raise for you about disciplinary literacy teaching? Connect your analysis to class readings as helpful. Length: 1.5-2 pages.
Part E: Works cited
Total paper length will vary based on length of lesson or short unit.
Total possible points: 100
| Exceeds (20 pts) | Meets (16 pts) | Approaching (12 pts) | Needs improvement (0 pts) | |
| Lesson Design (Part A) | Designed lesson includes opportunities for students to engage students in disciplinary inquiry with texts. It includes ways that the teacher will support students’ disciplinary reading, writing, and talk and assess their learning. It is clear that all aspects of the lesson are aligned with one another and in the service of disciplinary literacy. | Designed lesson includes opportunities for students to engage students in disciplinary inquiry with texts. It includes ways that the teacher will support students’ disciplinary reading, writing, and talk and assess their learning. Most aspects of the lesson are aligned with one another and in the service of disciplinary literacy. | Designed lesson includes some opportunity for students to learn aspects of disciplinary literacy. A strong inquiry frame may be absent, or there may be major areas of misalignment (e.g., the texts are not suitable for answering the disciplinary question). | Project does not include new lesson, or there are not visible disciplinary literacy aspects embedded in the new lesson. |
| Lesson Justification (Part B) | Project thoroughly justifies lesson design based on disciplinary literacy goals and principles. | Project offers some justification of lesson design based on disciplinary literacy goals and principles. Most claims are warranted and clear. | Project offers some justification of lesson design. Some claims are warranted and clear, while others are vague, incomplete, or unwarranted. | Project does not justify major decisions about the lesson design. |
| Lesson Reflection (Part D) | Project thoroughly analyzes an existing lesson or lesson set from a clear disciplinary literacy perspective. Analysis includes nuanced discussion of multiple ways that the lesson does and does not reflect disciplinary literacy goals and principles. | Project analyzes lesson from a clear disciplinary literacy perspective. Analysis includes some discussion of ways that the lesson does and does not reflect disciplinary literacy goals and principles. | Project analyzes lesson from a disciplinary literacy perspective, but the perspective may be unclear in some places. Analysis misses and/or confuses key aspects of disciplinary literacy. | Project does not analyze lesson from disciplinary literacy perspective. |
| Use of Course Readings (throughout) | Project draws deeply on course readings and course themes to design and analyze the lesson. It is clear that the writer is using the course readings in a substantive way. | Project draws on multiple course readings to design and analyze the lesson. Sometimes there are missed opportunities to draw on course readings or imprecisions in the way the readings are used. | Project draws on multiple course readings to design and analyze the lesson. The majority of the citations are superficial (i.e., they read as if they are “tagged on” rather than as if they are driving the thinking). | Project does not draw on specific course readings or only uses course readings superficially. |
| APA Format (throughout) | Project lists all in-text and end references in APA format. | Project lists all references; there may be minor errors in APA or the works cited list at the end may be incomplete. | Project does not consistently use APA. | Project does not include references. |
Content Area Reading 2019 