Real-World Literacies

Heather Lattimer draws on Literacies of Disciplines: An NCTE Policy Research Brief and stories from high school classrooms to illustrate how we can learn to recognize the unique languages and literacy structures represented by various disciplines and then help our students both navigate within individual disciplines and travel among them. Lattimer explores instructional practices grounded in real-world contexts that provide students with opportunities to approximate the kinds of reading, writing, listening, and speaking that occur in the world beyond school. Our highly technological and increasingly connected world needs more people capable of creative, innovative, and imaginative thinking that crosses disciplines. Why, then, are so many educators pressured to fall back on a standardized, test-driven, single-subject approach to instruction? How can secondary school educators across the disciplines build teaching and learning practices that respond to the complex literacy demands of the twenty-first century? Heather Lattimer draws on Literacies of Disciplines: An NCTE Policy Research Brief and stories from high school classrooms to illustrate how we can learn to recognize the unique languages and literacy structures represented by various disciplines and then help our students both navigate within individual disciplines and travel among them. Lattimer explores instructional practices grounded in real-world contexts that provide students with opportunities to approximate the kinds of reading, writing, listening, and speaking that occur in the world beyond school. Through a range of rich classroom examples, explanations of theory and practice in teacher-friendly language, guiding questions to support discussion and classroom application, and annotated lists of resources, Lattimer reframes the conversation away from generalized strategy instruction and toward true disciplinary literacy. This book proves that "we can find opportunities to create meaningful learning experiences that concurrently nurture content understanding, literacy skill development, and twenty-first-century skills."