Nonfiction
Disciplinary Literacy
Text Complexity
Rigor and Relevance
Supporting Students
100

This type of text is present in all content areas.

What is nonfiction? 

100

Literacy skills that can be used for all subjects.

What are intermediate literacy skills? 

100

Texts that students can struggle with, rather than texts they can struggle through. The text must also be developmentally appropriate for the students. 

What type of texts do we want for students? 

100

The foundation and necessary element for rigorous reading. It is personal and about what matters to the reader. 

What is relevance? 

100
This supports student understanding of disciplinary texts and topics.

What is discussion?

200

Choosing an easier text.

What does NOT help make disciplinary reading more developmentally appropriate? 

200

Skills that are specific for a particular discipline. 

What is disciplinary literacy?

200

Multidimensional characteristics of a text that involve quantitative and qualitative factors. 

What is text complexity?

200

Resides in the energy and attention that the reader brings to the text. 

What is rigor? 

200
This helps students to process, engage, and express learning.

What is writing about the topic?

300

Body of work in which the author claims to tell us about the real world, a real experience, a real person, an idea, or a belief. 

What is nonfiction?

300

Summarizing, skimming, scanning, and writing definitions that are essential for engaging in disciplinary literacy.

What are examples of intermediate literacy skills? 

300

Word level, language function and text features, syntax, and discourse.

What are the demands of a text? 

300

Giving students harder texts to read.

What does not increase rigor of texts? 

300

This strategy can help students with difficult syntax.

What is slow reading?

400

The reader must question the text, question the author, question their own understanding of the topic, and accept the possibility their views will change as a result of the reading. 

What are the demands/ responsibilities of the reader when reading nonfiction? 

400

This content area should teach literacy skills.

What are all content areas?
400

Knowledge demands, content, rhetorical function, critical stance, and source considerations.

What are the discourse demands of a text? 

400

These factors have been well-researched to impact the level of engagement and outcomes for disciplinary literacy.

What are interest and motivation? 

400

Unknown vocabulary, trouble visualizing, lack of prior knowledge, and not understanding relationships and sequencing

What are some common problems that readers have when reading nonfiction? 

500

The reader must challenge the text, invite the text to challenge them, and take on an active role. 

What are the roles of the reader when reading nonfiction?

500

Reading as a scientist, mathematician, or historian; debating and discussing evidence and perspectives; writing about a topic in the format appropriate to the discipline.

What are examples of disciplinary literacy skills? 

500

Refers to the text difficulty in a book (word and sentence level), not the content or quality of the book. 

What is a quantitative / Lexile measurement?

500

As students interactions with text increase, they should receive increasingly more complex texts. 

What is the responsibility of the teacher in regards to rigor? 

500
Students should make, support, and respond to arguments in this content area.

What is all of them!