Jenelle Williams

An accessible, research-backed guidebook for teaching culturally sustaining disciplinary literacy (CSDL) in the classroom Too often, disciplinary literacy and equity-focused instruction are treated as separate endeavors, leaving teachers unsure how to integrate rigorous content learning with practices that honor students' diverse identities. Many educators want to make their instruction more inclusive but lack models that show what this looks like across subjects. In Engaging Learners with Culturally Sustaining Disciplinary Literacy, Jenelle E. Williams and Rachelle S. Savitz provide a new, proven framework designed to equip teachers to engage students in rigorous literacy practices through authentic disciplinary learning while affirming who students are and what they need to thrive. Featuring authentic classroom examples drawn from a network of teachers across the disciplines, this resource provides strategies applicable to all 6th–12th grade disciplinary educators, including ELA, social studies, math, science, art, music, and PE teachers. Each chapter highlights actionable approaches that identify how to support student motivation, voice, and agency while meeting curricular goals. Chapter 7 pulls it all together with a complete instructional unit that shows how literacy, content learning, and cultural relevance can be woven together in the classroom. Within these pages, readers will find concrete tools—such as layered text sets, discussion protocols, and authentic assessment approaches—that empower teachers to build learning environments where students' cultural and linguistic identities are recognized as assets for learning.

A revised and expanded edition that promotes inquiry and teaching practices to help students gain the discipline-specific literacy skills they need to succeed in college, the workplace, and the society of tomorrow. In this second edition of Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry and Instruction, Jacy Ippolito, Christina L. Dobbs, and Megin Charner-Laird update their framework for guiding discipline-specific teaching and learning in K–12 classrooms. With new and revised chapters, the book outlines disciplinary literacy professional learning that not only supports the development of new instructional skills but also inspires hope, authentic engagement, and collaboration among teachers and educational teams. Ippolito, Dobbs, and Charner-Laird show how their adaptable framework, which is based on the RAND model of reading comprehension, allows educators across grade levels to embrace the language, genre, and modality of their particular subject areas while attuning specifically to texts, tasks, students, and classroom cultures. Offering research-based best practices, guiding questions, and concrete real-world examples, they prepare teachers to meet the demands of today’s educational climate. This useful resource for professional learning demonstrates how the disciplinary literacy framework can guide both larger-scale and hyperlocal implementation. It maintains a special focus on critical disciplinary literacy work, which interweaves the ideas of disciplinary literacy with critical, culturally sustaining, and antiracist pedagogies. It also prepares educators to serve diverse student populations with specific literacy-learning needs, including neurodivergent students, deaf students, and multilingual learners. This book gives teachers and school leaders the tools to equip a more technically proficient, informed, and creative citizenry.