Connecting Across Disciplines: Collaborating with Informational Text

While the Common Core has made informational text a focal point in English/language arts classrooms around the country, it has also made literacy a key concern in other subjects.

Teaching literacy in the disciplines and navigating informational texts are challenging prospects. How can content-area teachers find high-quality informational texts that will enhance their curriculum? How do they go about working with these new texts? Most importantly, how do teachers balance their responsibility towards their subject matter with the new charge to incorporate disciplinary literacy?

The key is to connect, communicate, and collaborate. Teachers can meet these challenges together and enhance student literacy, engagement, and motivation along the way. This volume offers a practical model that teachers in any discipline can use to incorporate informational texts into their classrooms on their own or in collaboration with colleagues in other content areas. We also share suggestions and ideas for initiating and implementing collaboration between teachers of any discipline, even those working at the secondary level with complex schedules and curricula.

Audrey Fisch is Professor of English and Coordinator of Secondary English Education at New Jersey City University where she has taught for over twenty years. She has published a wide variety of academic work and has worked as a curriculum consultant and professional development provider for K-12 districts in New Jersey.

Susan Chenelle has taught English and journalism for eight years at University Academy Charter High School in Jersey City, New Jersey, where she serves as English department lead and peer coach for humanities. She holds a master’s degree in education from New Jersey City University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Kenyon College.