Disciplinary Literacy in Secondary Education: Why Schools Must Go Beyond ELA

Walk into any middle or high school classroom and you’ll see it: students staring at a text — a primary source, a lab write-up, a multistep word problem — and they’re stuck before they even start. And yes, part of the issue is that some students in these classrooms still haven’t mastered foundational reading skills.

That’s real, and we can’t pretend it away.

But here’s the bigger truth: even when students struggle with reading, they still need access to the content in front of them — and we still need to teach them how to read it like a historian, a scientist, or a mathematician. Making texts more accessible helps, but accessibility alone isn’t the solution. Students need explicit instruction in how experts in a discipline make sense of information.

This is where many secondary classrooms get off track. They’re built around covering content, not teaching the disciplinary skills that help students think, question, and process like experts. And when instruction focuses only on the content, students miss the very skills that would help them understand it.

Take the word justify. In math, “justify” means show how you arrived at your answer. In science, “justify” means provide evidence that supports or disproves a claim. Same word — completely different ways of thinking.

When we don’t teach students those disciplinary differences, we leave them guessing. They don’t need more generic reading strategies — they need the tools to read, analyze, and make meaning through the lens of the subject they’re in.

That’s where disciplinary literacy in secondary education comes in.

What Disciplinary Literacy Really Means (Plain English)

Disciplinary literacy starts with one core idea: Every subject has its own ways of reading, thinking, questioning, and making meaning — and students must be taught those ways explicitly.

• Historians read to understand perspective, sourcing, bias, and cause-and-effect.

• Scientists read to evaluate evidence, identify variables, and interpret data.

• Mathematicians read to understand structure, logic, and precision.

• Literary analysts read to trace language, symbolism, and theme.

  
  

If we want students to access the texts they encounter in secondary classrooms, we have to teach them how to read like experts in each field — not like generic “good readers.”

That’s why disciplinary literacy is essential: it acknowledges that reading is not one-size-fits-all and that comprehension depends on the thinking moves each discipline demands.

The Problem With Generic Reading Strategies

Many secondary classrooms still rely on the same “universal” reading strategies we’ve used since elementary school — summarizing, predicting, finding the main idea, annotating, asking questions.

These strategies aren’t wrong; they’re simply insufficient for secondary readers because they don’t mirror how experts in different fields actually make sense of information.

A historian doesn’t begin with “What’s the main idea?”.  They start with: Who wrote this? When? Why? What perspective is influencing this interpretation?

A mathematician doesn’t highlight every line of a word problem.  They zero in on the sentence that reveals the structure of the task.

A scientist doesn’t predict what the author will say next.  They assess whether the data actually supports the conclusion and whether variables were controlled.

Generic strategies create generic thinking.  Disciplinary literacy creates expert thinking.  And that’s the level of comprehension our secondary students need.

→ A classroom environment that supports text-based thinking matters just as much as the strategy itself. You might find From Chaos to Calm: Building a Classroom That Works for Everyone helpful here.

Disciplinary Literacy in Secondary Education: Strategies Every Teacher Can Use

So how do we teach reading in every subject—without turning every teacher into an ELA teacher?

Below are practical disciplinary literacy strategies any secondary teacher can embed tomorrow.

1. Teach the “Hidden Moves” of Each Discipline

Experts have mental habits they use automatically — what to attend to, what to ignore, what questions to ask, how to process the structure of the text. Students don’t intuit these moves on their own.

Even a 20–30 second think-aloud can shift comprehension by helping students see:

• what matters in the text

• what’s noise

• how experts interrogate information

• how to approach disciplinary structures

These micro-models build powerful clarity.

2. Use Talk to Build Thinking — Not Just Discussion

Not all classroom talk builds comprehension.  Disciplinary talk routines simulate the way experts reason.

Examples include:

• Pair-share with evidence (students must reference the text)

• Agree/disagree with citations (defending a claim with disciplinary clues)

• Small-group “expert lens” roles (students adopt the perspective of a scientist, historian, analyst, etc.)

When talk mirrors disciplinary reasoning, students don’t just talk about the text — they understand it.

3. Scaffold Until Students Can “Read Like Experts”

Secondary texts are complex, layered, and discipline-specific.  Students often need scaffolds to enter the text without being overwhelmed.

And remember, he goal is always independence — not dependence.

Effective scaffolding =

• model → guided practice → independent analysis

• heavy support → strategic prompts → gradual release

4. Align Texts, Tasks, and Thinking

Sometimes the issue isn’t the text — it’s the task.

If we want students to think like scientists, mathematicians, or historians, the task must require those ways of thinking.

• A science task should require evidence, patterns, interpretation — not just multiple-choice recall.

• A history task should require sourcing, contextualizing, or corroborating — not just highlighting the document.

• A math task should require justification, modeling, or structure — not just computation.

When text, task, and thinking align, comprehension skyrockets.

→ To strengthen your walkthrough lens around disciplinary literacy, check out Analyzing Classroom Walkthrough Data: A Step-by-Step Guide for School Leaders — it pairs well with this work.

What This Really Means for Your School

Here’s the real takeaway: disciplinary literacy is not “more work.  It’s the right work, done consistently across subjects.

Disciplinary literacy becomes sustainable when:

• teachers feel confident modeling expert thinking

• routines are simple enough to implement tomorrow

• leaders create clarity, expectations, and support structures

That’s when comprehension stops being “an ELA issue” and becomes a schoolwide strength. Because when students learn to read like scientists, mathematicians, historians, and literary thinkers, their comprehension moves from surface-level to deep, durable understanding — the kind that actually transfers.

👉 Want Ready-to-Use Tools to Bring Disciplinary Literacy to Your School?

Explore this month’s Behind the Desk PD package: Supporting Reading Comprehension in Secondary Classrooms. It includes a done-for-you slide deck, plus three practical tools you can put to work right away—to help teams design stronger comprehension routines across content areas.

Get it through our Behind the Desk subscription, along with continued access to time-saving resources each month, or you can grab it by itself from my TPE store.