Developing Disciplinary Literacy through Classroom Blogging

Classroom blogging can be an effective tool through which to apprentice students in appropriate disciplinary thinking and reasoning skills. Inquiry is the basis for disciplinary literacy. Effectively framed blog posts can situate learning tasks from an inquiry stance. Another key component of disciplinary literacy is “insider” disciplinary discourse. The article demonstrates how a specific teacher effectively invites students into the disciplines and facilitates students’ introduction into reading, writing, and talking as disciplinary specialists. Lastly, we note how the blogging tasks facilitate students’ interpretation of disciplinary texts and production of arguments around central questions in the discipline. This article focuses on one middle grade teacher to demonstrate how such classroom blogging activities can facilitate the development of disciplinary thinking and reasoning with historical texts and literature, especially through engaging students in teacher-framed inquiry, supporting their reading of disciplinary texts, and encouraging student interpretation and writing through their classroom blog.