How should you address 'disciplinary literacy' in a science or math edTPA task?

• A. Avoid discipline-specific terms to keep writing simple.
• B. Use only worksheets without vocabulary.
• C. Integrate discipline-specific vocabulary, procedures, and reasoning that support literacy within content learning.
• D. Focus only on general reading strategies.

Answer: (C)

Disciplinary literacy in science and math means helping students learn to read, write, talk, and think with the language, procedures, and reasoning unique to those fields within the content they are learning. The best approach is to integrate discipline-specific vocabulary, procedures, and reasoning that support literacy within content learning. This matters because students need to engage in the discourse of the discipline—using precise terms (like hypothesis, variable, or coefficient), following and explaining procedures, interpreting data, and constructing explanations or arguments grounded in evidence. In science, this means using accurate terminology and describing how investigations are designed and analyzed; in math, it means using correct notation, symbols, and logical justification to explain solutions. This approach ties language directly to content practice, helping students understand concepts more deeply and communicate their reasoning effectively. Relying on discipline-agnostic terms or general strategies alone misses the specialized literacy demands of the subject, and using worksheets without vocabulary or focusing only on broad reading strategies does not build the language and practices students need to participate meaningfully in scientific or mathematical tasks.