Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescent English Language Learners: Vocabulary Development and Reading within the Disciplines

Recent research on disciplinary literacy has called for a paradigm shift among secondary content teachers from perceiving themselves as disciplinary content transmitters to disciplinary literacy teachers who model and engage students in reading, writing, inquiring, and doing like experts within each discipline. How do content teachers incorporate disciplinary literacy and stay responsive to the unique and diverse learning needs of the adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) who are integrated in the mainstream classes? Drawing on Moje's (2015) 4Es framework and a translanguaging pedagogy, this paper presents a set of instructional practices to support content teachers in integrating disciplinary literacy within the disciplines to enhance adolescent ELL students' learning in vocabulary development and reading.