LiteracyBreakdownBy Hannah PreheimWritten July 15, 2020July 15, 2020PARENTS AND EDUCATORS,Frederick Douglass wrote that “once youlearn to read, you will be forever free.”Through studying ship names at the harborand writing letters with a stick in the dirt,Douglass communicated the value of literacyin the life of a child. Understanding how toread and write became his way to escapeslavery. Literacy holds immense value. Dueto this immense value, our school willintegrate it across all classes and content.Teachers will work to ensure that all studentssee the value of literacy in all subjects.Reading and writing have the potential tomake vast changes if students are given theproper tools for success.Once you learn to read, you willbe forever free.This article’s aim is to inform parents andteachers of interdisciplinary literacy andfluency, theories related to these processes,and how cross-disciplinary instructionsupports the need for literacy in all contentareas. I will begin the article by defininginterdisciplinary literacy and, from there,expand on its role in the classroom and itshistory.INTERDISCIPLINARY LITERACYAND FLUENCY: HISTORY ANDDEFINITIONAround the 1960’s, the concept ofinterdisciplinary learning saw a resurgencein education. Teachers and schoolsformulated more “collaborative units, andcreativity came to be considered the mostimportant element in curriculum design”(Jacobs, n.d., pp. 1). For a time, the focusshifted from this concept of learning and
