Which practice best supports literacy across science and social studies?

• A. Rely exclusively on reading fiction
• B. Use content-specific routines like note-taking, summarizing, and question generation
• C. Avoid nonfiction texts
• D. Separate literacy from content areas

Answer: (B)

The practice that best supports literacy across science and social studies centers on using content-specific routines like note-taking, summarizing, and question generation. These routines give students practical ways to engage with informational texts and primary sources that are core to these disciplines.

Note-taking helps students capture key ideas, vocabulary, procedures, evidence, and relationships as they read or listen, creating a usable record they can refer back to when explaining concepts or building arguments. Summarizing trains students to distill the essential points across multiple sources, helping them see connections, compare viewpoints, and organize evidence in a coherent way. Question generation invites active inquiry: students formulate questions about causes, effects, processes, and competing interpretations, which guides focus during reading and drives deeper understanding.

Together, these routines support disciplinary literacy by teaching students how to handle the kinds of texts common in science and social studies—articles, reports, graphs, diagrams, timelines, and primary documents—while building language, reasoning, and writing as tools for understanding content.

Relying only on fiction limits exposure to the nonfiction texts students need in these subjects, and avoiding nonfiction, or separating literacy from the content areas, undermines the goal of applying literacy skills directly to science and social studies.