Rethinking Text Features in the Digital Age: Teaching Elementary Students to Navigate Digital Stories, Websites, and Videos

Abstract

AbstractWhile reading digital texts requires many of the same foundational literacy skills as reading printed texts, it also requires skills that go beyond print‐based reading. In this article, we argue that the skills children need to read, understand, and communicate about digital texts is a Core Disciplinary Practice that should be addressed in the elementary grades. To do so, we explain the idea of reading digital texts as a disciplinary literacy practice, explore the features of digital texts that make them qualitatively different from printed texts, and offer approaches for explicitly teaching children how to read and interact with digital texts in ways that support their comprehension and prepare them for future disciplinary learning. In the final section, we provide teachers with three examples of digital texts they might integrate into a K‐2 science unit and offer strategies for teaching children to navigate the unique features of these texts.