D698 Elementary Disciplinary Literacy, catalog number EDUC 5089, is the two-CU graduate disciplinary literacy course in the WGU Master of Arts in Teaching sequence. It covers the literacy demands specific to content disciplines, the same material as the undergraduate D690 (EDUC 2259). The graduate emphasis falls on writing. Reading like a historian is half the claim; writing like one is the half that gets skipped, and it is where the disciplinary difference is most visible on the page.
Why EDUC 5089 concentrates on disciplinary writing
Ask an elementary class to write about anything in any subject and most of them will produce the same thing: a general statement, three loosely related sentences, and a closing that restates the opening. That form is what school has taught them, and it belongs to no discipline at all. Teaching the actual forms is the graduate work.
A scientific explanation has a shape: the phenomenon, the claim, the evidence, and the reasoning that connects them, with the writer largely absent and the conditions stated. A historical account has a different shape: the situation, the sources, what they agree and disagree on, and a conclusion that acknowledges what is uncertain. A mathematical justification is different again, since it argues from structure rather than from evidence and can reach certainty in a way the others cannot. Those forms are teachable and their differences are exactly what the course scores.
Text structure is the reading half of the same insight, and it is the highest-leverage teachable feature in informational text. Description, sequence, comparison, cause and effect, and problem and solution each have signal words, each have a visual shape and each support a different kind of note taking. Children who can recognise the structure they are reading comprehend and remember more, and the instruction is cheap.
Vocabulary works differently by discipline too, which is worth saying explicitly. In science many terms name a precise concept and cannot be approximated. In history the difficult words are often ordinary words used in a specialised sense. In mathematics the same word may be used with a technical meaning that conflicts with everyday use. Those three problems need three different responses, and a submission that treats vocabulary uniformly has missed a distinction the course is about.
The graduate version also expects some attention to working with colleagues. Disciplinary literacy in an elementary school is a shared undertaking, and a teacher who can explain to a colleague why a generic comprehension organiser is not serving the science unit is doing the kind of professional work a master's programme is meant to produce.
Assessment closes the loop. Disciplinary writing needs criteria that name disciplinary features rather than general writing quality, since a beautifully organised piece that cites no evidence has failed as science writing while passing as writing. Building criteria that make that distinction is a graduate task and one of the more useful artifacts you will produce in the programme.
Joint construction is the instructional move that carries most of the weight and it is worth writing into a plan in detail. Before children write alone, the class writes one together: the teacher takes suggestions, thinks aloud about why one formulation serves the discipline better than another, and builds a piece in front of them while narrating the decisions. Ten minutes of that reveals the moves that a model text alone leaves implicit, because children see the choices being made rather than only the finished result. It also gives you a shared reference to point back to when individual writing goes off form, which is worth more than a further round of instruction.
Turning the rubric into a disciplinary writing plan
Your scored aspects are in the Course of Study, not the public catalog. Count them before drafting, since every aspect is scored on its own against a three-point scale and every one of them has to reach a 2. In a compressed course the aspects that ask for differentiation between disciplines are the ones that decide the outcome.
Where D698 is assessed by performance assessment, write to the aspect list and use its nouns. If an aspect covers more than one discipline, give each a subheading and make sure the instruction, not just the content, differs between them.
A worked word budget. Work with seven scored aspects and directions pointing at roughly 1,900 words. Set aside 120 words for context naming the grade and disciplines in scope, and 80 for a close. That leaves 1,700 across seven aspects, or about 243 words each.
Then weight for the distinguishing content. The aspect requiring you to differentiate demands by discipline deserves 360, and the writing instruction aspect deserves 340. The five remaining aspects sit at 200 each, which brings the arithmetic back to 1,700. A drafting test: if you could swap the discipline label at the top of a section and change nothing else, that section has not yet done the work.
A shape that fits a disciplinary writing submission
Where directions supply sections, use them. Where the shape is yours, this order keeps the disciplinary difference visible from analysis through to assessment.
| Element | What it must establish | The generic version |
|---|---|---|
| Discipline and purpose | What writing does in this field and for whom | Writing treated as demonstration of learning, in every subject |
| Genre analysis | The structure of the target form and its conventions | A paragraph format applied across all disciplines |
| Model text | An example children can examine before writing | Instructions to write with no model provided |
| Text structure instruction | The reading structures that feed this writing | Reading and writing taught as unrelated activities |
| Vocabulary approach | Handling suited to how terms work in this discipline | One vocabulary routine used everywhere |
| Scaffolded writing | Frames, joint construction and gradual release | A blank page and a prompt |
| Disciplinary criteria | Assessment features specific to this kind of writing | General writing criteria that any piece could satisfy |
Include a model text and analyse it with children before asking them to write. Examining how a real scientific explanation is built takes ten minutes and changes what children produce more than any amount of instruction about structure in the abstract.
Evidence craft across disciplines at graduate level
Writing about how several disciplines work requires you to be right about each of them, which is a genuine sourcing burden.
- Cite disciplinary literacy research rather than general writing research when you claim a difference between fields.
- Be accurate about disciplinary conventions, since a misdescription of how historians handle uncertainty is a content error.
- Identify model texts fully, and prefer real examples over teacher-written imitations where possible.
- Quote standards from both the literacy and the content documents, since both usually apply.
- Keep children anonymous and composite in every sample of student work.
- APA throughout, including any published writing framework you adapt.
Name the ceiling. Elementary children write approximations of disciplinary forms rather than the forms themselves, and saying what a good fourth grade scientific explanation realistically looks like keeps your criteria attainable rather than aspirational. Describing that target concretely, in a sentence or two of what you would expect to see on the page, also gives you something to hand children as an example of success rather than a description of it.
What separates Competent from a returned submission
Because aspects score independently, returns here usually name writing instruction that was identical across disciplines or criteria that assessed general writing quality.
- The target genre is analysed structurally rather than named.
- A model text is provided and examined before writing.
- Vocabulary handling differs according to how terms work in the discipline.
- Scaffolding moves from joint construction toward independence.
- Assessment criteria name disciplinary features that general writing criteria would miss.
WGU marks work Competent or Not Competent rather than assigning letter grades, and performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty. A return costs calendar inside a six-month flat-rate term, and closing more courses inside the term is what lowers the effective cost per course.
The standing boundaries apply here as everywhere: proctored objective assessments are prepared for and never sat by us, credentials are never requested, and any classroom-based component of a course is yours to complete.
Five mistakes that weaken a D698 submission
- Teaching one paragraph form everywhere. It is the form children already produce, and it belongs to no discipline.
- Assigning writing without a model. Children cannot approximate a form they have never examined.
- Using one vocabulary routine. Technical terms, specialised uses of ordinary words and conflicting everyday meanings need different handling.
- Separating reading and writing instruction. The structures children read are the structures they should write.
- Assessing with general writing criteria. Organisation and mechanics cannot detect whether a piece functioned as science.
How support works on D698
Send the rubric out of your Course of Study, the task directions and the grade plus the disciplines in scope. The draft returns aspect-mapped, with genre structures analysed, a model text identified and examined, vocabulary handled according to discipline, scaffolding that releases responsibility, and criteria that name disciplinary features.
If your Degree Plan lists the undergraduate code, build from D690. This course also feeds directly into D679 and D681, where the writing forms you teach here are what children are asked to produce.
Three questions MAT candidates ask about D698
Is D698 the same course as EDUC 5089?
Is D698 the graduate version of D690?
Can elementary children write in disciplinary forms?
Teaching writing in the disciplines for D698?
Send the rubric and directions with your grade and disciplines. You get an aspect-mapped draft with genre structures analysed, a model text and criteria that name disciplinary features.
Where D698 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.