Crossing the Final Frontier: Exploring the Numeracy Demands of Texts Read in English Language Arts

Incited by the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 2009 Reading Framework and the Common Core State Standards, recent shifts in national education goals have urged English language arts teachers to make curriculum adjustments. One such adjustment is to shift their focus from fiction, which has traditionally dominated the curriculum, to nonfiction. Doing so has the potential to increase students’ exposure to informational texts which often employ numeric modes to represent quantitative data, thus necessitating numeracy knowledge. This article presents a study of 60 nonfiction texts taught in secondary ELA classrooms. Through analysis of these texts, it addresses the questions: Which nonfiction texts are ELA teachers assigning to their students? and What are the numeracy demands of these texts? Findings reveal not only the important role that mathematical representations play in the nonfiction texts students read in their English language arts classes but also implications for English language arts research and instruction