WGU D162: Secondary Disciplinary Literacy

What D162 Is and Why It Lives in Your Teaching Program

WGU D162, Secondary Disciplinary Literacy (also carried on some transcripts as EDUC 3275), is a School of Education course for candidates preparing to teach middle and high school. Its premise is simple but easy to underestimate: a scientist reads and writes differently than a historian, and a mathematician argues on the page differently than a literature teacher. This course asks you to notice those differences and to build instruction that helps adolescents read, write, speak, and think inside a specific content area rather than treating "literacy" as something that only happens in English class.

Direct answer: You pass D162 by completing a performance assessment task, not a timed exam. Design a literacy-rich lesson or unit for your own teaching discipline, ground every strategy in course concepts and educational research, and hit every point on the task rubric explicitly. Meet the rubric line by line and you pass.

D162 is a required component of WGU's secondary education programs and appears in both undergraduate and graduate versions of those programs, so a large share of future secondary teachers move through it regardless of subject. It matters because disciplinary literacy is not busywork: your future students will spend their careers decoding textbooks, primary sources, lab reports, word problems, and data displays. This course is where you learn to make that decoding teachable. It also draws on the science of reading and on digital and technology literacy, so what you produce here should look like something you could actually hand a class next semester.

What the D162 Performance Assessment Covers

Because D162 is assessed by a submitted task rather than an objective test, the "topics" are really the competencies your task must demonstrate. Expect to work with:

• Discipline-specific literacy demands — how reading, writing, speaking, and listening function differently across content areas, and the specialized vocabulary, text features, and language structures each field relies on.
• Assessing literacy strategies for a discipline — evaluating which reading and comprehension supports actually fit your subject and your learners.
• Designing literacy-integrated learning activities — building lessons that raise content understanding by embedding literacy, not bolting it on.
• Authentic writing across the discipline — planning writing tasks that develop and reveal genuine content understanding (the "writing across disciplines" work many students remember most).
• Revising with feedback and research — proposing concrete improvements to a lesson plan using instructor feedback and connections to educational research.
• Structured literacy and the science of reading — using research-based, structured approaches rather than generic "read the chapter" instructions.

How Hard Is D162, Really?

Difficulty in D162 is less about intellectual challenge and more about following directions precisely. There is no question bank to memorize and no proctored test to sit; the whole grade rests on a written task that an evaluator scores against a rubric. Many students describe the course as one of the more approachable stops in the teacher-education sequence for exactly that reason — it rewards clear, organized writing and steady effort over cramming.

That said, "approachable" is not the same as "instant." The task must be thorough, tied to research, and internally consistent, and a rushed submission that skips a rubric aspect will come back for revision. Plan for something on the order of one to a few weeks of focused work, depending on how much time you can give it each day and how comfortable you already are with lesson design. If you teach or tutor now, you will move faster because you can pull from real classroom context. If secondary content is new to you, budget extra time to pick a discipline and a standards-aligned topic before you start drafting.

A Task-First Study Plan for D162

Treat the rubric, not a study guide, as your syllabus. Everything below is built around producing a strong submission on the first or second try.

• Read the task and rubric before the course materials. Print or copy every prompt (A, B, C, and so on) and turn each into a checklist item. In a PA course, an unaddressed sub-point is the single most common reason for a resubmission.
• Choose your discipline and topic early. Anchor the whole task to one subject you intend to teach and one standards-aligned topic within it. A concrete, narrow topic is far easier to write about than a vague one.
• Use active recall on the vocabulary of the field. Instead of rereading, close the materials and explain in your own words what "disciplinary literacy," "structured literacy," and "authentic writing" mean and how they differ from general reading strategies. If you cannot explain it aloud, revisit it.
• Space the work over several sessions. Draft one rubric section per sitting rather than marathon writing. Spacing lets you catch gaps and strengthens the connections you make to research.
• Practice-test yourself against the rubric. After drafting, reread each aspect and ask, "Where exactly did I do this?" Highlight the sentence that satisfies each requirement. Blank spots are your revision list.
• Cite research deliberately. The competencies expect connections to educational research, so integrate credible sources and explain why a strategy works, not just that you used it.
• Use the course instructor. WGU course instructors will review a draft or answer targeted questions. A pre-submission check is the cheapest way to avoid a revision cycle.

These same habits — active recall, spacing, and self-testing against the standard — carry over to the assessment-focused work in D184 Standards-Based Assessment and the foundational teaching mindset in D090 The School as a Community of Care, so building them now pays off across your program.

Mistakes That Cost Students Time on D162

• Writing generic literacy strategies. The word that matters is disciplinary. "Have students annotate" is generic; "have students annotate a lab procedure for cause-and-effect language" is disciplinary. Evaluators look for the subject-specific angle.
• Answering the topic instead of the prompt. Students who know the content sometimes write an essay about disciplinary literacy in general and never map their writing to the rubric's lettered parts. Address each part on its own terms.
• Choosing a topic that is too broad. "Teaching reading in science" is a semester; "reading and interpreting a data table in a biology unit" is a task. Narrow scope makes every other requirement easier.
• Skipping the research connection. Describing a strategy without tying it to why it works, backed by a source, leaves a rubric aspect only partly met.
• Submitting without a self-review. Because this is a task, not a test, you get to proofread against the rubric first. Not doing so is the avoidable error that triggers most resubmissions.
• Ignoring feedback on a returned task. If it comes back, the evaluator's comments are a precise map. Address exactly what they flag rather than rewriting everything.

D162 Readiness Checklist

Before you submit, confirm you can honestly say yes to each of these:

• Can you explain, in plain language, how literacy demands differ from one secondary discipline to another?
• Can you name a specific subject and a narrow, standards-aligned topic that your task is built around?
• Can you point to the exact sentence in your draft that satisfies each lettered part of the rubric?
• Can you justify each literacy strategy with a connection to educational research, not just personal preference?
• Can you describe an authentic writing activity that develops discipline-specific understanding?
• Can you explain how you would revise a lesson plan using feedback and research?
• Have you removed generic advice and replaced it with discipline-specific instruction?
• Have you proofread the whole submission for clarity, citation formatting, and consistency?
• Have you used your course instructor or a peer to sanity-check the draft before submitting?

D162 FAQ

Is D162 an objective assessment or a performance assessment?

It is a performance assessment. According to WGU's program materials, Secondary Disciplinary Literacy is assessed through a performance assessment task in both the undergraduate and graduate versions of the course, so there is no proctored multiple-choice exam to sit.

How long does D162 usually take?

It varies with your schedule and experience, but because the grade rests on a single task, many students complete it in roughly one to a few weeks of focused effort. Practicing teachers often finish faster because they can draw on real classroom context.

How many competency units is D162 worth?

The competency-unit value can differ by program version, so confirm the exact number in your own WGU program guidebook or the current institutional catalog rather than relying on a figure quoted elsewhere.

Do I need to teach English to pass D162?

No. The course is intentionally cross-disciplinary. Build your task around whatever secondary subject you plan to teach — science, math, social studies, and other content areas all fit — and apply literacy strategies to that field's texts and thinking.

What is the single biggest key to passing?

Treat the rubric as a checklist and make your work explicitly disciplinary. Address every lettered part, tie strategies to research, and keep everything anchored to one specific subject and topic.

Where can I confirm the official course details?

Check WGU's own teaching degrees pages and your program guidebook for the current description and requirements. For related study guides, see D268 Introduction to Communication, browse the School of Education hub, or explore the full library of WGU course guides.