Report from Winter Conference: Reading Apprenticeship for Students with a Range of Needs

March 17, 2011 by

The Reading Apprenticeship Winter Conference was held earlier this month near Philadelphia with 70 participants attending from 9 states.  I was honored to facilitate a problem-solving roundtable at the conference.  We tackled the issue of how to meet the needs of students with special learning needs within the Reading Apprenticeship framework. Our insights fell into two categories: classroom implementation and professional development connections.

Classroom Implementation

Our roundtable discussion was especially focused on the importance for students with special learning needs of classroom relationships, brain-considerate teaching, and pumped-up background knowledge:

  • Know Your Students: This goes beyond reading levels and past performance. What are their interests and hobbies? What makes them tick?
  • Build Relationships: Knowing students goes a long way toward building relationships. The consensus in our group was that teachers who have not developed relationships with their students will struggle with Reading Apprenticeship implementation; students have to feel safety and trust.
  • Don’t Double Dip: Brain research tells us our brain focuses on one thing at a time. Therefore, do not teach new content and new learning processes at the same time. Teach new content with familiar structures and new learning processes with familiar content.
  • Teach Expectations: My colleagues connected back to the “Rita Classroom Case” from their initial Reading Apprenticeship training and how Rita explicitly teaches key learning routines for six weeks before digging deeply into content.
  • Scaffold Background Knowledge: Build on and build up student strengths. Learning goals stay constant, but purposefully build in a variety of opportunities to build student background knowledge.
  • Go Visual: Visual images can be processed almost instantly. They contribute background knowledge in a safe, risk-free manner and build student confidence. Many schools have visual resources such as streaming video that can support subject area reading.

Professional Development Connections

In our roundtable discussion, the focus on classroom implementation gave rise to a discussion on implications for professional development. How can we facilitate teacher confidence and efficacy to meet student needs? One striking suggestion resulted:

  • Plan Your Own Problem-Solving Roundtables: Our opportunity to exchange ideas and collaborate led to new insights and seeds of solutions. We benefited from hearing the stories, experiences, and stumbling blocks of others. Overall, the conversations were both reflective and encouraging. Why not take the roundtable experience home, we thought?

Holding your own roundtable need not be a huge undertaking. In a short period of time, perhaps as little as 20 minutes, participants can feel the power of the Reading Apprenticeship framework: build on the social and personal dimensions to develop your knowledge and skills. Give yourselves the gift of time to dialogue and problem-solve with colleagues.

Make time to dialogue and problem-solve with your colleagues.

Kelly Pauling

Kelly Pauling

Blog Contributor Kelly Pauling

Kelly Pauling is Director of Curriculum Services at Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 (CIU20), and coordinates Reading Apprenticeship’s i3 grant in Pennsylvania. Previously she worked as a staff developer, curriculum specialist, and teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. She first attended Reading Apprenticeship training in 2003 and was immediately captivated by the RA framework. She has worked diligently to build RA capacity throughout her area. Current passions, in addition to Reading Apprenticeship, include integrating technology in education, school improvement, and chocolate.

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Posted in Adolescent Literacy, Collaboration, English Language Learners (ELL), Literacy, Professional Development, Reading Apprenticeship, Teacher Professional Development | 1 Comment »

Is It a Good Idea to Pre-teach Vocabulary?

March 11, 2011 by

The more words in a text that students know, the better they will understand the text. So what does this mean for pre-teaching vocabulary?

The teachers’ goal of pre-teaching vocabulary is usually to limit the challenge of dealing with new words so that students can focus on the academic content of the text. Even though this may seem considerate in terms of students’ content learning, it may be inconsiderate on another count. Pre-teaching vocabulary may keep students from developing the skills they need to deal with new words in any text.

Reading Apprenticeship advocates a student-centered, inquiry approach for identifying and learning new words. In this approach, students learn to value word learning and are introduced to a range of skills for dealing with new words. These include:

  • how to notice new words while reading,
  • how to evaluate whether they are essential to understand (or not),
  • how to use word attack skills, strategies for using context clues, and strategies for using reference and other resources (like classmates) to learn new words.

In addition, previewing texts, noticing and using text structures and features, and spending time with illustrations and captions can build a knowledge framework, or schema, to support the learning of new concepts and vocabulary words.

In Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, teachers model how to deal with new words. Thinking aloud, talking to the text, identifying survival words, being a sentence detective, and using metacognitive logs are all high-utility strategies for helping students become flexible and independent word learners. Because students in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms often work collaboratively, they also share their strategies for dealing with new words and learn from each other.

The Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework is designed to help students deal with the realistic challenges of reading, not preempt reading challenges. That said, is there a role for pre-teaching vocabulary in Reading Apprenticeship?

A teacher might reasonably choose to pre-teach vocabulary when a text poses substantial comprehension challenges in addition to containing many new words. In this case the teacher would strategically pre-teach only the very few words that are both essential for comprehension and impossible to understand from the context, then follow up by orchestrating multiple instances for students to speak, hear, read, and write the words in meaningful contexts.

Making decisions about which words to teach can be a difficult judgment call. Teachers who engage students in helping to identify “survival words” for a text (see pages 106–107, Reading for Understanding) tell us they are surprised how often they make wrong guesses about the words their students don’t know and may need their help in defining. In most textbooks, many essential content words are already identified and defined for students, so the teacher’s role is to orchestrate ways for students to use and appropriate these new words. This means text-based discussion plays a key role in students’ vocabulary growth.

The key to helping students increase their word knowledge is not just to teach them the words, but to make sure they have the strategies that will allow them to teach themselves, and use, the unknown words they encounter whenever they read.

Blog Contributor, Will Brown

Will Brown

Will Brown is a Professional Development Associate with the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd. He specializes in supporting science and math teachers who are integrating Reading Apprenticeship into their courses. Before joining SLI, Will taught science in the Oakland Unified School District, where he and his students got quite comfortable thinking aloud, talking to the text, keeping metacognitive logs, and working collaboratively (check out a video snippet of Will and the students in his Introduction to Chemistry class). Will received a PhD in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.

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Posted in Reading Apprenticeship, English Language Arts, Literacy, Adolescent Literacy, Teacher Resources, Disciplinary Reading, Collaboration, Reading Comprehension | Leave a Comment »

Herding Elephants?

March 4, 2011 by

Whenever I facilitate Reading Apprenticeship professional development or talk to somebody about bringing Reading Apprenticeship to their campus, I am asked the same question: “How do we convince our colleagues to come to our workshop and to try this in their classes? How do we create buy-in across the disciplines?”

How, indeed!  How do you engage any overwhelmed instructor in the enormous project of examining and modifying his or her pedagogical approaches? A psychology professor described his move from a lecture style of instruction to a Reading Apprenticeship style of instruction as “burning down a beautiful house that I had built by hand and that I enjoyed living in, and moving into a walk-up apartment.” Ouch! So how exactly do we sell this process to colleagues?

Elephant and rider drawing

by Jana Bouc

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath describe a framework for supporting change that begins with psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s insight that human beings are analogous to an elephant with a rider.

The “Rider” is our rational, analytical side — the person holding the reins who knows you absolutely should not eat that chocolate cheesecake. The “Elephant” is our emotional side, the part that says, “I deserve cheesecake!  I’ve had a really rough week. Besides, studies show that chocolate is good for you.” If the Rider and the Elephant disagree, the six-ton Elephant wins — no contest.

Heath and Heath propose, then, that to support change, you’ve got to work with both the Rider and the Elephant. Direct the Rider by explaining what you are doing, why you are doing it, and where it will take you. Motivate the Elephant by creating emotional engagement, making change feel manageable, and creating a sense of community around it. Finally, Heath and Heath suggest shaping the path the Rider and Elephant will travel by tweaking any institutional/environmental structures that could better support the change.

All of us in the community colleges have to cope with massive change right now, and most people who are starting to introduce Reading Apprenticeship professional development to their campuses want to know how colleagues in other contexts have managed to shape those changes without being trampled by a herd of angry elephants.

For example, I wonder how the faculty at Renton Technical College made so much progress so fast?  Could it be because their RATS [Reading Apprenticeship Teachers and Supporters] Review publication “rallies the herd?” In truth, we need to know not just what has worked, but why it did in order to adapt different strategies to our unique situations.

Stay tuned for posts showcasing successful Reading Apprenticeship implementation models from around the country — but in the meantime, think about it. What could you do on your campus to direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the path for Reading Apprenticeship-oriented change?

Blog Contributor, Nika Hogan

Nika Hogan

Nika Hogan

Nika Hogan is Associate Professor of English at Pasadena City College (PCC) and the Reading Apprenticeship Community College Coordinator for the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd (SLI).  She has a B.A. in English and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Multiethnic U.S. Literatures from the University of Massachusetts.

Her work at PCC and with Reading Apprenticeship is focused on developing pedagogical, curricular, and institutional approaches and structures that will maximize the retention and success of all students, especially those entering college at the “basic skills” level.  She has been involved in many learning communities through PCC’s Teaching and Learning Center and is currently the Activities Director of a Title V grant designed to scale up those programs to a broad first-year experience pathway that will, if she gets her way, integrate both reading across the curriculum and reading across the community.  She lives in Altadena, CA,  with her partner, their three-year-old son, and two extremely under-disciplined terriers.

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Posted in Community College Literacy, Disciplinary Reading, Literacy, Professional Development, Reading Apprenticeship, Strategic Literacy Initiative, Teacher Professional Development | Leave a Comment »

Readability, Text Leveling, and English Language Learners (Part II)

February 24, 2011 by

Last week we took a look at what the “90% rule” means for text selection, especially for English language learners. Don’t “protect” students, we suggested, from the challenge of the academic vocabulary they need to learn and the academic texts they need to learn it from. But do support them.

First of all, students need support to see themselves as “code breakers” wading into conceptual territory and vocabulary and sentences that they find challenging. Like the immigrant women reading The Babysitter’s Club books, “code breakers” expect to be challenged and can find it satisfying and enjoyable (see Part I).

by Jana Bouc

Support also includes chunking texts for repeated readings, so that students have multiple passes through manageable sections of text. Teacher modeling of the problem solving involved in making meaning of text is a necessary support. And so is the ongoing social collaboration of partners and small groups who can help each other problem solve text challenges. Word-learning strategies are an important subset of the kind of problem solving English learners need support to master: How does context help? How do word parts work?

Learning how to break down text through deliberate problem solving helps students become more independent readers of the challenging and complex texts they will meet in their academic careers. They learn when to rely on their stamina and problem-solving abilities and when to seek help from others. Of course it is still important for the teacher to choose texts that won’t be so difficult that, even with instructional support, students will only be frustrated instead of successful.

The use of “vertical text sets” is one way to keep reading challenge steady and appropriate. For a given unit of study, students encounter easier texts early on to introduce topics and build vocabulary and background knowledge. Increasingly difficult texts follow, introducing and reintroducing concepts and additional vocabulary, like stepping up a ladder. (You can see why ancillary texts, as well as visual texts, are so important in Reading Apprenticeship.)

Equally important is investing students with knowledge about how to make personal choices of books and texts. For recreational reading and when students can choose from a set of texts, students learn things like the Goldilocks rule and the Ten Page Chance to help them decide on books to read. When their interest and motivation to read a book is high, they will be able to tolerate more struggle with unfamiliar vocabulary.

Small chunks, repeated readings, tapping into students’ stores of knowledge and experience, intentional focus on learning words from context and with word-analysis strategies, building up from easier to more challenging texts, and empowering students to select books that are meaningful to them — these will all build students’ reading independence, comprehension, and academic language. It’s hard to put a percentage on that!

Cynthia Greenleaf

Cynthia Greenleaf

Blog Contributor, Cynthia Greenleaf

For over two decades, Cynthia Greenleaf has helped students become more successful readers and writers as Co-Director of WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI). She also directs SLI’s research program and has contributed to several books on literacy and education, including Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide, The Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research, Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Improving Reading Achievement through Professional Development, and Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap Grades 4 – 12, and has co-authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Harvard Educational Review and Phi Delta Kappan. She received a PhD and MA in language and literacy education from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in linguistics from the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated magna cum laude.

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Posted in Adolescent Literacy, English Language Learners (ELL), Literacy, Professional Development, Reading Apprenticeship, Reading Comprehension, Teacher Professional Development, Teacher Resources | Leave a Comment »

Readability, Text Leveling, and English Language Learners (Part I)

February 18, 2011 by

An English Language Development (ELD) teacher wrote to ask whether Reading Apprenticeship supports leveling texts so that students can read the text with 90% accuracy.

The answer: “It depends.”

Level, by Jana Bouc

Level, by Jana Bouc

We know that when students can read a text with ease, comprehension, reading persistence, and enjoyment are much higher than when a text is difficult to read. Text leveling is one method of assessing the difficulty or readability of texts and selecting reading material for students.

However, part of what English language learners need to do is acquire academic English through their reading activity. Oral spoken English simply does not have the necessary input for academic language development. But neither do books in which students encounter little new vocabulary.

In Stephen Krashen’s wonderful book, The Power of Reading, he describes how immigrant women were learning English from reading book series such as The Babysitter’s Club. Because they expected to learn new words as they read, the reading, though challenging, was not overwhelming to them but pleasurable. And the more they read, the more they were able to read, and the more English they knew.

A problem with the “90% rule” is that if we only use texts containing vocabulary students know, we will have consigned them to very impoverished texts. In addition, we will likely be wrong in our guesses about which vocabulary will be “new,” given that each student brings his or her own library of reading experiences, vocabulary, and language attainment to the class.

For English language learners, it also depends on what is meant by “accuracy.” Accuracy in decoding a word is not the same as understanding the word. It is not unusual for ELD students to be able to decode words accurately without actually knowing the meaning of those words. Decoding accuracy may not be a good measure of how challenging a text will be for English learners.

The theory underlying the 90% rule is this: Readers must be able to read a text fluently because readers can only hold so many things at once in their “working memory,” and if the number of things they are holding increases beyond their working memory capacity, comprehension will break down.

But let’s unpack this a little. Reflecting on the reading processes native English speakers use with academic texts, we do not expect fluency. Instead, we know that readers of academic texts hold things in mind and retrace their steps and make annotations to clarify text meanings. We think it is important to teach English learners those same text-based problem-solving strategies for making their way through challenging texts.

What Reading Apprenticeship  proposes is this: English learners and all students need to be both supported and challenged to read academic materials. Come back next week for Part II, with the details about how this can be accomplished.

Cynthia Greenleaf

Cynthia Greenleaf

Blog Contributor, Cynthia Greenleaf

For over two decades, Cynthia Greenleaf has helped students become more successful readers and writers as Co-Director of WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI). She also directs SLI’s research program and has contributed to several books on literacy and education, including Education Policy and Practice: Bridging the Divide, The Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research, Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Improving Reading Achievement through Professional Development, and Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap Grades 4 – 12, and has co-authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Harvard Educational Review and Phi Delta Kappan. She received a PhD and MA in language and literacy education from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in linguistics from the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated magna cum laude.

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Posted in Adolescent Literacy, English Language Learners (ELL), Literacy, Reading Apprenticeship, Teacher Resources | 3 Comments »

Capturing Your Reading Process: Feed Two Birds With One “Scone”

February 10, 2011 by

Literacy Coach Rita Ramstad wrote to tell us of a doubly-successful approach she used recently with the “Capturing Your Reading Process” exercise in a training session with teachers at Centennial High School in Portland, Oregon.

Sketch, Jana Bouc

Birds by Jana Bouc

One of the core Reading Apprenticeship tools, “Capturing Your Reading Process” helps readers become aware of the strategies they use to make meaning. Participants are given a piece of challenging text and asked to pay attention to the strategies they use to make sense of it. When they finish reading they are asked to answer some questions regarding their reading process.

By sharing their reading processes in a group, readers learn from each other and take up new strategies. They also begin to see reading as a complex activity that requires flexible application of many strategies, an important new awareness for many readers.

The challenging text that Rita used for this exercise was two excerpts from the final report of the Strategic Literacy Initiative’s research on the effectiveness of Reading Apprenticeship in high school biology classes!

Sketch by Jana Bouc

Scone by Jana Bouc

Not only did the exercise bring forth a wide range of reading strategies and reading processes, but the content helped build the case for Reading Apprenticeship among the teachers. It also helped to highlight the differences in disciplinary ways of reading. “We had science teachers in the group,” Rita said, “and their process was markedly different than those from other content areas. It helped me meet multiple goals with one activity.”

Rita used pages 5-8 and 31-34 from the report linked below, so that she would have different types of text, including several complex tables.

If you’d like to download the full report that Rita excerpted, click here to download a pdf file of “Integrating Literacy and Science Instruction in High School Biology: Impact on Teacher Practice, Student Engagement, and Student Achievement.” You may also read a summary of the study, “Integrating Reading Apprenticeship and Science Instruction in High School Biology” on our website here.

Blog contributor, Jana Bouc

Jana Bouc

Jana Bouc is the Program Coordinator of the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd. She works with school principals and district administrators to plan on-site professional development and since 2000 has been working behind the scenes to support and coordinate many facets of SLI’s work. She is also an artist who enjoys sketching and painting and maintains her own art blog at JanasJournal.com.

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Posted in Adolescent Literacy, Professional Development, Reading Apprenticeship, Reading in Science, Research, Strategic Literacy Initiative, Teacher Professional Development | 1 Comment »

Content Coverage and Coffee Cups

February 4, 2011 by

OK. I enjoy alliteration. Guilty. But I heard something today I have to share. Picture an audience of community college faculty gathered to hear about an approach to supporting students’ reading comprehension in academic courses.

Coffee cup, oil painting detail by Jana bouc

Painting detail, Jana Bouc

Now picture an experienced English faculty member addressing the group. She has been leading a campus-wide effort to use this method for a number of years and has seen it make a real difference for students in her classes. She is talking to the group about something she has heard many of her colleagues express: nervousness about “content coverage,” the need to get through the whole textbook whether students actually understand the concepts by the end of the course or not.

She holds a coffee cup upside down. With her other hand she holds a pot of coffee and begins to pour coffee on the upside-down cup. (She has warned the people sitting up front.) Now she asks the group about what happens to students when we just “pour the content on” but the students aren’t prepared to “receive it.”

I can’t begin to count the times my colleagues and I hear teachers worry that they won’t “get the students through the book” if they stop to work on having students do the hard close reading and thinking necessary to create understanding. I know that in some cases teachers really are threatened by “pacing-guide police,” people with authority to tell a teacher, for example, not to have students reading whole books in an English course because their class won’t be on target with the selected excerpts in the required anthology. But it seems to me that in many more cases, teachers themselves are making decisions to sacrifice comprehension, depth, and student ownership of texts for the notion of doing one’s job by marching students through a textbook.

What’s your experience? How real are the “coverage cops” in your schools and districts and colleges? What guesses do you have about how the new assessments based on the Common Core Standards (coming on line in 2013 in some states) might shift educators in our country toward teaching “depth” instead of “breadth”?

Any sense of increased support for helping students learn to make their own coffee?


Blog contributor, Ruth Schoenbach

Ruth Schoenbach is Co-Director of the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd. She taught and led reform initiatives in the San Francisco public schools in the 1980s and early 90s as an ESL teacher, curriculum developer, and professional development support provider in literacy. Since the mid-90s she and Cyndy Greenleaf have led the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd in developing the Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework and its parallel professional development model.

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Posted in Common Core Standards, Community College Literacy, Literacy, Reading Apprenticeship, Reading Comprehension, Standards, Teacher Professional Development | 5 Comments »

Group Genius

January 26, 2011 by

As I started pulling thoughts together for my Reading Apprenticeship blog debut, I began with the question, “Why blog?” I have had my own blog for several years and, while I have some faithful followers, the blog is really an opportunity for me to think out loud about different experiences, books, ideas, etc.

A book I am currently reading, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration,* by Keith Sawyer, seems to have some interesting ideas for Reading Apprenticeship fans of the social dimension. See what you think:

“Collaboration is the secret to breakthrough creativity.” (p. ix)

“Doesn’t each creative spark come from one person? In fact, researchers have discovered that the mind itself is filled with a kind of internal collaboration, that even the insights that emerge when you’re completely alone can be traced back to previous collaborations.” (p. xii)

The author points out that achieving creativity, insight, and innovation is time intensive. Collaboration takes time, processing ideas takes time. For me, this parallels the Reading Apprenticeship professional development model, which nurtures collaboration and professional dialogue in every activity. New ideas are sparked, insight emerges, and these ideas and insights lead to a gradual shift in thinking—and new ideas and insights.

Perhaps the greatest lesson suggested is for us to dedicate protected time to the iterative process that inquiry and learning demand.

I am hopeful this blog will become a format to spark “group genius.” The intent is for readers to react, share, confirm, reframe, reinterpret, and enjoy this opportunity for collaboration.

Be generous in sharing your ideas, and use the commenting feature to provide that additional spark for us all to grow in our understanding and build a strong social dimension!

*Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York: Basic Books.

Kelly Pauling

Kelly Pauling

Blog Contributor Kelly Pauling

Kelly Pauling is Director of Curriculum Services at Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 (CIU20), and coordinates Reading Apprenticeship’s i3 grant in Pennsylvania. Previously she worked as a staff developer, curriculum specialist, and teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. She first attended Reading Apprenticeship training in 2003 and was immediately captivated by the RA framework. She has worked diligently to build RA capacity throughout her area. Current passions, in addition to Reading Apprenticeship, include integrating technology in education, school improvement, and chocolate.

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Posted in Collaboration, Literacy, Reading Apprenticeship, Teacher Professional Development | 5 Comments »

Planting the Seeds of Reading Apprenticeship, Part 2

January 19, 2011 by

In my previous post I explained why and how I model Reading Apprenticeship routines in colleagues’ community college classrooms. Our goal is to help their students become better readers of their class texts, but other benefits are apparent as well. Both teachers and students have had interesting things to say about this work.

Students have been quite frank about what is not working in their classes.

“If I don’t like to read or it is hard to read, merely assigning the reading does not teach the content.”

“Previously, I never saw the difference in some of the multiple-choice answers [on exams] because I did not understand the context and the vocabulary.”

“Sure, PowerPoints of the chapter are nice, but they do not help me with the reading. If I cannot read the chapter, the unit exam is impossible to pass with a high score. Teachers think that they have done their job when they create and show a PowerPoint of the chapter’s information. Really, it is not teaching us how to master the chapter’s topic. Instead, it is a teacher activity, not a student learning activity.”

On the other hand, faculty members appreciate having ways to address students’ and their own concerns. Foremost, they are pleased to see that the Reading Apprenticeship routines are student-centered and student-directed.

“My class is much happier doing than listening. That is a big lesson for me because before I did everything, and I assumed that I had their attention. Now I realize that the learning environment is so much more energized when students debate, ask for clarification from their peers, and think about the text.”

“These routines are not difficult; I am learning how to adapt them in so many ways and for so much content.”

“Seeing my class come alive and participate reassures me that learning is happening, just in a different way. The Reading Apprenticeship framework helps students understand the different resources they have to engage the text and derive specific meanings and information

Faculty also note that these student-centered routines make the lectures they do give more valuable. Having heard and seen what students are struggling with, teachers can hone their lectures to address particular content. The Reading Apprenticeship routines seem to be accomplishing three important things: students are more engaged, their retention and test scores are improving, and faculty have less preparation work.

In these two posts I have offered some suggestions for sharing Reading Apprenticeship in an often reluctant-to-change educational environment. I hope that others will also contribute  ideas for planting the seeds for Reading Apprenticeship on their campuses. Just click the “comment” link to add your thoughts below.

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Posted in Community College Literacy, Disciplinary Reading, Literacy, Reading Apprenticeship | 2 Comments »

Planting the Seeds of Reading Apprenticeship, Part 1

January 14, 2011 by

Although many faculty at our community college have heard of Reading Apprenticeship or attended our campus-wide training sessions, their teaching loads offer little time to ponder the complexity of reading instruction. They tend to assume their students have the reading skills needed to succeed — until they see poor test results, students drop out, or students ask many “obvious” questions.

When faculty recognize that students need help with reading, they are concerned first that they don’t have training in teaching reading and second that their primary professional obligation is to cover the content of their classes.

For me as a faculty mentor and trainer, these are the exact reasons why Reading Apprenticeship is an important, appropriate, and effective instructional framework to use.  After all, as faculty members, we are the content “reading” experts. Who is better at revealing the secrets in the passages of our class texts?

When faculty ask me for assistance, I think it is critical to use actual coursework texts, so I request a desk copy of their primary text. I select several Reading Apprenticeship routines that fit the content and text and are likely matches for their teaching style, and then I schedule a visit to their classrooms.

I engage the students in a discussion about the value of reading in their course, introduce the four dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship Framework, have the students do a personal reading history exercise, and then model a Reading Apprenticeship routine such as the Reading Strategies List or a Think Aloud about the organization of the text. Follow-up sessions have covered text features, the pairing of text passages and chapter graphics, vocabulary exercises, evidence/interpretation metacognitive logs, more Think Alouds, text annotation, and inquiry as a means for engaging the text.

In my next post I will share some of the feedback from students and faculty, including some interesting ideas about who benefits from student-centered classrooms.

Click here to read Part 2 of Planting the Seeds of Reading Apprenticeship.

Blog Contributor, Michele Lesmeister

Michele Lesmeister teaches Adult Education classes at Renton Technical College in Renton, Washington. She has a BA in Linguistics and a Master’s degree in Teaching English. Since 1990, she has focused on teaching adults transferable language skills in writing and reading and sometimes math for health sciences. She has published two texts with Pearson Education: Math Basics for the Health Care Professional, 3rd edition and Writing Basics for the Health Care Professional. Michele began her work with Reading Apprenticeship by attending the a 2008 Leadership Institute in Reading Apprenticeship. She is leading a college-wide initiative of institutionalizing Reading Apprenticeship under the Achieving the Dream grant for her institution. You can learn more about the work in Reading Apprenticeship at Renton Technical College at www.RTC-Rats.org.

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Posted in Community College Literacy, Literacy | 1 Comment »

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