Institute/Session
Summary:
Participants in this session will learn about Reading Apprenticeship as a powerful framework for discipline-based literacy instruction. Reading Apprenticeship (RA) involves teachers in orchestrating and integrating four interacting dimensions of classroom life that support reading development. These dimensions—social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building—are woven into subject area teaching through metacognitive conversations—conversations about the thinking processes in which students and teachers engage as they read. (See Reading for Understanding, Jossey-Bass, Schoenbach, et al., 1999, which describes the Reading Apprenticeship framework and “Apprenticing Adolescent Readers to Academic Literacy,” Harvard Educational Review, Greenleaf, et al., 2001 which documents our progress in this work with teachers and students.)
During the past four years, growing numbers of community college teachers have begun implementing RA in both developmental and transfer level courses and are reporting positive outcomes. With support, adult learners in college classes become aware of and able to manipulate these metacognitive processes to support comprehension with a variety of texts and to sustain engagement and comprehension with difficult texts.
Current views of reading as a discrete set of skills acquired sequentially can lead to otherwise capable, but inexperienced, adult readers being limited to basic skills instruction that can actually distance them from a more engaging curriculum. In contrast, college teachers who implement Reading Apprenticeship in their classrooms use a repertoire of metacognitive techniques for mentoring students in the thinking processes of advanced academic literacies. As they begin to integrate the pedagogical framework into their curriculum, instructors learn to help students take the kind of active, strategic, and informed stance they need to read and learn in the discipline being studied.
Objectives for this session include:
- Learn about Reading Apprenticeship (RA) as a framework for disciplinary literacy instruction in the community college
- Understand the role of inquiry into reading processes in initiating and sustaining classroom metacognitive conversation
- Experience ways to make the invisible processes of reading visible and accessible to students
- Learn about the Learning Connection at Chabot College (Hayward, CA) that is shifting the focus on reading and learning support away from services only indirectly linked with classroom instruction in favor of involving instructors in decision making about reading and learning support services, the better to connect such support directly to classroom instruction in the disciplines
- Learn how supplemental instruction leaders (tutors) can strengthen student learning as they model and facilitate metacognitive conversations about reading in the disciplines.
Session content and methods of presentation:
- Overview of RA rationale and routines, with a visit (via DVD) to a community college developmental English classroom (Los Medanos Community College, Pittsburg, CA)
- Participation in an inquiry into our reading process with an academic text (individual work followed by small and large group discussion)
- Presentation on Chabot College’s Learning Connection that is linking various learning support services with one another and with classroom instruction. Examples include tailored learning support and tutor training, with instructor involvement, and college-wide conferences on reading and learning. Participants will view and discuss clips from a video “Reading Between the Lives,” produced by the college, in which students share their academic reading experiences, needs, and suggestions for support.
- Introduction to RA implementation at Merced College (Merced, CA) in the English and mathematics departments. Participants will engage in sample inquiry activities with texts in both disciplines and will view and discuss a short DVD of supplemental instruction (SI) leaders engaging in a metacognitive conversation routine, prior to using the routine with students in developmental math and English classrooms. Presenters will share samples of student work, including metacognitive log entries.
- Presentation and discussion: Summary of impact (documented changes for teachers and students in RA classrooms)
- Institute debrief, questions and discussion
Materials used (U) /provided (P)
- Selected publications on Reading Apprenticeship (annotated graphic of the Reading Apprenticeship framework for disciplinary literacy instruction; Schoenbach et al., (2003), “Apprenticing Adolescents to Reading in Subject Area Classrooms,” Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 133-13 (U,P)
- Powerpoint overview of RA rationale and routines, key features of RA classrooms, and outcomes for teachers and students (U)
- DVD of developmental English class students reading and talking about motivations to read (Los Medanos College, Pittsburg, CA) (U)
- Academic texts for shared inquiry into reading process (U/P)
- DVD of Chabot College students talking about themselves as readers and handling the demands of academic texts (U)
- Academic texts (math and history) for practice of metacognitive routines (U/P)
- DVD of supplemental instruction leaders (SI’s) engaged in metacognitive conversation with a literary text and a mathematics text (Merced College, Merced, CA) (U)
Presenter1
Name: Jane Braunger
Presenter1 Institution: Strategic Literacy Initiative/WestEd
Presenter1 Bio: Jane Braunger, Ed.D. is a Senior Research Associate with the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd, where she conducts research on professional development in literacy among middle and high school teachers; collaborates in the ongoing development of theory and practice in Reading Apprenticeship®; and establishes new networks and contexts for SLI’s work, especially in preservice teacher education and community college settings. Her professional experience includes high school and college teaching, K-12 language arts curriculum development, teacher education, research, and writing. She is lead author of a book on preparing middle and high school teachers for content area literacy instruction (Rethinking Preparation for Content Area Teaching: The Reading Apprenticeship Approach, Jossey-Bass, 2005). She is co-author with Dr. Jan Lewis of a synthesis of the research on learning to read, Building a Knowledge Base in Reading, 2nd edition, published by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English in 2006. Jane is the 2005 recipient of WestEd’s Paul D. Hood Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field.
Presenter2 Name: Diane Waff
Presenter2 Institution: Strategic Literacy Initiative/WestEd
Presenter2 Bio: Diane Waff, a Senior Program Associate at Strategic Literacy Initiative, WestEd, is a researcher and published author with years of experience in urban education as a teacher and as an administrator. Diane was a recipient of a two year Carnegie Foundation Fellowship (1999-2001) awarded to school and university-based scholars to conduct classroom-based research and a Fred Hechinger Award from the NWP in 2002 for connecting research and practice in a body of work that includes articles and book chapters focused on language and literacy. She is co-editor of Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescent’s Lives, 2nd edition (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006).
Waff received her BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a MEd from Antioch University, Yellow Springs Ohio, and a MS in educational administration from Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Presenter3 Name: Cindy Hicks
Presenter3 Institution: Chabot College
Presenter3 Bio: Cindy Hicks’ higher education teaching career began at San Francisco State University where she was a lecturer in English, wrote a mini-course for reading, and served on the hiring committee for lecturers in English. She began teaching in community colleges at Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey, CA, where she taught a range of English courses and a professional development course to high school language arts instructors. Also at MPC, Ms. Hicks was coordinator of the college’s Learning Center and headed MPC’s staff development work. She was hired by Chabot College in 1985 to teach English and ESL. In addition to her teaching at Chabot, Ms. Hicks has been the Reading Center coordinator, the Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum Center coordinator, the tutor trainer for both the WRAC Center and the Tutorials Center, the Title 3 basic skills English coordinator, and the Curriculum Committee chair. Currently she is project development coordinator for the college’s new learning resource center, The Learning Connection, and for a new Center for Teaching and Learning. Ms. Hicks is a former president of the Northern California Writing Centers Association, has served on two WASC accreditation teams, has presented at numerous conferences on learning support and literacy in higher education and has published in the Basic Writing Newsletter, and been cited in the Journal of Basic Writing for her work in writing and reading across the curriculum program development.
Presenter4 Name: Patricia Schade
Presenter4 Institution: Merced College
Presenter4 Bio: Patricia Schade received her BA in English from the University of New Hampshire in 192 and an MA in English from Boston College in 1988. She teaches both developmental and transfer level English at Merced College and is actively involved in faculty development and inquiry toward improving literacy at Merced College. She also provides training to supplemental instructors(tutors) who assist in the developmental English classroom.
Presenter5 Name: Marie Bruley
Presenter5 Institution: Merced College
Presenter5 Bio: Marie Bruley received her B.S. in mathematics from CSU Stanislaus in 2000 and an MA in mathematics from CSU Sacramento in 2003. She teachers both developmental and transfer level mathematics at Merced College. Marie is involved in faculty inquiry groups that are aimed at promoting student success. She also provides training to supplemental instructors (tutors) who assist in the developmental mathematics classroom.
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