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Strengthening Post-SecondaryStudent Literacy

through Reading Apprenticeship®

http://www.WestEd.org/ReadingApprenticeship

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WestEd’sStrategic Literacy Initiative (SLI)

• A professional development and research

organization focusing on improving

academic literacy in diverse populations of

adolescents and post-secondary students

using Reading Apprenticeship, a research-

based instructional framework.

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Reading Apprenticeship

• A partnership of expertise between the

teacher and students, drawing on what

content area teachers know and do as

skilled discipline-based readers and on

learners’ unique and often underestimated

strengths

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Dimensions of Reading Apprenticeship

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What does a Reading Apprenticeship Classroom Look Like?

• A focus on comprehension and

metacognitive conversation

• A climate of collaboration

• An emphasis on student independence

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Where is Reading Apprenticeship Implemented?

• RA is making learning visible in. . .

– 35+ California community colleges and

– 10 community colleges in Michigan, Arkansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Saskatchewan

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History of Reading Apprenticeship in Community Colleges

• SPECC Project (Strengthening Pre-Collegiate Education in Community Colleges), Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• 2004-2008 Reading Apprenticeship Leadership Institutes

• 2006 Faculty Inquiry Groups

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Faculty Inquiry to Improve Teaching and Learning

• SLI’s Community College Literacy Research Group (CCLRG)

• Lumina Foundation support for CCLRG 2007-2010

• 10 community college teachers representing– CA, WA, PA, TX, MS– English, Science, Developmental Studies, Adult

Basic Education, ESL

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Student Outcomes

• More reading• Increased engagement and

confidence as readers• Development of a range of strategies to

support comprehension• Higher levels of interaction between and

among teachers and students• Increased retention

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Teacher Outcomes

• New ways of looking at student thinking and reading difficulties

• Wider repertoire of resources and tools for addressing student reading difficulty

• Increased sense of responsibility for addressing reading and literacy in subject area classes

• Growth in teacher leadership

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Campus-wide Outcomes

• Increased student focused interactions with colleagues

• Campus-wide emphasis on literacy improvement

• Agreements about a common language and strategic approaches to reading

• Professional learning communities: inquiry and use of protocols for looking at classroom practices, student work

• Interactions with other RA practitioners becomes a source of information sharing, learning and support

• Growth of campus leaders in literacy

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Outcomes of my own classroom research while introducing RA routines:

ESL 21B, Fall 2007/Spring 2008:

•Increase in reading comprehension scores

•Increase in the variety of reading strategies that students report using

•Shift in “classroom culture”

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Outcomes of my own classroom research while introducing RA routines:

ESL 251B, Fall 2008

•Students work with more challenging texts and

•Produce more interesting and complex writing.

•Skills-based writing lessons did not produce better grammar or organization than freer written

responses to challenging readings.

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Teacher training site and complete research reports:

http://tinyurl.com/6oshf4