Implementing Reading Apprenticeship:
The First Four Weeks

Goals

Begin building the social and personal dimensions of the classroom

• Personal connections, interests, motivations, experiences
• Norms for respectful collaboration, risk-taking, sharing of resources

Begin the metacognitive conversation about reading and thinking

• Classroom inquiry into reading, thinking, and learning
• It’s cool to be confused; problem solving to make meaning

Establish conversational routines for paired, group, and whole class work

• Individual, pair share, foursomes, whole class collaboration

Introduce, model, and practice key metacognitive conversation routines

• Think Aloud, Talking to the Text, metacognitive logs/journals

Extend class time devoted to reading and talking about reading

• Daily warm-up readings, paired reading, silent reading

Collect and use a variety of reading materials that offer different levels of difficulty

• Extend reading opportunities for all students, for the first topic or unit of study and then subsequently for all topics or units

Ideas For Week 1

Student Reading Survey

(see Reading for Understanding, Assessment Appendix)

Have students individually fill out the survey and share their responses with a partner, followed by a whole class discussion about students’ responses. What do students read outside of school? What are they interested in and good at? Acknowledge and value students’ dislikes and difficulties, and share yours as well. Have students bring materials they read at home into class.

Personal History-/Math-/Science-/English-Reading History

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 3.9)

Have individuals reflect on and capture their own subject-area reading history with words, pictures, or a combination of both. Have students share their history with a partner, and then combine two sets of partners into a foursome to discuss commonalities and differences. End with a whole class discussion of what discourages and supports students’ reading and learning in a subject area, what resources they are bringing to the class, and what kind of classroom community they want to create. Use that discussion as a means to create norms for class work.

Developing Norms

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 3.4)

Let students know that they have the power to create a safe, productive classroom and that you will help them. Invite them to describe what is important to them in a learning environment: What helps and what hurts.

Capturing the Reading Process/Reading Strategies List

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 4.3)

Using a high interest and accessible text, have students read individually and write about what they did to make sense of the reading. Have them share with a partner and then in a whole group discussion. Make a list of the reading strategies they share and post it on the wall in the classroom. Emphasize how much they know about reading and how much they can offer one another as learners. Let them know that they will continue to add to this class Reading Strategies List.

Introduce Metacognition: Think Aloud with Pipe Cleaners

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 4.2)

With a non-reading task such as this one, have students learn to externalize their thinking processes. Explain how becoming metacognitive will help them monitor and control their thinking and learning, and how sharing their thoughts will help the whole class. Debrief as a class: acknowledge the difficulties associated with thinking aloud, and value students’ willingness to take risks.

Model Think Aloud

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 3.10)

Using materials from students’ outside-of-class reading, demonstrate your own comprehension processes and problems with these unfamiliar materials. Model the Think Aloud with other high interest reading materials. Have students use the Metacognitive Bookmark (Box 4.7) to identify your thinking processes.

Use Think Aloud to Model Discipline-Specific Reading Processes

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 4.6)

As you introduce course materials, again model the Think Aloud to help students see how you approach these disciplinary materials. Model disciplinary-specific reading strategies—such as wondering about point of view, identifying rhetorical devices, or comprehending data arrays—and help students see how discipline-specific reading processes can help them read more productively.

Ideas For Month 1

Practice Think Aloud

Have students contribute to a group Think Aloud using the Metacognitive Bookmark. Ask them to contribute to each prompt: Does anyone have a picture? A question? Is anyone confused? Give students practice thinking aloud in pairs with bookmarks. Add new strategies to the Reading Strategies List.

Model Talking to the Text

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 4.9)

First Model Talking to the Text with the overhead or document camera. Have students contribute to a whole group Talking to the Text on the next part of the text. Add new strategies students are using to the Reading Strategies List.

Practice Talking to the Text

Have students individually Talk to the Text and share their work with a partner. What did they do to make sense of the text? What comprehension problems did they solve? What comprehension problems do they still have? Have pairs share highlights from their conversations and debrief the process with the whole class.

Help Students Choose Materials for Extensive Reading

(see Reading for Understanding, Box 5.2)

Offer students a variety of reading materials to choose from as they complete class assignments focused on curriculum topics. Model ways of choosing texts according to interest and difficulty. Have a class conversation about ways to choose accessible reading materials. At the beginning of a unit, encourage individual students to choose text selections that are at their comfort level in terms of comprehension, and to move on to more difficult selections as they progress in the unit.

Begin SSR or Independent Reading (if applicable)

(see Reading for Understanding, Chapter Six)

Introduce Metacognitive Logs/Journals

(see Reading for Understanding, Boxes 4.10-4.12)

Introduce metacognitive prompts for reading logs and journal assignments to accompany all class reading. Model the kind of responses you are looking for. Identify good responses in students’ logs and journals and share them with the class. Always have students share their metacognitive logs and reading experiences with each other, looking, for example, for especially good responses or interesting new strategies. Add new strategies to the Reading Strategies List.