The Social Dimension

Establishing a Reading Apprenticeship classroom begins with the work of nur­ turing a social environment in which students can begin to reveal their under­ standings and their struggles as well as to see other students, and their teacher, as potential resources for learning.

Creating Safety

To begin developing the social dimension of the classroom, teachers work with students to create a sense that they are part of a safe community of readers. Developing this sense of safety is fundamental to the activity of investigating reading. To help students become more active and strategic readers, we need to hear from the students themselves about what is going on in their minds while they are reading. Therefore, they must feel comfortable expressing points of confusion, disagreement, and even disengagement with texts. They need to feel safe enough to talk about where they got lost in a text, what was confusing, what they ordinarily do when they have these kinds of comprehension prob­ lems, and how well these strategies work for them.

Some students may be embarrassed by reading comprehension difficul­ ties, believing these difficulties mean they are not as skilled at reading as they should be. Making it safe for students to discuss reading difficulties mitigates students' potential embarrassment. The following classroom activities help establish a safe culture for students to take on the role of reading apprentices:

• Discuss what makes it safe or unsafe for students to ask questions or show their confusion in class.
• Agree on classroom rules for discussion so that all students can share their ideas and confusions without being made to feel stupid.
• Discuss what makes it safe or unsafe for students to engage in classroom learning.
• Agree on classroom norms that allow all students to engage in learning without being made to feel uncool.

Investigating the Relationship Between Literacy and Power

Motivation to read and to work on improving reading is affected by myriad fac­ tors, including the ways instruction builds on learners' out-of-school identities and literacies and leverages their interests and desires to learn, do, and com­ municate. Students' understanding of the likelihood of success and of learning itself mediates how much effort they will expend on learning tasks-that is, it influences their motivation. Motivation is also intimately related to students' cultural and peer group identity as well as their prior experiences in school.

The degree to which students see doing well academically as a means of gaining status with their peers can vary. For some students, there may be a stigma attached to reading better than others in their social group. For others, school uses of literacy seem far away from the literacy practices they value. Students who are underprepared academically for the challenge of academic literacy are often perceived as resistant to learning when they are actually aspiring to achieve. For many students, experiences in academic settings have not offered the kinds of learning opportunities they need to see how purpose­ ful engagement with academic literacy may affect their future ambitions. Engaging students in asking questions about reading (and literacy) and its rela­ tionship to academic, economic, political, and cultural power has the potential to reframe reading as a more valued activity. The following classroom activities help position reading as a universal value:

• Investigate and talk about the people who read in our society, what they read, why they read, and how reading affects their lives.
• Investigate and talk about the people who do not read in our society and how not reading affects their lives.
• Read and talk about the role played by lack of literacy in the historical dis­ enfranchisement of particular groups of people in society.
• Talk about the relationships between literacy and power of various kinds, including academic, economic, political, and cultural.

Sharing Text Talk

Particularly when students resist engagement in reading because they have devalued it, have had little experience reading, or are embarrassed by their rela­ tive reading competence, sharing books and other texts on topics that appeal to young people is an important way of generating interest in reading. Intrinsic motivation to read can flourish in a classroom where everyone has a chance to talk about and hear about each other's interesting or important reading experi­ ences; for example:

• Share the texts that teachers and classmates have found exciting, fun, inter­ esting, or important.
• Share the ways in which teachers and classmates choose books they will both enjoy and be able to finish as recreational reading.
• Share teachers' and classmates' responses to the ideas, events, and language of texts.

Sharing Reading Processes, Problems, and Solutions

Teachers and students must build a sense of collaborative and respectful inquiry into each other's reading processes. This is key to establishing the conditions for successful reading apprenticeships. Once students are safe to engage in classroom reading activities and share their reading processes and difficulties, the classroom community of readers can offer its members crucial resources in the diversity and breadth of interpretations, experiences, and perspectives that different readers bring to different texts. Activities in which students have access to a variety of social resources for dealing with reading comprehension problems are another way to establish and maintain the social dimension of a Reading Apprenticeship classroom; for example:

• Talk about what is confusing in texts.
• Share how teachers and students deal with comprehension problems as they come up in class texts.
• Participate in whole- or small-group problem-solving discussions to make sense of difficult texts.

Noticing and Appropriating Others' Ways of Reading

Students possess a variety of strengths, including diverse background knowl­ edge and experiences. Each student can have times when he or she becomes the more knowledgeable other, helping peers gain comprehension of par­ ticular texts and acquire strategies and knowledge for the comprehension of a range of texts.

Teachers act as expert resources for reading strategies, disciplinary reason­ ing, relevant background knowledge, and experience with particular kinds of texts and how they work. In a classroom environment where sharing one's reading processes, comprehension difficulties, and attempts to solve com­ prehension problems is the norm, teachers have many opportunities to share their expertise. They also can draw students' attention to the fact that different readers in the classroom bring different valuable resources that influence their interpretations of texts. The point of such activities is for students to notice and appropriate successful ways of reading and solving problems of reading com­ prehension; for example:

• Notice the different kinds of background knowledge and experience differ­ ent readers (teachers and classmates) bring to texts and how that affects the way they interpret what they read.
• Notice the ways different readers think aloud and respond to texts as they work to make sense of them.
• Notice the different reading strategies different readers use to make sense of texts.
• Try out the different strategies and approaches other readers use to make sense of texts.

Reading for Understanding, pp.27-30