The Personal Dimension

The personal dimension of a Reading Apprenticeship classroom focuses on developing individual students' relationships to reading. Classroom activities support students in developing increased awareness of themselves as readers, inviting them to discover and refine their own goals and motivations, likes and dislikes, and hopes and potential growth in relationship to reading. This work develops within and in tum adds to the development of the social context of the classroom. As individual students gain a sense of themselves as readers, they add to the classroom community their descriptions of their varied reading processes, their responses to texts, and their questions and interpretations, all of which provide rich content for classroom discussions.

Developing Reader Identity

The activity of reading-the ability to use a variety of metacognitive and cogni­ tive strategies to make sense of texts-is closely tied to the will to read.13 When students feel they are not good readers, frustration, embarrassment, or fear of failure can prevent them from engaging in reading. Without confidence in themselves as readers, students often disengage from any serious attempts to improve their reading.

Learning to independently read unfamiliar types of texts and complex texts is hard work. Unless students begin to see reading as related to their personal interests and goals and as something they can improve, they are unlikely to expend the necessary effort. For poor achievers to become more motivated and persistent, the key is seeing that their effort really does lead to success. We have found that when we can convincingly frame the hard work of improving read­ ing as an avenue toward increased individual autonomy and control, as well as toward an expanded repertoire of future life options, we have won more than half the battle.

In developing the personal dimension of a Reading Apprenticeship class­ room, teachers and students work together to develop new identities as read­ ers, awareness of their own reading processes, willing persistence in the hard work of building stronger reading skills, and increased confidence for tackling new and unfamiliar kinds of texts.

Reading researchers have found that having a sense of who one is as a reader and learner is an important aspect of motivation. Especially for students who think of themselves as nonreaders or poor readers, developing a sense of reader identity is crucial. Teachers can create classroom routines or periodic activities that help students see themselves as readers, come to know what texts they like and don't like, identify where their strengths and weaknesses as readers lie, and articulate and monitor their own goals as developing readers. The following activities can help students see themselves as readers:

• Write and talk with others about previous reading experiences.
• Write and talk with others about reading habits, likes, and dislikes.
• Write and talk with others about reasons for reading.
• Set and periodically check in on goals for personal reading development.

Developing Metacognition

Gaining metacognitive awareness is a necessary step to gaining control of one's mental activity. Consciousness of their own thinking processes allows learners to "reflectively tum around on their own thought and action and analyze how and why their thinking achieved certain ends or failed to achieve others." Moreover, knowledge of one's own thinking is like other kinds of knowledge in that it grows through experience (that is, through the metacognitive activity itself) and becomes more automatic with practice.

Students find becoming conscious of their mental processes unfamiliar yet often intriguing. Here are examples of classroom activities that assist students in thinking about their thinking:

• Notice what is happening in your mind in a variety of everyday situations.
• Identify various thinking processes you engage in, in a variety of everyday situations.
• Notice where your attention is when you read.
• Identify all the different processes going on while you read.
• Choose what thinking activities to engage in; direct and control your read­ ing processes accordingly.

Developing Reader Fluency and Stamina

One of the paradoxes that struggling or disengaged readers face is that in order to become more confident readers and to enjoy reading more, they need to become more fluent readers. Yet it is difficult to develop fluency without feeling confident and interested in reading. Our colleagues in secondary and college classrooms have developed a variety of ways of approaching this very difficult area:

• Demonstrate that all readers, including the teacher, are developing readers and that everyone has room to grow during a lifetime of reading.
• Identify the role that effort plays in the growth of reading comprehension over time; notice that effort pays off in becoming a stronger reader.
• Notice and celebrate progress as a developing reader; increase patience with yourself as a reader.
• Persist in reading even when you are somewhat confused or bored with a text.
• Build stamina for reading longer texts and for longer periods of time.

Developing Reader Confidence and Range

Another paradox that teachers face in developing students' personal relation­ ships to reading is that readers who do not feel confident about their abilities are less likely to take the risks involved in approaching new kinds of texts. Extending the range of what they can read, however, is an important way that students can build their confidence as readers. Students (and their teachers) are often unaware of just how much reading students do daily. The skills, strategies, and knowledge students bring to making sense of such daily reading as notes from friends or parents, websites, movie and music reviews, song lyrics, and electronics manuals are valuable resources teachers need to invite into the class­ room. Convincing students that they have already mastered many text types helps build the kind of confidence they need to approach less familiar texts.

Our colleagues have used a number of activities to build such confidence and expand the range of texts students read:

• Bring the huge variety of different kinds of texts students read in their daily lives into the classroom.
• Investigate how students approach and make sense of these different kinds of texts.
• Connect the competencies that students demonstrate in approaching these texts to the resources students will need to approach unfamiliar texts.
• Have students read, with class support, short pieces representing a wide range of unfamiliar types of texts.
• Draw attention to what students do understand when reading unfamiliar texts.

Reading for Understanding, pp.30-33