Reading Apprenticeship

Kristina Pittman, Facilitator

Emma Fujii

Kristina Pittman, Facilitator

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Location: Farmington Hills, Michigan

Years of Teaching: 25

If you had to describe yourself as an educator, what six words would you use and why?

Passionate. Motivated. Optimistic. Collaborative. Caring. Reflective. I am passionate because I love what I do; motivated because I have high expectations of myself, my students, and my colleagues; optimistic because our attitude frames our experiences; collaborative because I enjoy working with others; caring because I genuinely care about what others are experiencing; and reflective because I am always looking for new ways to reach students as I tweak my approach and lesson plans to adapt to the learners who are in front of me.

What drew you to Reading Apprenticeship?

When I was working on aligning the English Language Arts curriculum with the Common Core State Standards, I was immersed in the shift from teaching content to teaching skills. After researching several best practices with my colleagues, I discovered the Reading Apprenticeship model of instruction, and after one Reading Apprenticeship workshop, I was hooked. Many teachers in our district are now trained in Reading Apprenticeship, and for the last several years, we have been meeting as an interdisciplinary instructional professional learning team, discussing routines that are working for our students across and within the disciplines. As a result, our students are active participants in their learning process, which has led to improvements in our students’ literacy levels, content mastery, and writing assessment scores!

What is your go-to Reading Apprenticeship routine?

#1 Think-Pair-Share and #2 I Think/My Group Thinks/My Community Thinks. These routines set an important purpose for writing: students have an opportunity to articulate their thoughts independently, but they know that they are writing in preparation for discussion. Once they capture their thoughts in writing, sharing in a small group creates a safe environment for students to engage in thoughtful discussion. Students are more willing to share their thoughts with the whole class when they are reporting out what their group thinks, which increases student engagement and collaborative meaning making.

Can you share a story about a time when you or a student had an “aha!” moment with Reading Apprenticeship?

A student recently said, “I love that in this class because we create our own questions, and as a result, we have the space to have important conversations that are relevant to us. Giving us the opportunity to create our own questions motivates us to find the answers to those questions.”

If you could describe Reading Apprenticeship in a sentence, what would you say?

Reading Apprenticeship transforms classrooms into places where all students are engaged as leaders in the content area.

What are you reading right now?

I am rereading All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Marissa Cavallini, Facilitator

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Location: Chicago, IL

Years of Teaching: 14

If you had to describe yourself as an educator, what six words would you use and why?

Intentional: If I’m doing a task with my students, I want there to be purpose.
Creative: I enjoy creating new ways to engage with content.
Organized: Being organized helps me stay in control and provide my best for my students.
Understanding: Not everyday is perfect so it’s important that my students know they can have an off day and come back the next to try again.
Funny: The school day is long, everyone needs some humor.
Hardworking: I put a lot of effort into what I create for the best overall experience.

What drew you to Reading Apprenticeship?

I didn’t know how to teach reading well. It’s something that was emphasized by my district but I never had the right guidance to do it. When Reading Apprenticeship PD was offered to me, I was excited to learn new ways to interact with texts that I didn’t do when I was a student.

What is your go-to Reading Apprenticeship routine?

Think-Aloud

Can you share a story about a time when you or a student had an “aha!” moment with Reading Apprenticeship?

My personal “aha” moment with Reading Apprenticeship was when I first participated in the PD as a learner. I finally felt like I was learning a way to teach reading that I could incorporate into a World Language class. The routines that Reading Apprenticeship is based on allowed me to use more authentic texts and resources with my students.

If you could describe Reading Apprenticeship in a sentence, what would you say?

Reading Apprenticeship supports reading at all levels.

What are you reading right now?

I am rereading Tom Lake.

How do you center student voice and experience in classroom instruction?

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Dr. Cynthia Greenleaf puts teaching and learning in context

This summer, as hundreds of teachers take the time further their practice via Reading Apprenticeship professional learning, our Co-Founder Dr. Cynthia Greenleaf reflects on the field of adolescent literacy and the new edition of Reading for Understanding.

Check out this feature Q&A with Cyndy in WestEd’s “Insights and Impact” and learn about the assets-based framework that “helps both teachers and students see the resources and knowledge they already have, and how these are central to accelerating literacy and learning.”

“It’s Important to Dance with the Text”

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Teaching English in the Two-Year College Journal (TETYC) has published a special issue focused on “Teaching Reading in Open Access Contexts.” This volume is a wonderful resource for instructors wondering how best to support students’ reading in a rapidly changing world.

Guest Editors Joanne Baird Giordano and Cheryl Hogue Smith argue in their introductory article, “The Changing Realities of Open Access Reading: Where Are We Now? Where Might We Go Next?” that at a time when both the nature of reading itself and the place of literacy instruction at community colleges are undergoing rapid change, “faculty and administrators in open-access teaching contexts need flexible, evidence-based practices for helping students from diverse social, cultural, linguistic, and academic backgrounds develop the reading skills and strategies required for success across the range of courses that they teach.” The research articles in the issue describe such practices, from strategies for antiracist reading, framing strategic reading as a transferable skill, and supporting returning students to draw on their lived experiences to connect to reading and writing assignments in the composition classroom.

Reading Apprenticeship is featured in an Instructional Note article written by Nika Hogan, “’It’s important to dance with the text’: Enhancing Writing Instruction Through Reading Apprenticeship.” Hogan describes the Reading Apprenticeship’ framework as a support for instructors to orchestrate dynamic, contextualized literacy instruction that supports both student engagement and deeper learning about the discipline of writing studies.

You can download the article here.

Interested in a deeper dive into how Reading Apprenticeship can support students to engage deeply with texts as both readers and writers? Consider the Reading Apprenticeship in College Writing Course.

College workshop on May 12 – everyone welcome!

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College Educators Share Approaches to Scaffolding Engagement and Critical Thinking

Many faculty feel that student engagement has been on the decline since the educational disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In a workshop series this spring titled “Reviving College Reading in Today’s Learning Environments,” college educators are sharing how the Reading Apprenticeship framework helps them navigate today’s complex landscape and to scaffold deeper engagement, critical thinking, and sense of belonging as students transition to college.   Sign up now to join the last session on May 12.

May 12, 10:00-11:30amPST:  “A Literacy Garden: Plant the Seeds and Watch Your Students and Colleagues Grow” will focus on how to engage colleagues in conversations and professional learning communities centered on our teaching practice and disciplinary literacy.

Lora Bagwell, Assistant Dean of English and Associate Reading Professor at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, TN, will share her journey of bringing Reading Apprenticeship to her courses, students, colleagues, and campus. She will share the successes and challenges of the process and provide practical advice for planting your own literacy garden.

College educators across levels and subject areas are invited to explore how the Reading Apprenticeship framework can help orchestrate active, culturally responsive, and engaged learning experiences for our students.

The first three workshops in the series highlighted the way that educators from different contexts utilize Reading Apprenticeship to support student learning.

The series started with “Reading to Learn Across the Disciplines:  An Introduction.”   Participants reviewed the Reading Apprenticeship framework and engaged in text-based metacognitive conversations which activated some of the core concepts that animate Reading Apprenticeship learning environments, such as that reading is problem solving, that everybody sometimes feels like an “insider” or an “outsider” with certain texts and discourses, and that educators tend to develop blind spots to their insider status when it comes to the texts in their discipline.  

The second workshop, facilitated by Dr. Laura Garofoli, Professor of Psychological Science at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, focused on the power of metacognitive question-posing to drive students’ persistence with and processing of challenging texts. In “The Reading Apprenticeship Framework as a Roadmap Back to Student Self-Confidence and Re-engagement in Our ‘Post-COVID’ World,” Dr.Garofoli described her methodology of “teaching metacognition as giving honor to the thoughts, feelings, questions, and connections that arise as students engage with learning materials. Anything that your brain gives you counts!”  Participants reviewed brain-based research highlighting the importance of student-generated questions for learning, and then practiced mapping their “thoughts, feelings, questions and connections” with a text set focused on the impact of sleep on learning.

The third workshop also introduced participants to deeper scaffolds for helping students generate connections which lead to academic engagement.  In “Scaffolding Thinking for Deeper Academic Conversations and Writings,” Caren Kongshaug, a College Readiness Instructor from Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA, presented several notetakers she has devised to support three distinct “thinking pathways”: 

Nika Hogan, Reading Apprenticeship College Coordinator and the organizer of the workshop series, says that the sessions so far provide support for dealing with the ways the world has changed while reinforcing the ways that learning stays the same.  “It’s still about transparency:  these are the rules of engagement; this is how we are going to work together.  It’s still about creating a culture of inquiry and providing opportunities for students to dig into text and to construct their own understanding.  It’s still about asking learners to share their thinking, but what we are seeing from the innovations that these faculty are sharing is that a slightly deeper level of scaffolding helps today’s students marshall the focus to make connections to text that they can build on for academic purposes.” 

For more information or to begin your own journey with Reading Apprenticeship, register for the My 12 workshop, or explore these resources:

Reading for Understanding, third edition

Reading Apprenticeship 101

Lora Bagwell, Facilitator

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Location: Knoxville, TN

Years of Teaching: 20

If you had to describe yourself as an educator, what six words would you use and why?

Engaged, purposeful, explorer, listener, strategic and sympathetic

These are the traits I like to see in my students, and I cannot ask them to do anything that I am not willing to do myself.
Engaged–The routines and strategies associated with the Reading Apprenticeship framework require students and instructors to be engaged with the text and one another.
Purposeful—Students need to see a purpose in the work I am asking them to do. My learning opportunities need to help students see how the reading and college success strategies are applicable to other classes and to their personal lives.
Explorer, listener, and strategic– The Intelligent Practice Formula is an important part of my co-requisite courses along with the Reading Apprenticeship framework. In order to be successful, one must put forth effort, use good strategies, and seek help from others. This formula leads to success in all areas of life. In order to follow the formula, one must be willing to put forth the effort required to explore new strategies and listen to learn from the experience of others.
Sympathetic—My blue personality will not allow me to be any other way. My sons recently graduated from college. When faced with a decision on how to handle a situation with a student or when planning the activities and assignments, I ask myself—what would I want my sons’ professors to do?

What drew you to Reading Apprenticeship?

I was drawn to Reading Apprenticeship when Tennessee shifted from pre-requisite learning support to co-requisite learning support.  A colleague discovered the use of the framework in the College One course at Pasadena City College (PCC). As is the norm with Reading Apprenticeship practitioners, Nika Hogan and the PCC faculty opened their training to my colleagues and me and introduced us to Reading Apprenticeship through a training that was both engaging and insightful. From there, Pellissippi paired their learning support reading course with the College Success course and used the integration of Reading Apprenticeship in PCC’s College One as a model. Reading Apprenticeship validated my teaching philosophy especially the importance of the social dimension in learning.

What is your go-to Reading Apprenticeship routine?

My go to routine is a combo Think Aloud with Talking to the Text. We all want our students to engage with the text on a meaningful level, and experts in a field just assume everyone knows how to do that. Of course, not everyone does. With a language arts background, I approach a text much differently than someone in the physical sciences. I usually begin with words while my scientist colleagues most often begin with the charts, tables, and diagrams. Students need to “see” what is happening in the expert brain. A Think Aloud allows experts in the field to make their metacognitive process visible. Talking to the Text or annotations on steroids is an opportunity to model what engagement with the text looks like on paper. Students are often surprised that I never pick up a highlighter. As my colleague Laura says, identify your thoughts, feelings, and connections as you read. Your thoughts, feelings, and connections invite the information you are reading into your brain and encourage the information to take-up permanent residence and not treat your brain as an Airbnb.

Can you share a story about a time when you or a student had an “aha!” moment with Reading Apprenticeship?

The moment that comes to mind was a pre-COVID moment. You will understand the importance of that line later. I was new to Reading Apprenticeship, so I explained the framework to my students. We constantly reflected on the routines we were using in the classroom and matched those routines and experiences with the different dimensions. When I asked students to explain the experience at the end of the semester, one young lady said the process builds your immunity to the feeling of failure. Of course, I had a puzzled look on my face until she explained further. Before this experience, I sheltered myself from mistakes. I avoided the textbooks as much as possible. I tried to keep all the bad (challenges) away. Reading Apprenticeship helped me to see that I can learn from my challenges and the challenges of others just as much if not more than from the successes. When I do not understand a text, I research and ask questions of myself, other students, and my instructor. I no longer feel like not understanding is going to destroy me or my chances of completing college. I am immune to the negativity that used to accompany challenges.

If you could describe Reading Apprenticeship in a sentence, what would you say?

The inclusivity brought about by engaging students in the four dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship framework is a game changer!

What are you reading right now?

I am going to be totally honest here. After a recent trip to Savannah, I am re-reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.