Reading Apprenticeship

Breakthroughs in College Reading:  The Promises and Tensions of Disciplinary Reading Apprenticeships

Decorative image: book cover of Breakthroughs in College Reading:  The Promises and Tensions of Disciplinary Reading Apprenticeships

Books

Breakthroughs in College Reading:  The Promises and Tensions of Disciplinary Reading Apprenticeships

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New Book features how to Improve College Success by Supporting Disciplinary Literacy

In our rapidly evolving world of digital media, generative AI, and an overwhelming information landscape, how can college educators empower students to make sense of course texts to support deeper learning?  In this new collection, community college and university instructors from across the disciplines — including science, math, history, psychology and English — describe the way they use the Reading Apprenticeship framework to:

  • Create strong classroom communities that help students bridge from their own funds of knowledge to new academic identities,
  • Help students to take responsibility for the intellectual work in their classes, and
  • Design tasks that engage students in reading as a problem-solving process.

This book is published by Rowman and Littlefield (2024) and is included in WestEd’s resource library with permission from the publisher. To see a table of contents and excerpts, or purchase the book, visit the publisher’s web site, bookshop.org, or Amazon.

To engage with post-secondary leaders and colleagues, come back to our website to learn about upcoming webinars and podcasts, or sign up for a college Reading Apprenticeship college course.

Read Our Chapter in this New Professional Learning Book

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Anyone interested in literacy and professional learning will find great value in this 2023 book edited by Dana Robertson, Leigh Hall, and Cynthia Brock. The introductory chapter provides a concise overview of the essential ‘ingredients’ and challenges involved in high quality professional learning. Each of the following chapters include program descriptions, case studies, and research on transformational teacher learning initiatives situated in culturally, linguistically and geographically diverse places. The chapters are grouped into two parts: 1) Professional Learning as Reflexive Growth-in-Practice and 2) Professional Learning In/Through/With Social Networks and Communities.

Reading Apprenticeship is featured in a chapter written by Cynthia Greenleaf, Gayle Cribb, Mira-Lisa Katz and Mary Stump “Professional Learning Designed to Cultivate Continuous Learning and Innovation.” The authors describe Reading Apprenticeship’s design principles, and they illustrate the power of ‘leading from practice’ by describing the journey of Gayle Cribb.

For a limited time, you can download our chapter at no charge, but we highly recommend you check out the book.

“This book conveys leading-edge ideas. It offers practical ideas for professional learning that ensure teachers and students alike are supported to learn and to sustain their learning….It shares insights that will make such professional growth a reality. This powerful work is a major contribution to the development of teacher learning.”
  — Diane Lapp, EdD, San Diego State University

Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, 3rd Edition

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Improve student outcomes in reading and literacy with the latest edition of this bestselling text

Thoroughly updated, this third edition of Reading for Understanding offers teachers evidence-based strategies to help students gain the reading independence they need to master subject area texts through Reading Apprenticeship. The practical tools and protocols in each chapter will help educators plan and enact lessons that are authentic to their subject area and also tap the expertise and interests of their students.

The authors – and many contributing teachers – present and illustrate how to enact Reading Apprenticeship™, a proven, evidence-based instructional approach that enables students to dig into all kinds of texts (word problems, charts and tables, primary source documents, fiction, and more). Moreover, students learn to do this reading with an awareness of their own thinking, their purpose, and discipline-specific conventions.

Readers will learn to:

  • understand their own expertise as readers and sense-makers in science, history, literature, math, and more
  • make their reading process – and that of their students – visible through metacognitive conversations and ‘think aloud’ routines
  • supplement and strengthen their textbooks with engaging and diverse texts
  • build collaboration and self-monitoring skills
  • create a positive classroom climate in which students feel safe to voice questions
  • assess and respond to students’ reading needs and strengths

Featuring a new chapter on disciplinary literacy, this edition is perfect for secondary teachers of math, English, art, science, social studies – as well as literacy coaches, educational leaders, teacher educators, and college faculty. Reading for Understanding proves it’s never too late for educators and students to build community and knowledge through reading.

This book is published by Wiley and is included in WestEd’s resource library with permission from the publisher. To purchase the book, visit the publisher’s web site, bookshop.org, or Amazon. A copy of Reading for Understanding is included in the course materials Reading Apprenticeship’s summer professional learning institutes, Essentials I and Essentials II.

Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship

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Whether for use with Unit 1 of the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy Course or on its own, this themed anthology for middle and high school students invites them to explore topics related to literacy and its relevance to their lives and their futures. Featuring lively and inspiring essays, journalism, poetry, expository writing, and personal narratives, the volume contains selections at varied levels of reading difficulty and offers diverse cultural and historical perspectives. This anthology appeals to disengaged readers whether they are struggling or advanced and can serve as an invaluable resource in any English language arts classroom, grades 6-12.

Building Academic Literacy

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Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6–12

Filled with instructional tips, lesson plans, and curricular resources, this book provides guidance for conducting Academic Literacy courses built around the Reading Apprenticeship framework. It also describes how to make use of readings from a companion student book, Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, and features case examples from five middle school and high school teachers who have successfully applied the Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework in diverse urban classrooms.

This book is a valuable resource for any subject-area teacher, grades 6-12, looking for classroom-based ideas to motivate adolescents in becoming more engaged, strategic, and competent readers.

Rethinking Preparation for Content Area Teaching

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The Reading Apprenticeship Approach

Arguing that teacher education programs need to foster a broader understanding of adolescent literacy, especially if teachers are to help their students read in discipline-specific ways, the authors show how Reading Apprenticeship can strengthen content-based instruction, how elements of the model can be embedded in teacher preparation curricula, and what types of course activities enable new teachers to understand and practice this approach.

The Reading Apprenticeship framework has received national recognition as an effective, research-based instructional approach that supports all students in successfully engaging with and learning from academic texts. Emphasizing social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building tools, the Reading Apprenticeship approach can be useful to teachers in any content area classroom.