The Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI)

APPROACH

Philosophy. Reading Apprenticeship is an approach to reading instruction that helps young people develop the knowledge, strategies, and dispositions they need to become more powerful readers. It is at heart a partnership of expertise, drawing on what teachers know and do as discipline-based readers, and on adolescents’ unique and often underestimated strengths as learners. Reading Apprenticeship helps students become better readers by:

• engaging students in more reading—for recreation as well as for subject-area learning and self-challenge;
  
  
• making the teacher’s discipline-based reading processes and knowledge visible to students;
  
  
• making students’ reading processes, motivations, strategies, knowledge, and understandings visible to the teacher and to one another;
  
  
• helping students gain insight into their own reading processes; and
  
  
• helping them develop a repertoire of problem-solving strategies for overcoming obstacles and deepening comprehension of texts from various academic disciplines.

Instructional focus. This professional development program improves teacher effectiveness and helps teachers build classroom learning environments that support and build students’ competence and confidence in reading varied kinds of texts.

Instructional components. Reading Apprenticeship involves teachers in orchestrating and integrating four interacting dimensions of classroom life that support reading development. These dimensions are woven into subject-area teaching through metacognitive conversations – conversations about the thinking processes students and teachers engage in as they read.

• Social: The social dimension draws on adolescents’ interests in peer interaction as well as larger social, political, economic, and cultural issues. A safe environment is created for students to share their confusion and difficulties with texts, and to recognize the diverse perspectives and resources brought by each member.
  
  
• Personal: This dimension draws on strategic skills used by students in out-of-school settings; their interest in exploring new aspects of their own identities and self-awareness as readers; and their purposes for reading and goals for reading improvement.
  
  
• Cognitive: The cognitive dimension involves developing readers’ mental processes, including their repertoire of specific comprehension and problem-solving strategies. Importantly, the work of generating cognitive strategies that support reading comprehension is carried out through classroom inquiry.
  
  
• Knowledge-Building: This dimension includes identifying and expanding the knowledge readers bring to a text and further develop through personal and social interaction with that text, including knowledge about word construction, vocabulary, text structure, genre, language, topics and content embedded in the text.

In Metacognitive Conversation, these four dimensions are integrated as teachers and students work collaboratively to make sense of texts, while simultaneously engaging in a conversation about what constitutes reading and how they are going about it. This metacognitive conversation is carried on both internally, as teacher and students reflect on their own mental processes, and externally, as they share their reading processes, strategies, knowledge resources, motivations, and interactions with, and affective responses to texts.

Setting. Content area classrooms in middle schools, high schools and community colleges.

• Materials. Materials vary depending on the professional development program. Theyinclude SLI’s book, Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms, a yearlong Grade 9 Academic Literacy Course curriculum; sample lessons and lesson templates for reading processes and strategies across the curriculum and in English, Science, Math, and History; student curriculum and teachers’ guides for a Grade 9 Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy Course; student and classroom case study videos; facilitators' guides for video cases and other key professional development practices; binders of readings, training materials, and other resources; membership in an active online discussion group with access to updated resources.  A number of other books are available to participants and on order, including Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, edited by Audrey Fielding andRuth Schoenbach.

Alignment with standards: Qualifies as “high-quality professional development” for Title I, Part A; Title II, Parts A and B; Title III, Part A; Title V, Part A; and Title VII, Part A.

ASSESSMENT

Assessment strategies are discussed as part of the professional development.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

SLI offers a comprehensive program in Reading Apprenticeship including:

• The Leadership Institute in Reading Apprenticeship, a training-of-trainers experience. It prepares school, district, or community college teams to lead professional development in Reading Apprenticeship (RA).  
  
  
• Reading Apprenticeship Site-Based Training for Classroom Teachers: This local professional development service is designed for cross-disciplinary middle and high school teachers and instructional leaders interested in learning to implement the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) approach in their classrooms. Two to seven day workshops can be scheduled nationally according to local needs.
  
  
• San Francisco BAY AREA Reading Apprenticeship Professional Development for Classroom Teachers. This is a seven-day series offered as a three-day institute followed by four additional one-day sessions during the school year.
  
  
• Grade 9 Reading Apprenticeship ACADEMIC LITERACY Course (RAAL) training: This training prepares educators to teach the 9th grade Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy Course. The Reading Apprenticeship approach, which includes inquiry-based discussion, modeling, and reflective dialogue, is embedded throughout the 5-day program.

COST

Site-based training is priced based on numbers of sessions for up to 40 participants. All other Reading Apprenticeship professional development is priced from $1,200 to $4,000 per person. Fees include a copy of SLI’s book, Reading for Understanding, and comprehensive course materials for each participant.

Contacting SLI. www.wested.org/sli
For professional development: www.wested.org/cs/sli/print/docs/sli/services.htm
For publications and other resources: www.wested.org/cs/sli/print/docs/sli/resource.htm
For research: www.wested.org/cs/sli/print/docs/sli/research.htm

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