CCR Standards Project

Please note:  Important Information about Implementing the CCR Standards

The LINCS page for Implementing College and Career Readiness Standards in Adult Education has been recently updated to reflect the CCR Standards Project as mandated in the Federal Initiatives.  The CCR Institute Materials will be posted soon and coming on October 1 will be the Applications for the Advanced Implementation Support Professional Development.  This next phase will be disseminated to state directors on October 1, 2014 where twelve states will be selected to receive intensive support building on the Standards-in-Action Innovations.  This project has been named, College and Career Readiness Standards-in-Action (CCR SIA).  Check out the link for more information.

Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME

 

 

 

Comments

Meryl,

Thanks for sharing this link to information about  materials from the CCR Insitute that soon will be posted. I clicked on the first link in your posting above and found this information:

"The instructional advances that identify the most significant elements of the CCR Standards for Adult Education for literacy:  
Regular practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary
Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text
Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction"

I think it was only last night as I was driving home and listening to "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio (NPR) that I heard something that made me think of the importance of the standards. I can't remember the state, but a student who is studying nursing at a community college  was being interviewed. He had had several jobs previously, such as billboard painter and factory worker, but he wanted and needed a job that would sustain him financially. He was having difficulties in the Anatomy class, as were many other students. Because of the low number of students who made it through the Anatomy class, and indeed, through the whole program, the college had instituted a sort of pre-Anatomy class where the instructor provided help to students on how to study and how to learn. The man, a native English speaker, probably in his 40s, said that he didn't know how to understand what he read when the text didn't say something directly; he didn't know how to say what it "implied." He said he had always thought learning was just about memorizing what the text said.

 Fascinating. Thanks again, Meryl.

Miriam Burt
SME, Adult ELL CoP

Hi Miriam,

I want to thank you for your insight and alerting me to the NPR story.  I searched for the story on "All Things Considerer" and here is the link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/02/344042884/the-toughest-class-in-nursing-school-is-the-first-one.  For those who are interested, I suggest that you listen to the audio to hear the words used by the student.  It is very powerful and a great example of why adult programs have to do more to prepare students for college and career readiness.

Meryl, SME

Hi Meryl and Miriam:

I also heard the NPR report and had a couple of thoughts.  Most nursing programs require students to take General Biology or Principles of Biology before they jump into Anatomy and Physiology.  That helps center students a bit.  That said, the science courses are all very difficult and require students to learn vast amounts of material that they'll need to apply as they move forward into nursing practice.

Then, in today's issue of Inside HigherEd, there was an article about the experience of college physics instructor, Lilit Haroyan, and the impact of the explicit reading strategy instruction she now provides in her classroom.  She was funded by the California Community College Success Network to take the Reading Apprenticeship program.  This is a program I am not familiar but would love to know if others have heard of it.  Here is part of the article:

"The method requires faculty members to sometimes be more like facilitators, letting students 'think aloud' and discuss what they learn from texts in an interactive way. The instructor and students talk about the process of reading, which helps expose comprehension problems and eventually increases understanding....Last fall every student passed Haroyan’s introductory physics course. She said the 100-percent success rate would not have been possible without the reading program. And fully 90 percent of those students moved on to the next-level course."

Here is the article:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/05/reading-apprenticeship-program-helps-instructors-across-disciplines-teach-reading

Cynthia Zafft

Good points, all, Cynthia. Thanks for sharing the link to the higher education article. It's heartening to see a content instructor embracing a language/skills teaching strategy to help students comprehend. I like think-alouds: As an occasional SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) trainer I often use this strategy in workshops, whether for instructors of  middle/high school, CTE, HSE, or adult/ESL education. it's good to know that this K12 strategy is being used with success in higher education.

Here's a link to an explanation from Reading Rockets (yes, it's K12, but what the students are reading can be at any level/ with any conent  that explains think-alouds in detail. http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/think_alouds.

Miriam

SME Adult ELl CoP

Hi Miriam and Cynthia,

Thanks for your thoughts.  I think that reading and comprehension of the text is holding many students back.  It is assumed that if the students will read the material that they will get it.  What other reading strategies do you find helpful for adult learners?

Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME

Hi all, Thanks for this discussion, which I consider to be at the heart of the issue of preparing learners to transition successfully. The Reading Apprenticeship process holds great promise for our work. I was able to briefly check out West Ed's resources at this link http://readingapprenticeship.org/publications/downloadable-resources/. I will be delving into these materials in depth. Supporting students to read complex texts extensively is key. I'll say more after I've had some time to digest these useful resources. The class I'm teaching currently is a perfect setting to try out the Reading Apprenticeship process. Let's keep this conversation going!

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Susan,

I think this work has a lot of potential for us in adult ed in light of the CCRS.  We offered a 3-hr session on it this past spring in MN at our state Adult ESL conference, presented by two teachers who use this model in their work with intermediate-high level adult ESL students. They are doing another session at our MinneTESOL conference this November.  Glad this work is getting into the hands of adult educators!

Patsy

 

I have been looking into the RA approach for the past several months as an alternative to the STAR program.  I've actually contacted the authors of the book, Reading for Understanding : How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, which I highly recommend, and they were very generous with their responses.  It's a great way, I think, to bridge the divide between secondary and post-secondary literacy, and as a former college English teacher turned Adult Ed teacher, I really like the emphasis it puts on reading complex texts no matter the "level" of the reader.  For example, they write: "Being sent 'back to the beginning' of reading instruction can be worse than nonproductive for these students [struggling readers]. It can reinforce their misguided conceptions that reading is just “saying the words.” Nor does going back to phonics help them understand and use the complex comprehension processes or the knowledge about texts and the world that good readers rely on. In addition, by simply reteaching decoding, educators ignore some of students’ most powerful assets for reading improvement: the knowledge and cognitive resources they already use throughout the many nonschool aspects of their lives."  Consequently, they argue for teaching complex texts immediately--an approach I have great sympathy for and we have success doing.  They also argue for contextualizing the reading process, rather than teaching decontextualized skills that supposedly transfer from one text, or one content area, to the next.  
 

Hi John,

I just wanted to respond to your comment briefly, to make the case for not "either/or" but "both/and."  I think the work of STAR and other evidence-based reading instruction practices are critical.  One cannot succeed with increasingly complex texts without a first grasp of the building blocks of reading, blocks that STAR lays beautifully.  I see these two reading 'packages' as very much working in tandem, focusing on improving reading from different angles, and I would be hesitant to give up one for the other.  STAR likely aligns more closely with the CCRS's "Foundational Skills" anchor standards, while Readers Apprenticeship works to meet other areas of the ELA standards.  Both have much to offer us and our students, I believe!

Eager to hear what others think,

Patsy

Hello,

I guess by "alternative" I didn't mean either/or; however the skills-based approach advocated by STAR felt incomplete to me, so I began investigating other approaches.  I will say, though, that the evidence upon which STAR is based is surprisingly thin, and the the National Reading Panel report on which STAR largely bases its approach (teaching the four components) is also highly contested in the literacy research field, and even within the panel itself: http://pdk.sagepub.com/content/83/5/364.short.  I do, though, find "modeling" very important as well as teaching vocabulary.  

John

 

Hello. I am respectfully responding to the conversation about STAR. I have been involved as a STAR trainer for going on 7 years. During this time, I've had the privilege of training over 120 ABE teachers in evidence-based reading instruction or EBRI. This is the foundation of STAR and supported by "thick" reading research or research review (more is available almost every year), the professional wisdom of experts, and the practitioner wisdom of STAR teachers. Although skeptical at first (like many other new STAR trainees), I have become a strong believer in the value of STAR for Low/High Intermediate ABE and Advanced ESL students.  STAR is not intended for all adult readers; although this may seem incomplete, I have found it to be very effective for the target population it was developed for. In fact,  across Minnesota, we have seen significant increases in STAR programs' support for change, STAR teachers' use of knowledge and skills, and most importantly, STAR students' learning outcomes (level completions and persistence). Thanks for listening!

This is very insightful and I am enjoying this RA thread. It is also right in line with an issue a colleague and I have been discussing this week. We have done some post testing and many of our ESL students (low beginning-high intermed) have great level gains in listening but not in reading. My first thought was to go back to the basics which included decoding. Of course with the push for Career and College Readiness in NC I have increased contextualization. I have always done it with higher leveled students but it is easy to ignore when teaching Beginning to Low literacy ESL.

John your reference to RA helps me to remember that the students will be simply decoding and not comprehending. This reminds of the Part or Whole Instruction debate. I try to do both, however I think it is good to get a reminder about Balanced Instruction. I've gone through STAR training and our whole staff found it difficult to implement with time constraints. Since I teach GED Science and some Social Studies as well as ESL, I plan to read more about RA. This will assist me with being less hesitant about selecting complex text for them.

Hi Patsy and all, I agree with you that we need "both/and" not "either/or." Finding the right approach for each individual is what is needed, which is not always that easy to figure out.

I'd like to hear more about the Reading Apprenticeship training held in Minnesota. What would you say were teachers' most important take-aways?

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Thanks for posting this link, Cynthia!   I recently heard some grumbling about a well-respected linguistics text I used in a graduate-level class. Several of the students complained that it was too hard to read. I'm wondering if I had taken some time to implement the reading apprenticeship approach in my class, students would have gained more from the text.

Hi Kathleen:

Your comment is so interesting.  When learners fall off the traditional education trail (or pick up the trail in a new country) and become “nontraditional students,” their every move comes under a strange kind of scrutiny, especially as they move to get on college and career pathways.  Then, lo and behold, we find that many, many traditional high school graduates come to college unprepared; many career pathway programs need to backtrack to help all their students catch up; and, that reading complex text is hard -- even graduate students may need and benefit from explicit reading instruction.

That said, we still need to do everything we can to help adults prepare for the challenges ahead -- both personally and academically.  The competing demands on their time and energy means that they must anticipate hurtles or they won’t reach their goal.  And, we can remind ourselves and our students that they are not so different after all.

Cynthia

Cynthia,

I enjoyed your inspiring comment that we can remind our students that they are not so different after all. I have found that by reading text with my adult ESOL students, I am also able to discover more about the challenges of reading academic text in a second language than I could have anticipated by focusing solely on isolated reading skills. My students seem to enjoy pointing out what confuses them about the text, and I enjoy learning from them. I would very much like to attend a reading apprenticeship training session if one is offered in my area (Baltimore) as I believe I would learn how to build even more effectively on what I learn from my students.

I have been using Reading Apprenticeship since 1999; I believe my colleagues and I at the City University of New York were the first ones to adapt it to use with adult education students.  It is still the most effective approach I know of to teach strategic literacy to adults.  Much better than the skills-in-a-box approach that is the basis of all the test-prep books, and unfortunately, still so prevalent in our field.  The skills approach purports to teach critical thinking, but it is just more of the same rote, decontextualized, stultifying stuff that causes students to drop out of our programs.  Reading Apprenticeship, on the other hand, really does help students learn how to be metacognitive and think deeply and critically. The strategies of questioning, clarifying, summarizing and predicting, as well as the think-alouds, have worked wonderfully with my students at various levels; and they are the strategies I teach adult educators to use with their students in my current work in Chicago.

EBRI has many useful things to offer as well, starting with the idea that reading cannot be taught from workbooks or worksheets.  Their method of teaching vocabulary is especially effective,and their approach to teaching fluency is also useful.  I think that comprehension strategies need to be connected to fluency; we need to teach those strategies for the books that our students are reading aloud.  The main challenge EBRI poses is that it is difficult to put into practice without having extra help in the classroom - so many of us do not have access to assistants, volunteers, or tutors, and our programs do not have the money to provide those supports.  

I think it is possible to combine Reading Apprenticeship with EBRI.  As for the CCR Standards: I have worked in Adult Ed for 30 years, and have seen that standards come and go.  What we need in this field is much better funding, which would make it easier to provide better materials and excellent instruction.  Our students deserve no less.

Anita, thanks for your very helpful description of the Reading Apprenticeship approach. I agree with you that some students become disinterested when faced with decontextualized workbook activities. On the other hand, I wonder if the RA approach could be combined with some skill- based exercises that are created in response to students' queries about what they are reading. When it comes to reading sentences with multiple subordinate clauses, it sometimes helps for students to step away briefly from the text to understand basic sentence structure. In order to keep these exercises contextualized, however, an instructor may have to create them on the spot, something that is difficult to do in a large multi-level class. 

Yes, I think that RA could (and should) be combined with some skill-based exercises.  And I think it's fine to use exercises from a grammar workbook, as long as the issue you're exploring is connected to the what students are reading and/or writing about.  You can start by analyzing complex sentences from the text you're reading, teach a lesson about the specific issues students are confused about, have students correct one another's attempts to compose complex sentences (in the context of what they're writing), and do some practice exercises to help them cement the concept.

The problem is that so many folks focus on grammar exercises that are not connected to text that students are reading or writing.  In isolation, those exercises are almost useless.  I'm working with teachers whose students spend more time on practice exercises than they do on authentic reading and writing.  Given how little time most adult ed teachers have with their students, the majority of that time should be spend doing real reading and writing and fitting the practice exercises into that, not the other way round.

I agree completely with you, Anita. We in ESL are luckier in that most ESL students enjoy reading a variety of subjects in English, but I still survey the class frequently to see what is going on in their lives and what elicits the most discussion from them. And I believe incorporating relevant material is even more important with struggling native speakers. With many in ABE, the motivation to read has diminished due to the struggle they've had in the past. And your comment about integrating skill-based exercises is especially apt to reading skills. It helps clarify the structure of text and improves the students' writing, too.

Anita, Thank you for this strong statement on the importance of contextualized grammar instruction. What I've been doing with my current class, a group of advanced English learners, is first analyzing the grammar structures embedded in the text we are reading and then drawing students' attention to those structures. For instance, if there are a lot of pronouns with referents that are not obvious to learners, I have the students circle all the pronouns in the text and then work together to determine what the referent of the pronoun is. Of course, I model this first by working through some examples.

Students need help unpacking academic text filled with complex sentences, i.e., relative, noun and adverb clauses, so we have started looking as these as well as passive voice, gerunds and infinitives. If students want extra practice with these grammar structures, offering workbook or online exercises can be appropriate as homework. I agree with you, Anita, that these types of exercises should not be the primary instructional tools.

How are others supporting adult learners to deal with the complex grammar in academic texts?

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Bravo, Anita! What you have described without argot, or acronyms, or buzz words is exactly what I think adult ed teachers, should be doing in classroom to prepare their students with the language and content they need for career and academic success: "Given how little time most adult ed teachers have with their students, the majority of that time should be spend doing real reading and writing and fitting the practice exercises into that, not the other way round " (bolding is mine)

Susan Finn-Miller's classroom suggestions for doing just that are excellent. To help students unpack the structures and vocabulary in what they are reading or what they heard - especially in a text rife with complex verb tenses and aspects and passives, and so on --  a teacher might have students work in pairs or small groups to order events, or create a timeline of who does what when, or have students draw pictures and explain them to one another.

There is just too much content and language needed (and cultural information, especially for adult English learners) for success in academic study, careers, and community life to make decontextualized worksheets the focus of instruction. Start with the text - whether written or spoken.

Great thread!

Miriam Burt

 

I teach a multi-level reading and writing Adult Basic Education course and a Transitions to College class, so these students come into the class with various levels,  insecurities, language backgrounds,  and gaps in their formal education.  In 2008 I began to learn and implement the Reading Apprenticeship framework and routines in my classroom. This experience has been transformative.  Students, who approached learning in a disinterested way or who had a poor reader identity, became  engaged in the class, starting reading and discussing their texts, and making remarkable end-of-the quarter gains.  What changed? 

I began to work the four dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship: personal, social, cognitive, and knowledge-building. Students immediately noticed that the classroom had a new energy and a new purpose.  My efforts in the course relied on modeling all my thinking and reading processes and then asking the students to do this work themselves. What they experienced was that there are common threads the connect us as readers. No one reads everything easily; we all have challenges and when we collaborate and work together we learn from each other and about ourselves.  This is what I refer to the community of readers in my classrooms.  My selections of text are scaffolded, and my modeling is intentional.  The class often has more to say about what they are discovering about their readings than I have the time to cover in class and they are gathering to discuss it over lunch or with their families.  To me, this is how I am building reader identity, fluency, and persistence.  

Community colleges in Washington state, like California, among other states  have invested heavily in training community college faculty in Reading Apprenticeship because many of our students are not able to access and engage their disciplinary texts.  Faculty need ways of bringing their students into their disciplines as "insiders" and helping them learn, apply, and use the language, structures, and texts in their fields in order to build strong and capable professionals. This framework meets the students where they are and moves them forward with a sense of ownership and  inclusion. 

More information about this framework can be found at http://readingapprenticeship.org/

 

 

 

Hello to all,

This discussion has resulted in lots of great comments from members of LINCS.  Thank you for your posts.  I have enjoyed the conversation and the resources that were shared.  It has been especially interesting to hear about your experiences.  Other thoughts???

Meryl Becker-Prezocki, SME

 

 

Hi Michele, It's good to hear that Reading Apprenticeship (RA) has been so successful for you. I have been checking out the online resources and have also located  some of the Reading Apprenticeship books. You mentioned the training for community college facuty that has happened in the northwest. I noticed that there is online training available-- although it is a bit pricey --around $500.

I was struck by one teacher's comment on the RA website that he no longer explains text to students but rather supports them to access the text on their own. This seems really important to me. If you have a moment, Michele, I would love to hear some concrete examples of one or two RA strategies that have worked especially well for you. How would you say this differs from other approaches?

Cheers,

Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP
 

Establishing classroom norms:

Students are asked to reflect on their positive learning experiences and what made them learn well in a or those situations.  They consider the attributes of successful classrooms. These are recorded and discussed by the class and consensus is reached in how the class will proceed.  This list is a living document and is added to as the class decides. It is a great management tool and it shows the students that you as an instructor care very deeply about the learning environment.  Students list items such as: do not laugh at other's ideas or comments; listen to each other; participate is classroom discussions; arrive on time; bring course documents etc.  This fosters the social and personal dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship framework.

Reader's Strategy List (RSL)

Students express their ways of approaching texts.  This is also a living classroom document and it gets at the heart of community and participation through surfacing different ways of reading different texts. It also ensures that the purpose of reading is provided either by the instructor or from the classroom discussion.  This also showcases to the students that reading is problem solving and that there are codes that students must learn to break to access particular types of text. I always have multiple RSL going on in my classroom because we read a wide variety of text.  For example: RSL for informational texts (the students indicate these strategies: pay attention to the types of numbers like % is different from money, read the legion, focus on the illustration, what are the uses of color, what is the source of the information, what years are covered, etc.)  For short story the list may include different strategies (who is the main character, what is the problem, figure out the setting, purpose, what kind of narrator is telling the story, can I get the plot line listed out, what is the climax, what type of language is used and why, what are literary devices, is the story believable, etc).  This helps bring the students to the table who may not be strong readers in multiple genres. In addition, students show each other how they are approaching text and what their processes are for making meaning.  These lists also give the faculty member insight into the ways that students are reading and approaching texts and confusions are uncovered and resolved by the discussion and use of the RSL.  Of particular value is that this helps establish and foster an inquiry culture in the classroom and it elicits student thinking. Thus, the learning is theirs.

Think Aloud

A Think Aloud is another key routine done in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms. The faculty begins by reading and thinking aloud. This works well in the adult education classroom when the text is placed under a document camera. Small or challenging chunks of texts are modeled for the students and this modeling shows them the thoughts that an expert reader has as the text is read, sentence by sentence. We showcase the mental activity that runs through our minds as we red. These glimpses are authentic problem solving responses or engagement of the text.  By modeling the kinds of reasoning needed  for a specific text, students can unpack the text and comprehend it.  Furthermore, it helps move the students from the stance of being an outsider to becoming an insider in a disciplinary reading. Instructors model think alouds, then students practice in pairs, and as they do they uncover confusions. Sometimes this leads me to model again and show the necessary thinking and then we debrief our confusions and new understandings of the text.  I use metacognitive book marks to help students verbalize about the text. One these bookmarks are some sentence starter prompts such as

A questions I have is....The big ideas is .... I think the point is.... I am not sure of....   I wonder about .... I can see... I predict.

This routine helps students engage in discussing their reading processes.

For me, the four dimensions of Reading Apprenticeship are the key to handing the students a means or framework for accessing text, any text.  Reading is social collaboration and problem solving. It is an active, ongoing, and engaging meaning making.     

 

 

Hi Michele and Others,

Michele, I want to thank you for your contributions to the conversation.  You really gave us a detailed look at the components of the Reading Apprenticeship approach with your comments.  Also, you inserted great links for the audience to visit.  This kind of thoughtful involvement in our discussion is really appreciated. It sounds to me like the four dimensions of the program are woven throughout the entire process of reading.  Is that correct?

Meryl, SME

 

I have been reading the posts about Reading Apprenticeship, and am fascinated by the comments about adding it to the Adult Ed Classroom.  I retired from a school district that used reading apprenticeship from 5th grade through 12th grade.  All content area teachers had to be trained and use the strategies.  It would take a concerted effort from each ABE/GED site to train staff to use the Reading Apprenticeship model, but I believe it would be well worth the time and effort.  My son, who teaches at the junior high is a trainer and consistently uses the strategies in his social studies classroom.

I do think it helps us to keep in mind that our adult instructors are expected to teach rla, math, science, and social studies to 12 - 15 different adult learners at 12 - 15 different levels each class period.  If Reading Apprenticeship strategies were taught to and internalized by our students, each of them could work better independently.

Thanks for this endorsement of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), Beverly. I just finished reading one of the books (Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms by Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Christine Cziko and Lori Hurwitz published in 1999 --maybe the first book on RA) outlining the strategies used in RA-- many of which are familiar to adult ed teachers since they have been around for a long time, e.g., use of graphic organizers, visualization as a strategy, reciprocal teaching -- i.e., questioning, clarifying, summarizing, predicting.

I am recognizing that some of the RA strategies are being recycled or adapted in Common Core and CCRS resources focused on "close reading." For instance, I came across Court Allam's blog http://iteachicoachiblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/five-simple-close-reading-strategies.html recently in which he outlines five strategies for close reading, including:

1. Number the paragraphs

2. Chunk the text

3. Underline and circle  ... with a purpose

4. Write notes in the left margin: What is the author saying?

5. Write notes in the right margin: Dig deeper into the text

These strategies seem quite useful to me. In fact, I have already started incorporating some of this in my teaching with advanced English learners this semester and seeing some positive outcomes.

What do members think of these strategies for supporting students' close reading of complex text? Have you used any of these in your teaching? What other strategies have you found to be effective?

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

 

Given the emphasis on data and evidence these days, here's a link to the studies done on RA.  Seems pretty impressive to me.  

http://readingapprenticeship.org/research-impact/research-results-tools/randomized-controlled-studies/

 

John, Thank you for the link to the data. The READING APPRENTICESHIP ACADEMIC LITERACY COURSE report was of great interest, for the students in the study, as per the link, were 9th graders reading at two to five years below grade level. The student outcomes gained are impressive. Wouldn't it be grand to see a study completed with adult basic education learners? At the present time, I am reading through Reading for Understanding  with two of my colleagues. We are set to meet tonight online to discuss what we have read so far. Thank you for bringing the book and Reading Apprenticeship (RA) to our attention. Thinking about what I find most impressive about RA, I am drawn to the dimensions included in the RA framework: social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building dimensions. As I understand from my reading, RA integrates all of the dimensions within the instructional framework. And, from my work with adult learners, all of these dimensions need to be incorporated with instruction. Thanks again, John. 

Hi Peg, It's great that you are engaged in a book study on Reading Apprenticeship. I've read the first version of the text, and now I'm reading the updated version. I would love to be part of a book study of this-- maybe even here on LINCS!

Cheers, Susan

Moderator, Assessment CoP

Hi to Susan, Kathleen, John and Others,

I like your suggestions and interest in a book study.  I will explore the options and get back to you.

Meryl, SME

 

 

 

 

Hi to all,

I have explored the idea of setting up a book study and learned that we can do it through a discussion thread.  The book that would be used is Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, 2nd Edition by Ruth Schoenback, Cynthia Greenlear, and Lynn Murphy.

Would anyone like to be the leader of the discussion?  How long of a time should the discussion last?

Please let me know of your interest so that I can contact you to set this up.

I am looking forward to this and thanks.

Meryl, SME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Meryl,

Thanks for looking into this! I am still interested in participating in this discussion and have ordered the book online.  Concerning how long we should meet, perhaps we might consider discussing a chapter a week?  I haven't seen the length of the chapters (or the number) yet, but this might be one way to go. In any case, I'm looking forward to this!

Kathleen

 

 

 

Hi DJ and others,

I have just ordered the book, Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms 2nd (second) Edition by Schoenbach, Ruth, Greenleaf, Cynthia, Murphy, Lynn published by Jossey-Bass (2012), for our discussion.  I learned that 8 chapters are included.  They are:

CHAPTER 1 Engaged Academic Literacy for All 1

CHAPTER 2 The Reading Apprenticeship Framework 17

CHAPTER 3 The Social and Personal Dimensions: Building a Foundation for Engaged Learning 55

CHAPTER 4 Metacognitive Conversation: Making Thinking Visible 89

CHAPTER 5 Extensive Academic Reading: Extending Opportunities and Support 135

CHAPTER 6 Sustained Silent Reading+: Dedicating Time for Independent Reading 167

CHAPTER 7 The Cognitive Dimension: Assembling a Reading Toolbox 191

CHAPTER 8 The Knowledge-Building Dimension: Surfacing and Building Schema in the Disciplines 233

EPILOGUE Collaborating Beyond the Classroom 289

I am thinking that we might want to discuss one chapter a week.  How does this sound to you?

I do not know if anyone in Kentucky is using this approach.  Are any Kentucky programs using the Reading Apprenticeship approach?

I will follow up soon with more details soon.

Meryl, SME

 

 

Hello to all, 

Thanks to everyone who has indicated your interest in joining a Book Study on Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms.  I am collecting your names and it is not too late to indicate your interest.  I just received my book and have begun tackling the first chapter.  I have found myself saying, "Yes, yes, yes" as I read.  Look for an announcement at the beginning of December with all of the details about the group.

Meryl, SME