Top 10 Things I Learned in "Teaching Reading in Content Field"

10. Blogging is easier to do than I ever knew (especially on Google Blogspot)! And so addicting! It was like opening a present whenever I would check to see if any comments were added to my blog and there was one!




9.  Literacy has been redefined to include language, writing, social constructs and cultural conventions, as well as psychological dimensions and a person's way of being in the world, including nationality, sex, and class, which Dr. James Gee calls Discourse. There is a whole new field of study now called Literary Studies.. "mushfake" is a cool word to describe faking it within a Discourse you don't have mastery in.




8. Discourses, with a Capital D, are multiple (reading for science, reading for language arts, being a student in school, being a student on a soccer field, etc., etc.)and people will learn many over their lifetime.  Discourses are multi-faceted and people need to learn them through an apprenticeship program with chances to practice in order to become a master and literate in any Discourse.

Image via Wikipedia

7.  The Web can be seen as a continuum, like a library of data which is controlled by one central creator on one end, and a polar opposite where information is decentralized, collaborative, and connected to many other sites of information. This end can be edited by any viewer and then corrected or changed by any other. (and a responsive school of fish can be correlated to an emergent knowledge system!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_pN88xJotM   (at time 4:43)

Image by kharied (vacation!!) via Flickr

6.  While blogging is fun, it is harder for me to discuss in online audio chat forums without video. I am just too visual, and not seeing people's faces while talking is not a part of my Discourse on school discussions. I need to work on that. I would start thinking about what was written on my computer screen while I was talking and lose my train of thought! And my train of thought jumps the track easily enough as it is!

5.  Teaching reading literacy requires more than just instruction in decoding words and testing on finding facts within a text. Students need modeling on the actual mental tools that master readers use to navigate difficult texts, textual cues that indicate important information is going to be coming in the text, metacognition, and much more. After learning this methods, they need time to
practice the skills within actual content based writings.

Image via Wikipedia

4. Teaching as a Master reader requires thinking about the mental tools one uses to navigate a particular Discourse. This is harder than it sounds!

Image by davesaunt via Flickr

3.  We can think of text as simply marks on a page that do not convey anything until a reader's mind brings all their background, emotions, images, to the words and this transaction between the readers' mind at a particular time and the marks happens in the act of reading. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?








2.  The best atmosphere for literacy to occur is one that is collaborative between student (apprentice) and teacher (master), safe for students to share any problems that they have with text, and personal. Students are given ample time to think about their mental processes and thinking (metacognition), practice modeled behaviors and skills, think critically about new information, and be exposed to many different types of text and approach them from stances both aesthetic and efferent.







1.  Literacy is an ongoing process throughout our lifetimes and no one is literate in everything. Literacy requires more than just an ability to read words, we have to be able to make connections with previous knowledge and and be able to use the information in new and creative ways.

Reading the Art of Navajo Weaving

So while this post is not based on my Reading for Understanding Book it does relate to Gee's Theory of Literacy(s). I took a seminar class in Farmington in June that was all about Navajo weaving. We visit Trading Posts and visited weaver's homes to see them at work on their looms and with their spindles. We got to experience sheep shearing, dyeing, carding and then we attended the Crownpoint Rug Auction. The weavers have formed their own association to market their rugs directly.  The weaving is taught to both males and females through scaffolding. When asked how they learned to spin or card, most weavers responded that they just learned from their grandmother or parent, starting when they were young with a small loom to work on.  Here are some pictures I took.  The weavers are amazing!

A few more ideas for apprenticeship

I have not broken down my text into large enough chunks to finish the blog with the end of the book unless I go past our due date! So I thought I would try to add in a few more techniques and try to reach some sort of ending point.

There are 2 more cognitive tools to place into your student's mental toolbelt. Last blog covered questioning and summarizing, and now I'll briefly mention predicting and clarifying.

Predicting
Master readers gave the students some guidelines for predicting (pg. 91) which was a list of signal structures and phrases that usually predict a specific type of clarification by the author later in the text. For example, a colon(:) will usually be followed by a list; Therefore-usually followed by results or conclusions; Similarly, In the same way, Just like, Just as, Likewise, In comparison, Also- usually followed by a comparison of how things are the same.
Students were asked to try to predict the types of information that the author would be presenting more than just what information they might learn. One reason to do this is so the reader learns not just predicting but how to handle incorrect predictions and not get locked into their incorrect schema.

Clarifying
Students were asked to make a chart while reading that was labeled with 4 headings. As they read, the students used the steps for clarifying mentioned in earlier blogs and noted the text they had problems with, what confused them about that text, what strategy they used, and how it clarified the issue. The next day the students shared their lists with each other. To repeat, those strategies were as follows:

1.ignore and read on to see if you understand enough to keep reading
2. keep reading to see if meaning gets clearer
3. reread section right before what was unclear
4. reread what was unclear
5. connect what you are reading to things you already know
6. get outside help

(Schoenbach,pg.93)

When students began to read independently with these strategies, they also were told about chunking. Many students were not aware that they could stop reading at any point even without commas, and periods. Once they were aware of the idea, they could organize the text into digestible bits depending on the difficulty.

For building context, text and disciplinary knowledge, the master readers began early in the semester to discuss why students needed some prior knowledge to make sense of texts. Schema was the term used to this body of mental associations the student has in their head. Teachers used the classic Abbott and Costello routine to help students visualize this concept.



They also did exercises with humorous/ambiguous headlines: "Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim", Eye Drops Off Shelf". They discussed wrong meanings that could be assumed if one did not have the schema to interpret headlines.

I would recommend this book to all teachers who are interested in embedding literacy in their subject matter, as it has many helpful tools.

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal Teaching is a process that was first developed for small- group work in remedial classrooms. It has been adapted for whole-class and peer-led group work in larger classrooms. It helps students monitor their comprehension and involves the same apprenticeship model as the Strategic Learning Initiative. Internalizing of the 4 key elements of comprehension-questioning, clarifying summarizing and predicting is the aim.
Questioning
One exercise, called ReQuest, has the apprentice reader ask questions about the text they are reading, imagining they are a teacher. What would they want their students to learn from the text? One student is chosen to ask their question to the class, and choose the correct answer from those given from the rest of the class. The person with the best answer asks the next question. For complete participation, no one can answer more than once until all have answered at least once. This exercise usually would entail a class discussion about which answer is the best or correct answer.

Master readers (teachers) discuss 4 types of questions with the students.
1. Right there questions- answer is right there in text, reader just needs to copy it down
2. Pulling it together questions- the answer is in the texts, but in different areas and the reader needs to pull it together from different locations in the text
3. Author and me questions- Answers are not in the text. Reader must combine his own knowledge and use information in text to find answer. For example, the text may say that someone took shower, worried they might miss the bus for school. The question "what time of day was it?" requires the reader to know that school starts in the morning and combine their knowledge with information from the text to find answer.
4. On my own questions- Answer not in text, reader may use text to inform their answer but it comes from their own knowledge. For example, "Should parents wake their children up for school?"

The first two questions are categorized as "in the text questions" with a right answer. The last two questions are "in my mind" questions and may have more than one right answer.
Now the activity for the class is "Question Around" and the class does the previous activity but labels the questions according to the 4 labels above.

Summarizing
Most students have experience with summarizing but do not have explicit knowledge on ways to determine what is important enough to include in the summary. To help make this visible to the students, teachers developed a list of what makes a good summary. The students agreed that a good summary should be shorter than the text, contain important information but leave out details and examples.
Signal words that would give the students structure to what they were looking for were detailed. Word such as first, then, finally helped the students mentally organize the text. Peer review of the summaries gave the students a safe way to learn what others felt were important ideas and which ideas they may have included that weren't deemed necessary by their classmate. Discussion and referral back to the text would then ensue.

Acquiring Cognitive Tools

The authors of "Reading for Understanding" reinforce the idea that reading is problem solving. They suggest that for students to increase their comprehension they need to have a wide variety of tools and specific strategies for solving any confusions and problems that come up when they read. These tools need to vary so that when different types of text are encountered they can pick and choose strategies to help them glean meaning from the subject. If students are not able to successfully read for comprehension from academic texts they will eventually give up.

The mental toolbelt for comprehension has four elements:
questioning
predicting
summarizing
clarifying

The goal is for students to independently use these tools to gain meaning from any texts. This requires practice. So the students first were introduced to using the tools with fairly straightforward and easily read texts. Individual and group work was repeatedly done. One way to do this was to have students explain to the class what they did to summarize, how they knew they needed to clarify something. By sharing, the students came to understand the strategies that worked for them and also opened up the idea that other students in class could be a resource.
Power and gatekeeping texts were explained and specific instances were explored such as SAT's, .

Teachers used The Think-Aloud Process to model problem solving. The master reader reads a text they have never seen before. Out loud they use Predicting, Picturing, Making Connections, Identifying a problem, Using Fix-ups. Some questions would be:

I predict...
In the next part I think...
I think this is....
I picture...
I can see...
This is like....
This reminds me of...
I get confused when...
I'm not sure of...
I didn't expect...
I think I need to ( reread or take some other action to help comprehension)
Maybe I'll need to ( read on, or persevere in some other way)


After the teacher models this a few times, the students begin to make check lists as they observe the teacher demonstrate. Whenever they hear one of the techniques used, they make a tally mark, and then the class goes over the checklists. Next the students read in pairs, using think-alouds to share their process. Then students read independently and use checklist on their own reading. They share their self- assessments. Tally sheets are saved in reading logs throughout the year, so that students can look back and review their growth. At the end of the year, students can share reflections on how the think-alouds affected their reading.

The goal of repeatedly doing read-alouds is to make the dialogue second nature and eventually be used unconsciously. According to Gee, at this point they would have mastered this secondary Discourse. They have a cognitive toolbelt for attaining meaning from the text.

Personal Dimension of Motivation

For students to become independent readers, they need to find their own authentic reasons for reading beyond simply finishing an assignment for school. The majority of students in the 9th grade pilot readership class reported not reading for pleasure which changed over the school year to a majority who did like to read. So what were some ways this came about?

Students were asked to report on why an author or character would answer the question "why read?". They also asked family members or community members why they read. The teachers tried to show how reading is not just something one does in school. They also reinforced that reading is a process, not just learned once early in childhood.

SSR -Sustained Silent Reading was a big part of the class. They gave the students a list of methods for picking out a book they might like, because many had stopped reading for pleasure when they hit middle school and started having to read for information and not just for aesthetic reasons. Many had no strategies for picking out books, which makes sense because as elementary readers, the books they were choosing from had more visuals to scan and use to help them choose books. I really liked the explicit instructions given, so I'll share.

Ways to pick out a book

Read the back to see if it is interesting
Find a subject you like to read
Ask a friend.
Look for another book by an author you like
Skim the book- read a few pages
Find a book that relates to you
(pg. 64)

If a student didn't like the book, they were to use "the 10-page chance". Read for 10 pages, if you like it then keep reading. If you don't like it, get another book. If you aren't sure, read another 10 pages. In SSR, reading for pleasure required new rules. It was okay to put a book down.

For SSR to work, class rules need to be set down. Students need to read either their book from home or, if forgotten, a book from the class library. A good library with many genres and options needs to be available. Students should write in logs every day about their reading. But this writing should focus on how they read and how they felt about what they were reading not the content of the books. Some great prompts for the log can be written inside the front cover, to be accessed by the students each time they logged. Here is a sample of some of them:

Sentence Starters(pg. 68):

While I was reading.....

I got confused by....
I was distracted by....
I started to think about....
The time went quickly because....
I figured out that....

Give the students a regular time to share about the book with the class, using the 10-page chance criteria.

To build concentration, SSR starts around 10 minutes and builds up to 20 or more minutes. Strategies to build stamina included an exercise relating the mind to a TV with many channels. The students need to ask themselves if they are on the friend channel, dressing channel or school channel. Students can write down what they think they will be distracted by and then a plan to deal with these distractions.

Set a goal for how many books must be read during SSR for the year, broken down by grading period. Students will write a letter to the teacher at then end of each book telling about the story and about how they as a reader experienced the book. Did they like it? Are your skills changing since the beginning of the year? If so, is anything surprising you?

Independence Day!

I was just thinking about Independence Day and it occurred to me that the goal of the Schoenbach etal. model is to give their students the strategies, motivation and cognitive skills to become independent readers. When that happens, they are no longer dependent on other people's interpretations of information,but are free to make their own informed opinions based on the knowledge they glean from their reading. What a powerful gift!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Thought this was a fun video!

Motivating Students to Read -Social Dimension

So this chapter on motivating students was very interesting and had lots of examples of tasks to try with your students. The authors break it down within their four dimensions of social, personal, cognitive and knowledge-building.

The social dimension requires creation of a sense of community and collaboration within the classroom between students and teachers. The emphasis on it being an inquiry to reading, without the power structure of teacher/student instruction, sets up an atmosphere of approval for questioning their skills and sharing confusions. This atmosphere would be ideal to have in all classes so that there was a sense that everyone was working together to facilitate learning. The impact on the students from knowing that mistakes were expected because everyone encounters texts that they struggle with, even teachers, seemed to be freeing for the students. To illustrate this point, they had students bring in texts like song lyrics to share with the class. The teachers tried to figure out what was meant in the language of rap, and the students were made to feel like experts (or Masters of the secondary Discourse of current slang, as Gee would say). By sharing out loud the strategies they were using to find meaning of unfamiliar terms, the teachers were also showing the apprentice readers various techniques in action.

Students were given a common vocabulary to use, including terms like metacognition, schema, fluency. As one teacher stated on pg. 55, " We treated students like real partners, and they seemed to like knowing that we were doing what the 'experts said' would make a difference in their reading."

The mental actions of reading were emphasized so that the students were aware that there is a difference between " 'reading with your mouth' as opposed to 'reading with your mind'." Thinking about thinking was introduced and as the authors state, middle and high school students are already so self-absorbed that this concept was not unfamiliar to them. Using something seen as a detriment to learning (students' focus on self and identity at this age) and turning it into a positive was brilliant.

Once students were able to recognize some of the problems they encountered while reading, they were given specific tools to use to help when they were confused by text. I thought they were excellent ideas and so I am sharing:

1. Ignore the unclear part and read on to see if it gets clearer.
2. Re read the unclear part
3. Re read the sentences before the unclear part.
4. Try to connect the unclear part to something you already know. (p.58)

Developing Academic Literacy

The Reading Apprenticeship Guidebook is based on the response of some educators in San Francisco in the late 1990's to a recurring and more frequent issue they were noticing. Students were entering high school unable to read subject matter texts independently and comprehend the information. These students had no identity as readers and their low grades in high school only reinforced their own image as not cut out for academics. The specifics are as follows:

The teachers' goal was to help all students become confident in their abilities to read all the necessary texts for the rest of their high school careers and beyond. The curriculum was designed with a variety of short texts that would show the role of reading in a variety of peoples lives, or give students a taste of reading styles from the various disciplines the would encounter at school, such as history or science. These texts needed to be challenging but not too difficult. It was set up in a format with teachers as master readers and students as apprentices.

The Academic Literacy curriculum was set up into three units.

Unit One- Reading Self and Society: For twelve weeks, students would read others' reading histories and reflect on these histories as well as their own. Narratives from Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass and others were provided and students were asked to put themselves in these authors shoes and reflect on what the authors would say was a reason to read. SSR or sustained silent reading was also introduced to the students with material of their choice. This was the time to instill an atmosphere of safety and even reward for sharing difficulties with reading. Reflection and critical thinking are modeled.

Unit Two- Reading Media: Six weeks to investigate visual as well as print media and question and investigate what the authors' purposes for the work are, who are the intended audiences, and what are the authors' points of view.

Unit Three- Reading History: 16 weeks for students to think of their own lives into the context of society around them and society historically. This is the time for the students to continue to think about their reading process and develop strategies for reading from subject area sources. The power structure of society and the role reading literacy plays in the control of power is explored.

Unit Four- Reading Science and Technology: This section develops techniques specific to reading technological texts.


Strategies used in all units included SSR, questioning, clarifying, summarizing and predicting, and specific instructions on how to self- monitor while reading, and use cognitive strategies. Students used reading logs more to relay information they noticed about their reading than to summarize plot and characters.

Reading Apprentice Framework Part Two

There are 4 dimensions to include when thinking about a classroom that is supportive to apprenticeship learning. These dimensions overlap and include both teachers and students thinking about their reading. Meta cognition by students and teachers brings out the hidden cognitive strategies for learning and allows them to be shared by all.

Social: building a safe space for students to explore and verbalize their reading difficulties
The key work done in the classroom is talking together. To achieve a meaningful and purposeful conversation requires that the students feel safe in sharing their failings. Some suggestions from Schoenbeck etal. to achieve this classroom environment include talking about why it might be difficult to share in classroom, make class rules to prevent anyone from feeling stupid, develop norms to work in classroom and not feel uncool. Some ways to do this might be to talk about who does and does not read in our society and for what reasons and then vocalize how this choice seems to affect their lives. Read and talk about historical precedents for not allowing some to learn to read and how this affected different groups access to power in society. Next, share in the classroom what books people have enjoyed and why. Discuss how people choose which texts they will read. By this time the classroom should feel comfortable opening up about their issues concerning reading and a collaborative environment has been established. Now students can be asked to share what they find confusing in texts, then share how some solve these issues and make sense of difficult text. Encourage the students to notice other students strategies, and try out new methods.

Personal: identity and self-awareness of student as a reader is valued and developed
The classroom should encourage the student to look more closely at their relationship to reading and perhaps rethink their identity as it applies to reading literacy. Students need confidence and a will to read and this can be obtained by reinforcing for the student the power and control over their future they will attain when they put in some effort to increase their abilities. Identifying themselves as readers is key to becoming proficient. Talking about what they have experienced previously in their reading life, what they like and dislike about it, why they read, and setting goals will help as will developing metacognition. Metacognition requires practice through experience. Students should be encouraged to notice what is going on mentally when they are in everyday life and then when they are reading. Think about what processes are going on while reading and then choose which ones to use in order to direct their reading.

To encourage students in the development of the difficult task of meta cognition, the author suggests demonstrating that everyone, including the teacher works of growth of reading ability throughout their lifetime. Have the students recognize their gains in comprehension with strategies learned, and with perserverance through difficult and boring texts. Recognize and reward stamina. Stamina and confidence can be achieved when the student is exposed to many different types of texts, and relate how they make sense of them.

Cognitive: developing problem solving, strategies and mental processes needed for reading literacy
Students need to practice using the strategies they learn in the texts of subject areas with meaning for them. Begin by focusing on the big picture and skim text, continuing past and difficulties or confusions and looking ahead to see if they will be cleared up later. Students will learn what areas will need more attention. Breaking down the reading into chunks and then checking to see if they are still comprehending what is being said will help with in subject area reading. Students can ask themselves questions about the text they just read or attempt to summarize it, in order to have critical awareness of their comprehension. They can then decide whether to clarify any omissions in their comprehension at this point or later. Problem-solving strategies can include visualizing what is described in the reading, ask questions or talk to text with notes in margins, reread sections to clear up confusion, summarize texts, draw pictures to represent content, use metaphors or analogies and compare text to other knowledge, outline or organize text in other ways.

Have the students decide what is their purpose in reading the text, and explain that purpose drives the process and affects how a text will be read. Some practices for learning purpose include setting goals for reading a text, then rereading text for a different goal, and have the student notice how their reading changes as the goals change. Have students share with each other what they noticed.


Knowledge-building: awareness of what information the reader/student brings to text
Students need to use their own existing knowledge structures to assimilate new information they are learning and compare it to the knowledge they already have. This is not a passive activity. The knowledge structures that readers already have in their minds, and which they access when reading text are called schemata. A single word can pull up a whole network of information within the students mind that they have associated with that word. Students have to understand the various schemata that can be triggered by a text, share that with other students, then choose which schemata is appropriate for the text to make sense and let go of the other schemata. To gain knowledge about a subject the class can brainstorm all the knowledge that they already have on a subject; imagine themselves in a similar situation, explore vocabulary, take a position on subject and then reassess that position after reading the text.

Knowing how the structure of various kinds of texts may differ will help students with comprehension. The students could notice how similar texts have similar structure and language used. Noticing headings and subheadings can expose a writing structure. Signal words can be used to predict the direction the text is going in.
Students can be encouraged to discover what purposes the authors from various disciplines may have for writing. Identifying who the intended audience may be and what function the text serves will help the student develop discipline specific knowledge they can apply whenever they read text from a specific discipline.

What an intense amount of information for just one chapter. Metacognition is the overlapping tool for all 4 dimensions. More classroom examples are coming up next!

Just a thought

So I realized I am so behind on my posts. It's not that I haven't been reading, but I guess I have been mulling over all the different information I have been getting about literacy and learning in the class. It is all new to me and I am finding myself reading and thinking about how I am reading all at the same time. Then I think about how to apply these new concepts and theories on literacy into my teaching bag of tricks. It is so much easier and more convenient for me to mentally fall back on the methods I was taught myself (oh, so many years ago). I will have to consciously veer from that framework and be vigilant.

I don't know. It is definitely hard work to figure out all the strategies I use to read different genres. And now we get transactional theory in teaching reading and a whole new way to look at literacy! I love it. Talk about brain overload!! I am processing as fast as I can.

So I'll return to the book and the framework for apprenticeship teaching model next post.

Reading Apprentice Framework Part One

"Reading is not just a basic skill." It can not be learned in one fell swoop during elementary school and then assumed to be completed. It is not just decoding words in a text and then being able to comprehend meaning automatically. Mental processing occurs while reading and takes in a readers point of reference to the text and their background concerning the information they are reading.

Reading complex text, or text containing complex ideas, will often entail many stops and starts, backtracking, and trying to infer meaning of unfamiliar words through context. A mental framework, or gist, of the text will emerge as you use strategies to monitor your understanding the author's intent. "Reading is problem solving." The reader makes sense of the text not just from decoding the words of the text but by applying their own memories, and thoughts being evoked by the words.

So "fluent reading is not the same as decoding." Fluency requires a good vocabulary and quickness in decoding but that is only the base. Fluency varies across genres and students need to have many chances to experience a wide range of texts with support and encouragement.
Not all readers, proficient or otherwise, will have fluency in all types of reading. But they do share some characteristics and habits with each other.

Motivated
Engaged
Socially active with reading tasks
Monitoring their process

Reading is a socially mediated process. This social-cognitive process is learned by participating in mediated activities with Masters who support learners in the areas in which they are not fully competent while still challenging their growth. This method of learning is considered cognitive apprenticeship. The proficient person engages the learner's interest in the activity and provides insight into the hidden or overlooked strategies needed to complete the task. Hidden or cognitive elements of the task need to be made visible for the learner and demystified.

Schoenbach etal. believe that habits and characteristics of skillful reading can be taught but not by transmission (instruction, practice, independent use) but through interactions throughout many different levels of classroom life. The reading apprenticeship model requires an environment of apprenticeship.

Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Mid and HIgh School Classrooms

Schoenback, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999


"When you read," she says, " there should be a little voice in your head like a storyteller is saying it. If it's not there, then you're just lookin' at the words." LaKeisha, 9th grader after one year in required Academic Literacy course. Pg.xv

This book is written by four educators who are involved in a professional development project called Strategic Literacy Initiative, http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/pj/179, developed in San Francisco. It was written to train and assist teachers in improving students' reading abilities through reading apprenticeship. This method is appropriate not just for English classes but for content area classrooms as well. It was written ten years after Gee's article, but the Initiative continues today, and presents a model of apprenticeship teaching that I found to reference back to Gee's theory of Discourse.


Part One: Confronting the Problem of Middle and High School Reading
Studies referenced by Schoenback, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz indicate that there is a "quiet crisis" in reading ability of adolescent students. These students are capable of reading at a basic level and are able to decode words but are lacking in skills necessary to gain comprehension of the text that they are reading. When this happens the students reach a "literacy ceiling" which limits what the teacher will be able to accomplish in the classroom with the student. It also limits what achievements the student will attain in the classroom and in life.


As the quote by LaKeisha above shows us, when the students are taught the skills necessary to comprehend text through a master/apprentice relationship with the teacher they are able to use metacognition to continue to advance their reading skills when reading individually. Students are concerned about their abilities as well. Some give up hope, and others develop strategies to prevent their lack of reading skills from being exposed. These may include acting out to distract the class, attempting invisibility or just pretending they don't care about it. It seems to be an example of Gee's "mushfake Discourse" or Pretending.


The research shows that it is not too late to improve reading ability at the middle school or high school levels. It just needs to be done through apprenticeship, not by sending remedial readers back to learning how to decode words. They need to learn skills in comprehension strategies, not just sounding out the words. These strategies are something all teachers used when they went through college, but they may not have thought about their thinking (metacognition) and sharing these strategies with their students. These untapped resources from teachers a huge resource for assisting students. Teachers need to work together to help each other discover the ways they find meaning in a text, so they can share it with their apprentice readers.

Students have resources as well, if they are recognized. Adolescence is a time when they are trying on new identities and is a great time for encouraging them to try on new reader identities, and giving them the power to control an option for what their lives could be like in the future. Inviting the students to share in a collaborative inquiry into the reading process is one way to avoid placing students into a situation which might possibly be humiliating. When the class rewards skill in finding confusing texts and incomprehensible areas, the students can assist in finding where the groups' skills are lacking.

The master/apprentice teaching style was adopted in a required class for all 9th graders at a San Francisco High School in 1996. Reading comprehension rose approx. 2 grade levels within the school year, and were consistent across ethnic groups and multiple teachers. The follow-up studies showed that gains continued to be accelerated a year later, and students related they were using the strategies in other classes and outside school. Using the reader apprenticeship program in subject area classes was also successful.

So why is it that over 10 years later we don't see more apprenticeship reading programs in our local schools? Some teachers have given up expecting independent reading or even any reading from their students and have found strategies to teach the content matter without books. This becomes a self-perpetuating practice as the students never learn the skills to self-initiate learning from curriculum. Without this skill, they may not be able to read "gatekeeper texts" such as SAT exams, college & job applications, directions for applying for student loans or mortgages. As Gee explains, gatekeeper texts block social gains to those who don't show mastery of a Discourse.

Next- the Reading Apprenticeship Framework

Welcome!

So, I can't believe I am starting my own blog! I've read or skimmed over so many in the past few years, but they all seemed to be written by witty people with exciting lives! I am hoping that mine will be at least somewhat interesting and will only hope for a witty remark to emerge now and then.

Anyway, I loved using the design elements provided to set up my page design! Had a few glitches, though, when I went to import my design to a new page, and it failed!! Hours and hours of work down the drain. (okay, maybe only an hour! LOL) Of course, I couldn't remember all the individual color blends I had selected, so you are now seeing FleetingImages 2.0, and I expect more versions to come about as I learn what I like and dislike about my current choices. Who knows, I may even change the name, and hope you all can find me again! I also had some trouble thinking of an appropriate name. This involved some concerns about using my real name in the blog. I still worry about security issues when presenting all my information out into the blogosphere (is that a word?).

We are always quick to to hear reports of identity theft, so it is definitely in the front of my mind. And isn't it interesting to use all the new words that have been introduced into our language since the Internet started. I didn't even known where the term Blog came from until I read the Wikipedia account required for class (weblog separated into we blog, and then blog, used as both noun and verb).

I am also amazed at all the various types of blogs out there. I had no idea so many people are interested in sharing their thoughts with the world! Or even that they are secure in the knowledge that anyone else wants to hear them. I am not quite so sure. It is rather scary to think that just anyone can read and comment on your thoughts. It takes a strong person to deal with any negative comments that can be and probably will be posted in response to one's random thoughts. It has become so easy to instantly post information about our lives so that everyone can see them. They seem much more permanent than when we blurt out some comment orally. I may regret something I have said, but it doesn't float in the air forever for everyone to see like words written in a blog. However, blogs and tweets are reality, and I need to know and experience them in order to help students learn to manage their posts in a positive way when I begin working in the classroom.

Blogging seems like it would renew interest in writing and reading in a way that involves technology and is current. We are experiencing a whole revolution in the way our society interacts with each other via the written word. As a teacher, we can't just ignore it; we need to give our students the information they need to decide when various styles of writing are appropriate and the skills to be literate across many genres.

It will be interesting to see how this blog evolves as it takes on a life of it own as posts and reactions synthesize and move me into new directions!

Talk with ya later!