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.