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!
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