Publications

Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy

By: Carol D. Lee, Anika Spratley

Date: September 2009
Publisher: Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy
Download File: http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/tta_Lee.pdf

This report defines and illustrates what is involved in comprehending texts within and across academic disciplines; summarizes the research base on reading comprehension generally and in the disciplines specifically, and briefly discusses implications for teaching and assessments. In making recommendations for improving policy and practice in the area of disciplinary literacy, the authors describe the Reading Apprenticeship approach as one of three approaches that offer powerful ways to help high school students learn to read with understanding within and across academic disciplines.

Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement

By: Rafael Heller and Cynthia L. Greenleaf, Alliance for Excellent Education

Date: June 2007
View HTML: http://www.all4ed.org/publication_material/reports/literacy_content

The authors report on the low numbers of students who are currently prepared to access and participate in high-level literacy in multiple disciplines necessary for college and work success. They then describe the kinds of "generic" literacy strategies that can be useful, but argue that in addition, content area teachers must be supported and expected to apprentice their students in the particular ways of reading, thinking, writing, and talking specific to different disciplines. They make a strong case for supporting content teachers’ professional development within a broader policy framework for building student capacities in advanced content literacy.

Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers: From Struggling, Striving, Marginalized, and Reluctant to Thriving

By: Cynthia L. Greenleaf, Kathleen Hinchman

Date: September, 2009
Journal: Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
View HTML: http://tinyurl.com/yaqp8th
Download File: http://tinyurl.com/yebl8zb

In this article, Greenleaf and Hinchman provide an energizing vision of high quality literacy instruction in a 9th grade Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy class for struggling adolescent readers. They describe key classroom features that help students thrive: high academic challenge with explicit support to develop reading strategies; asset-oriented teaching that begins with students' existing knowledge; an emphasis on student choice and interest-driven reading; and an inquiry-oriented learning environment to engage students actively in reading and learning.

Teaching Adults to Read with Reading Apprenticeship

By: Michele Benjamin Lesmeister

Date: February 2010
Publisher: Association of Career and Technical Education
Download file: http://www.acteonline.org/tech_feb10.adults.html

The author describes changes in her instructional practice and benefits for students resulting from incorporation of Reading Apprenticeship in her Adult Basic Education class. Modeling strategic ways of reading and engaging students in metacognitive conversations as they read technical and academic texts has led to greater engagement and deeper comprehension. Student retention is higher, and students are reading more and tackling more challenging texts. With Reading Apprenticeship, the author’s class has become an active learning community in which students gain productive insights into their own and each other’s reading processes.

A New Focus on Interactive Learning at Community Colleges

R&D Alert Vol. 11, No. 1
Date: March 2010
Publisher: WestEd
Download file: http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/rd-10-01.pdf

This issue of R&D Alert focuses on postsecondary readiness. Based on an interview with SLI senior research associate, Jane Braunger, this article describes the expansion of Reading Apprenticeship into community colleges. In professional development experiences tailored to the college context, growing numbers of faculty are learning how to apprentice students to reading and thinking in their disciplines, building collaborative classrooms in which students attend to their reading processes as well as to their comprehension of texts. A Lumina Foundation grant supports a three-year inquiry project on the impact of Reading Apprenticeship across a variety of disciplines and a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant has made greater dissemination of Reading Apprenticeship in California possible through establishment of a regional leaders cadre of California community college teachers.

Harvard Educational Review: Apprenticing Adolescent Readers to Academic Literacy

By: Cynthia Greenleaf, Ruth Schoenbach, Christine Cziko, and Faye L. Mueller

Date: Spring 2001
Journal: Harvard Educational Review
View Article: http://www.wested.org/stratlit/pubsPres/HER/p01green.htm

The authors describe the Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework that is based on a socially and cognitively complex conception of literacy, and examine an Academic Literacy course based on this framework. Through case studies of student reading and analyses of student survey and test score data, they demonstrate that academically underperforming students became more strategic, confident, and knowledgeable readers in the Academic Literacy course.

Reading Next--A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy: A Report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2nd ed.)

By: Gina Biancarosa and Catherine E. Snow, Alliance for Excellent Education

Date: 2006
Download File: http://www.all4ed.org/files/ReadingNext.pdf

A panel of five nationally known and respected educational researchers met in spring 2004 with representatives of Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Alliance for Excellent Education to draw up a set of recommendations for how to meet the needs of our eight million struggling adolescent readers. The authors outline the key elements of effective adolescent literacy programs and highlight Reading Apprenticeship.

Building Capacity for the Responsive Teaching of Reading: Strategic Inquiry Designs for Middle- and High-School Teachers

By: Cynthia Greenleaf and Ruth Schoenbach

Date: August 2003
Journal: The LSS Review (pp. 12-13), published by the Laboratory for Student Success at Temple University Center for Research in Human Education
Download File (then scroll down to Page 12): http://www.temple.edu/lss/pdf/lssreview/lssrev_impread_v2n4.pdf

This article briefly describes the Reading Apprenticeship professional development approach and its integrated set of inquiry tools designed to help teachers support students’ engagement and achievement in reading academic texts. The article then offers a snapshot of one of the inquiry tools and closes with a brief note on accumulating evidence that this professional development approach initiates powerful improvements in teaching practice resulting in literacy-learning gains for students.

Building Capacity for the Responsive Teaching of Reading in the Academic Disciplines: Strategic Inquiry Designs for Middle and High School Teachers' Professional Development (Book Chapter, pp. 97 – 127.)

By: Improving Reading Achievement through Professional Development

Authors: Cynthia Greenleaf and Ruth Schoenbach (D. S. Strickland & M. L. Kamil Eds.)
Date: 2004
Publisher: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.
View HTML: http://www.christopher-gordon.com/Authors/strickland.shtml
Download File: Building Capacity for the Responsive Teaching of Reading in the Academic Disciplines: Strategic Inquiry Designs for Middle and High School Teachers' Professional Development (Book Chapter, pp. 97 – 127.)

From the Secondary Section: Leadership for Literacy: Teachers Raising Expectations and Opportunities

By: Nicole A. Chilla, Diane Waff, and Heleny Cook

Date: May 2007
Journal: English Journal, Vol. 96, No. 5, Published by NCTE
View HTML: http://www.ncte.org/journals/ej/issues/v96-5
Download File: From the Secondary Section: Leadership for Literacy: Teachers Raising Expectations and Opportunities

This article describes a teacher-led initiative in a Washington, D.C. high school that led to school wide study groups and professional development centered on content area reading and writing with Reading Apprenticeship as the framework. As a result of this work, discussed in the context of the need for teachers’ voices to be more strongly heard in reform decision-making, student literacy engagement and scores on standardized tests improved.

Breaking Through the Literacy Ceiling

By: Marean Jordan and Ruth Schoenbach

Date: November/December 2003
Publisher: Association of California School Administrators (ACSA)
Journal: Leadership Magazine
Download file: Breaking Through the Literacy Ceiling

"Reading is demystified for secondary students in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, where students can 'read to learn' in all their subject area courses."

Amidst Familial Gatherings: Reading Apprenticeship in a Middle School Classroom

By: Marean Jordan, Rita Jensen, and Cynthia Greenleaf

Date: May 2001
Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English
Journal: Voices from the Middle, Vol. 8, No. 4
Download file: Amidst Familial Gatherings: Reading Apprenticeship in a Middle School Classroom

This article describes the Reading Apprenticeship approach to adolescent reading improvement and demonstrates the program at work in one seventh and eighth grade classroom. It also discusses four key dimensions of classroom life: social (building community); personal (connecting to reading); cognitive (developing a tool kit); and knowledge-building (tapping resources).

Fostering Adolescents’ Engaged Academic Literacy (Chapter 7 in “Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research”

By: Ruth Schoenbach and Cynthia Greenleaf. Edited by Leila Christenbury, Randy Bomer, and Peter Smagorinsky

Date: 2009
Publisher: The Guilford Press
View HTML: http://tinyurl.com/yjeykqr

In this chapter from an award-winning book on adolescent literacy research, the authors argue that educators can have a significant impact on students' academic engagement and achievement by fostering adolescent students' development in four inter-related areas: 1) dispositions for engagement in academic tasks, 2) disciplinary knowledge, 3) capacities for problem-solving with texts, and 4) shifts in learner identity. The authors discuss selected research supporting the “engaged academic literacy” model, a model for school-based literacy that contrasts in pedagogy and purpose with a more traditional conception of academic literacy. The importance of students’ active engagement in literacy tasks is central to this model, and is viewed as a quality that teachers can foster and actively support.

Apprenticing Adolescents to Reading in Subject-Area Classrooms

By: Ruth Schoenbach, Jane Braunger, Cynthia Greenleaf, and Cindy Litman

Date: October 2003
Journal: Phi Delta Kappan
View HTML: http://tinyurl.com/RA-PDK-Article

A growing number of middle and high school teachers across the country are taking the time to teach about reading in their disciplines. They are learning to recognize their own complex discipline-specific reading processes and are helping their students do the same, implementing Reading Apprenticeship. These teachers' efforts and the significant difference in attitudes and outcomes for many of their students, particularly for those who are reading well below grade level and who have "given up on reading" are documented in this article.

Traveling Together over Difficult Ground: Negotiating Success with a Profoundly Inexperienced Reader in an Introduction to Chemistry Class

By: Cindy Litman and Cynthia Greenleaf

Date: 2008
Book: Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Edited by Kathleen A. Hinchman and Heather K. Sheridan-Thomas
Publisher: Guilford Press
View HTML: http://tinyurl.com/yhgqh7o

Without classroom interactions that emphasize student capabilities and reward effort toward learning, students may make little progress over the difficult terrain of high academic challenge. In order to benefit from high-quality curriculum and instruction, students must avail themselves of these learning opportunities. This chapter describes how a chemistry teacher not only provided rich literacy and science learning opportunities, but supported his students to invest themselves in learning through a process of "negotiating success."

Superintendent's Corner

By: Shawn Lewis-Lakin, Superintendent of Manchester Community Schools

Date: April 6, 2009
Blog: The Wire (published by the staff of the Manchester Enterprise Newspaper)
View HTML: http://wireenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/04/superintendents-corner.html

In this article the Superintendent of Michigan's Manchester Community Schools documents the success of teachers and students in classrooms where Reading Apprenticeship is implemented. Along with an increase in their students' reading growth rate measured at 3.5 to 5.5 the national norm for growth, their students are reading more and appreciating the positive changes in their classrooms.