WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) helps students become more motivated and successful readers and writers. Using the research-based instructional framework, Reading Apprenticeship®, SLI offers intensive hands-on training to improve the teaching effectiveness of content-area middle and high school teachers, literacy coaches, and teacher educators nationwide.
Several SLI research studies show that students whose teachers have participated in Reading Apprenticeship training become more confident, engaged, and strategic readers.
Students in a 9th grade Academic Literacy course based on Reading Apprenticeship gained two years' reading proficiency in seven months.
Another SLI study revealed significant gains in reading proficiency for students in middle and high school content classes where teachers used the Reading Apprenticeship approach. English learners grew as much as students who were fluent in English. Students who initially scored in the lowest quartiles made the most rapid gains.
School districts from Boston to Durham to Tucson are seeing significant benefits in combining the strong core ideas and practices of Reading Apprenticeship with their local reform initiatives and contexts.
9th Grade Academic Literacy Course and Curriculum
As described in Education Week (February 2008), the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy Course is designed to accelerate 9th grade students’ reading achievement, engagement, and fluency.
Voices from the field When I read now, I think about the purpose of why I am reading something. If you told me to read something and tell you something about it when I'm done, I would read it in a certain way. If you told me to take notes on this, then I would read it in a different way.
9th grade student
Reading for Understanding This practical handbook provides concrete lessons for middle and high school teachers about how to support students' reading in the disciplines, as well as the theoretical underpinnings of the approach — Reading Apprenticeship.
