Reading Apprenticeship: Improving Academic Literacy and Social Emotional Learning for Middle, High School, and College Students

What if teachers learned to recognize their own subject area expertise and to apprentice students into the ways of reading, writing, thinking, talking, and reasoning in their fields? And what if students were explicitly supported to build identities as people who can solve reading problems and persevere?

Reading Apprenticeship encourages exactly this kind of teaching and learning.

Educators using WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship framework:

• Regularly model disciplinary-specific literacy skills
• Help students build high-level comprehension strategies
• Engage students in building knowledge by making connections to background knowledge they already have
• Provide ample guided, collaborative individual practice as an integral part of teaching their subject area curriculum

As a result, students develop the literacy competencies, subject area knowledge, and the learner dispositions they need — for school, college, careers, and life.

We offer professional learning institutes and coaching at WestEd, online, and at schools and colleges throughout the U.S.

Reading Apprenticeship’s strong evidence base has earned high honors, qualifying the program to be included in Effective Social Emotional Learning Programs and EvidenceforESSA.org, and winning prestigious Investing in Innovation awards from the U.S. Department of Education.

Visit the Reading Apprenticeship website to learn more.