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Reading Apprenticeship: Making the

Invisible Visible to our students
FTLA 2015
Text and Task Analysis
Setting Literacy Goals

Dimensions of Reading Apprenticeship

Consider Schema
World/ Personal: Schema from your lived
day to day experience
Text: Schema about how different text
forms and genres are structured
Discipline: Schema learned as a result of
school; specialized knowledge
Language: Schema about how words are
built and fit with other words

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Planning to embed literacy goals

If you have a current course text with you,
get it out now.
You will get to take turns being an expert
and a novice in this activity.

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Trade texts with a partner from

another discipline

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Read the unfamiliar text and capture your

reading process, asking yourself as a reader:
What strategies did I use to make meaning from or
negotiate the text?
What schema knowledge did I bring to the text?

And asking yourself as a teacher:

What challenges might students encounter when
grappling with this text?

With your partner, take a closer

look at Text #1
Discuss the novice partners experience
reading the text and consider with one
another what challenges students might
have with the text.
Make notes on the Text and Task
notetaker.

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Still with Text #1

Choose a key chunk of text, one that:
Contains an important concept; or
Is particularly challenging; or
Speaks to an instructional goal in terms of
content or literacy.

Novice does a Think Aloud with the

chunk of text while Expert takes notes

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Articulate literacy goals for text #1

What RA routine might be most helpful for
students to use when grappling with this
text?
What kinds of supports can you design to
build on students strengths and extend their
fluency, stamina, and comprehension as a
reader of texts in your discipline.

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Time to take a closer look at Text #2

Discuss the novice partners experience
reading the text and consider with one
another what challenges students might
have with the text.
Make notes on the Text and Task
notetaker.

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Still with Text #2

Choose a key chunk of text, one that:
Contains an important concept; or
Is particularly challenging; or
Speaks to an instructional goal in terms of
content or literacy.

Novice does a Think Aloud with the

chunk of text while Expert takes notes

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Articulate literacy goals for text #2

What RA routine might be most helpful for
students to use when grappling with this
text?
What kinds of supports can you design to
build on students strengths and extend their
fluency, stamina, and comprehension as a
reader of texts in your discipline.

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Debrief Activity
Having any novice reader make their
thinking visible with a text that falls within
your expert blind spot is usually a very
eye-opening experience!
When we read with students in mind, we
can plan to support literacy acquisition as
we teach towards our content matter.

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Lesson planning to support both

content and literacy goals

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Our Goals with Reading

Apprenticeship:
Help students learn to read and think like
insiders (experts) in a subject area
Overcome our own expert blind spot
blending subject-area knowledge with
important understandings of how novices
acquire the conventions, rituals, and
expectations of discourse in that field

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RA helps to develop more

powerful readers
Engaging students in more reading for
recreation, subject-area learning, and selfchallenge
Making the teachers discipline-based reading
processes visible to the students;
Making students reading processes, motivations,
strategies, knowledge, and understanding visible
to the teacher and to one another.

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Helping students gain insight into their own

reading processes; and
Helping them develop a repertoire of
problem solving strategies for overcoming
obstacles and deepening comprehension of
texts from various academic disciplines

In a Reading Apprenticeship
Classroom, one will notice:
The teacher briefly modeling to make his or
her thinking visible
The students engaging in guided practice of
what the teacher has modeled
Students talking with one another about
their experiences with the reading

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In Reading Apprenticeship
Classrooms, Teachers
Focus on comprehension and metacognitive
conversation
Create a climate of collaboration
Provide appropriate support while
emphasizing student independence

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This conversation is a critical

dynamic in the classroom:
Students learn from the teacher and from
each other new ways to engage with and
comprehend academic text.
Teachers learn from students what they are
currently doing to make sense of a text,
what knowledge they bring to the text, and
what difficulties they are having.

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The metacognitive conversation provides a

powerful and productive window:
For students, into the teachers and other
students reading processes, so they can
broaden their repertoire of strategies and
deepen their subject area knowledge.
For teachers into students reading
processes, so they can plan instruction to
focus on students actual learning needs.

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