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.

In the last decade, concern about secondary students' literacy development and ability to comprehend content area academic texts has grown dramatically. The assumption that if students learn to read by the third grade they have the foundation and all the tools they need to "read to learn" thereafter in all their subject area classes is increasingly challenged by the sobering realities of middle and high school classrooms. Secondary teachers encounter large numbers of students who can decode and comprehend at the third grade level or above but are unprepared to make sense of academic texts in their subject area courses.

Many teachers, believing that students are unprepared, unwilling or unable to read academic materials, have stopped expecting students to do independent reading assignments. Instead, they resort to presenting information and concepts in pre-digested form--through lecture, summary, video, multimedia--anything but reading.

As the quote on the next page from a California high school teacher illustrates, it is possible to re-engage and empower adolescent readers, even those who have had little experience and even less success with academic reading.

For the last seven years, the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd has collaborated with secondary teachers and school leaders to put reading materials back into students' hands and to help adolescent readers break through the "literacy ceiling," the invisible barrier that blocks many young people from doing the kind of independent reading and thinking they need to succeed in academic courses, higher education and the workplace (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999).

The result of this collaboration is an interactive approach to reading improvement that we call Reading Apprenticeship. Reading Apprenticeship engages subject area teachers, instructional leaders and students in a partnership of expertise that promotes students' self-awareness and engagement in reading, strengthens their reading performance and builds school, district and regional networks of educators committed to adolescent reading improvement.

Reading Apprenticeship: A partnership of expertise

Classrooms where teachers are embedding Reading Apprenticeship approaches in their subject area instruction, whether in English, social studies, science or mathematics, have several common features:

* a focus on comprehension and the explicit modeling and teaching of strategies to help students access text-based materials;

* an emphasis on demystifying reading and malting the invisible process of reading visible through metacognitive conversation;

* a climate of collaboration, in which teacher and students draw on each others' knowledge and serve as resources for one another's learning; and

* an emphasis developing students' independence and responsibility for their own learning.

Focusing on comprehension

Growing public attention to phonics and decoding has obscured the reality that by the time students reach adolescence, the vast majority have developed basic decoding skills. To become more skilled, confident and practiced readers, and to meet challenging content area and grade level standards, they need many more opportunities to concentrate on the real work of reading--making meaning of academic texts.

In Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, teachers explicitly reach and give students regular opportunities to practice strategic reading of course-related materials. The work of comprehending reading materials takes place at least in part in the classroom, where the teacher can model, guide and scaffold the learning experience, and can observe and give students feedback on their reading performance.

Demystifying the reading process

Subject area teachers are reluctant to call themselves reading "experts," seeing this as the domain of reading specialists. Yet in the course of their academic preparation, teachers have learned to be highly skilled readers of texts in their disciplines: of poetry, fiction and exposition in English; of historical narratives and primary source documents in history; of research articles, lab reports and experiments in science; of word problems and analytical text in mathematics.

Students are expected to make sense of a bewildering range of textual materials across disciplines in the course of their school day. To guide novice readers through the complexities of discipline-based reading, teachers need to surface the reading knowledge that is so internalized they are not aware they are using it, and learn to explicitly share that knowledge with their students.

This is where the metaphor of apprenticeship comes in. In Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, teachers apprentice students to read, write, talk and think in their discipline. They show students how texts are organized, highlight specialized language and concepts, and "think aloud" about the problem-solving strategies they use when they come to difficult passages. They make the invisible process of their reading visible, and in doing so let students in on what it means to be a skilled reader of text in that subject area.

Teachers also actively engage students in meaningful subject area reading tasks, giving them opportunities to learn about, practice and internalize a repertoire of problem-solving strategies, such as rereading to clarify confusing passages or concepts; chunking the text into smaller segments; and asking questions, visualizing, annotating and summarizing before moving on.

As they offer students expert guidance on the reading of subject area texts, teachers come to understand that teaching students to read in their content area is teaching their content area. As one teacher put it, "One of the biggest changes in our teacher identities ... is that we now see ourselves as content area reading teachers."

Building collaboration

Reading Apprenticeship classrooms are characterized by shared expertise and all interactive approach to reading (Braunger, 2002). While subject area teachers have expertise to offer their students, students also bring many often-unrecognized resources to their reading. Adolescents, even those who are inexperienced or have been classified as "struggling" readers, have an array of interests, experiences and problem-solving strategies they carry into the classroom. They often have insights into their own reading process and learning that they may have had few opportunities to share.

The social context of classrooms is a powerful resource for adolescent learners. In interactive classrooms where literacy improvement is a priority and collaboration is valued, class members draw on each other's knowledge and pursue inquiry questions together. Expressing confusion is seen as an essential part of developing understanding.

To establish this safe, collaborative environment for learning, the teacher works with students to develop norms and structures that support risk-taking, sharing knowledge and confusion, and working together to solve comprehension problems. Flexible grouping arrangements--in which students have opportunities to move from independent work to paired and small-group collaboration to whole-group discussion and synthesis--give students many opportunities to practice strategic reading, internalize effective literacy practices, share knowledge and get help.

Developing student independence

If students are to be able to tackle challenging reading materials on their own, they need reading experiences with subject area text that build their independence over time. Carefully scaffolded instruction--which includes teacher modeling, opportunities for guided and increasingly independent practice and the fading of support over time--can build this independence (Rose, 1995).

Opportunities to learn about themselves as readers--their habits, their reading history, their processes and interests--help students build a reading identity and become agents of their own learning. In the process, the teacher's role gradually changes from being the source of knowledge and explanations to becoming the facilitator and skilled guide in the reading, writing, thinking and learning processes (California Department of Education, 2000).

Creating a schoolwide focus on reading improvement

What we have described above are subject area classrooms where reading is central to building students' subject area knowledge and thinking. Learning to embed this focus on reading in subject area classrooms and helping students develop the tools they need to take charge of their own learning requires teachers' stamina, commitment and openness to change. A professional learning community that values and supports their efforts is essential.

If literacy growth is to become a school-wide reality, administrative leaders must actively promote this work, articulating a shared vision for literacy improvement, supporting teachers' efforts to change their instructional practices, learning side by side with teachers, and helping to create a school climate and culture that values adult learning and promotes achievement for all students (Cosner & Peterson, 2003).

A teaching and learning community

To launch and sustain this focus on reading and literacy improvement in classrooms and across the school, teachers and administrators must first have opportunities to explore what it means to read, and then to think together about how that knowledge is best shared with students. They can draw inspiration and resources from participating in a learning community in which time is set aside to read, problem-solve and reflect together on teaching and students' learning.

Administrators can promote this culture of learning through study groups, professional development in department meetings and work in small learning communities. They can also be strong advocates for teacher learning by finding resources that support teachers' participation in sustained professional development on reading and literacy outside the school.

For example, the Strategic Literacy Initiative offers professional development in Reading Apprenticeship that links cross-disciplinary school teams in learning networks across schools, districts and counties. Reflecting on the impact of network participation and team collaboration, one teacher explained, "Our work together has affirmed our mutual desire to all be literacy advocates no matter what content area we all teach."

The learning that adults do together is most powerful when it parallels the learning that teachers are hoping to promote in their classrooms. When colleagues have opportunities to practice an inquiry stance--asking critical questions and exploring evidence--and when they engage in regular reflection, they not only reap much richer benefits in their own learning, but they practice and internalize structures for similarly engaging students.

Likewise, teachers need opportunities not only to learn about reading and subject area literacy but also to learn both through and from their own and others' practice (Ball & Cohen, 1999). When they participate in and reflect on literacy activities they can adapt to their own classroom practice, and when they engage in inquiry about lessons and student work in collaboration with colleagues, they are much more likely to rethink their beliefs about students' capacity, re-examine their instructional practices, and begin to apply what they are learning to their own classroom context.

A common language

One of the experiences teachers and administrators describe when a focus on literacy moves from a few classrooms to the school as a whole is the development of a common language for talking about reading and literacy. Schools promote a common language and a culture of reading and literacy by:

* agreeing on a few core high-level strategic approaches across the curriculum that are explicitly taught and used in many classes;

* setting aside a regular time in the school day when everyone reads materials of his/her own choosing; and

* developing routines and structures (such as teachers regularly using inquiry-based protocols for looking at lessons and student work; students keeping regular learning togs and monitoring their own reading progress) that are valued and practiced across the school.

This shared language for talking about literacy gives students the authority of naming their own learning experiences. It unites administrators and teachers across subject areas in working toward common literacy goals. It builds articulation across grade levels and programs as students develop literacy practices that are recognized and valued at all levels of their educational experience.

Shared accountability

Administrative and teacher leaders who are actively engaged in this schoolwide literacy work often talk about the importance of shared accountability. If the school has agreed to a focus on literacy, instructional leaders need to expect that attention to reading and literacy will be embedded in subject area instruction.

Administrative leaders promote this focus by devoting common planning time and professional development to literacy work. Teacher teams engage in year-long cycles of learning, classroom implementation, examination of classroom artifacts, reflection and planning, with the support of protocols that guide their inquiry process.

Colleagues encourage mutual accountability through peer observation and coaching, collaborative planning and problem solving, and analysis of student work. Teachers come to see administrative leaders as accountable partners in this literacy work when they demonstrate their knowledge of literacy approaches, know what to look for in classroom observations, celebrate teachers' and students' successes, and actively support teachers who are straggling or resist change.

A hopeful picture of student learning

In our current educational environment in which school rankings, reputations and funding often rest primarily on the results of standardized tests, it is easy to lose sight of all the resources we can draw on to give a nuanced, multi-dimensional and hopeful view of student learning.

Administrators can help teachers develop this picture of students' literacy growth by encouraging and valuing data collection of all sorts: reading and writing surveys, reflections and learning logs, think alouds and retellings, ongoing observations of student reading and periodic, content-embedded reading assessments.

All these resources offer a window into students' reading and thinking. They help teachers get to know students as learners and take immediate action by using students' strengths to address their learning needs. These data can also be used to give parents and community members a picture of students' progress that goes well beyond the limited information provided by standardized tests.

No quick fixes

Developing and sustaining a focus on adolescent reading improvement is admittedly a long-term effort that requires the participation of the entire school community. In the face of pressures for immediate results and quick fixes, instructional leaders must make some hard choices to stay the course. Yet how can we choose to do otherwise when so much is at stake?

Supporting classroom-based and school-wide efforts in which literacy is not done to students or for students but with them contributes to a dynamic learning culture and helps to develop engaged, empowered learners and thinkers. As the high school teacher quoted on page 9 of this article put it, "Giving the students the ability to read to learn has changed their outlook on school, their outlook on their own abilities, and their opportunities for post-secondary life."

References

Ball, D.L., & Cohen, D.K. (1999). "Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional education." In L. Darling-Hammond and G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Braunger, J. (June 2003). "Professional development for literacy: Building a community of readers." Middle matters online: a newsletter for middle level educators (http://www.middlemattersonline.org/reading2.htm).

California Department of Education. (2000). Strategic teaching and learning: Standards-based instruction to promote content literacy in grades four through twelve.

Cosner, S. and Peterson, K. (May/June 2003). "Building a learning community." Leadership. Sacramento, CA: Association of California School Administrators.

Krebs, L. (2003). (Spring 2003). Project Prospectus for "Creating a reading apprenticeship classroom at Dixon High School." Unpublished master's thesis in English pedagogy, California State University, Sacramento.

Rose, D. (1995). "Apprenticeship and exploration: a new approach to literacy instruction." Scholastic Literacy Research Paper, 6. Scholastic, Inc.

Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., Cziko, C. & Hurwitz, L. (1999). Reading for understanding: A guide to improving reading in middle and high school classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Marean Jordan and Ruth Schoenbach

Marean Jordan is director of professional development and Ruth Schoenbach is co-director of the Strategic Literacy Initiative, WestEd (www.wested.org/stratlit).