Reading Apprenticeship: A program that aims to improve students' reading skills by having them learn how to closely examine their own reading strategies and processes, as well as those of their teacher and fellow students, in order to develop new strategi

Reading Apprenticeship is a program that aims to improve students' reading skills by having them learn how to closely examine both their own reading strategies and processes and those of their teacher and fellow students. The program involves small-group and full-classroom conversations about, and students' reflections on, the thinking process being used while reading. Reading Apprenticeship calls for teachers to integrate four dimensions of classroom life into subject-area teaching through conversations about the thinking processes that students and teachers use as they read. These dimensions are: Social, which uses students' interests in social interaction to provide a learning environment that reflects the diverse perspectives and resources of each individual; Personal, which draws on skills used by students in out-of-school settings, students' interest in deepening their awareness of the thinking processes used while reading, students' identities as readers, and their purposes and goals for reading; Cognitive, which involves developing readers' mental processes, including the specific comprehension and problem-solving strategies that can be applied to academic texts; and Knowledge-building, which includes identifying and expanding the knowledge readers bring to a text, including knowledge about word construction, vocabulary, text structure, genre, language, and content. The program also offers professional development and train-the-trainer sessions for content-area middle and high school teachers, literacy coaches, site-level administrators, and district leaders to help them incorporate Reading Apprenticeship in classrooms, schools, and districts. Additionally, the program developers offer a year-long curriculum for 9th-grade students, called Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy, which is designed to support students' reading achievement, engagement, and fluency.