Reading Apprenticeship: Integrating Literacy and Science Instruction in High School Biology

Reading Apprenticeship is a coherent instructional model that draws together research-based practices in reading instruction, including methods of engaging students in extensive reading; integrating explicit teaching of comprehension strategies; establishing relevance and making personal connections to reading materials and curriculum activities; identifying and using a variety of text structures to support comprehension; and supporting collaborative sensemaking activities with written materials. Reading Apprenticeship draws both on what teachers know and do as readers in particular domains of science, and on adolescents' underestimated strengths as learners. Teachers improve students' general reading comprehension and understanding of science curriculum materials by: engaging students in more science reading; making the teacher's science-specific reading processes and knowledge visible to students; making students' reading processes, knowledge, understandings and (mis) conceptions visible to the teacher and to one another; helping students gain insight into their own reading processes as a means of gaining strategic control over these processes; and helping students acquire a repertoire of science-specific problem-solving strategies for