Education Week - November 6, 2024 - 13

Do they like reading? If so, how much time do they
spend reading, and what do they usually read?
From there, it's easier to get to the text-based
problem-solving strategies, such as predicting, questioning,
visualizing, and annotating, Stump said.
In each subject, the program puts an emphasis on
students thinking aloud and sharing their questions
and musings with peers, Stump said. Essentially a
form of metacognition, this strategy helps students
become aware of their own thinking and access new
ways of approaching a text. And in the process, they
develop an understanding of what they're reading,
she said.
What makes the approach especially powerful is
when all teachers are on board, reinforcing the message
across classes, teachers say.
" Reading requires kids to sit in a chair and be off
their phones and struggle in silence by themselves. I
think the struggle has always been getting them to
be comfortable with that process, " said
George Vlahakis, a high school social
studies teacher for the Rich Township
district in Illinois, which
has also adopted the Reading
Apprenticeship model. " If
they're only doing that in one
of their classes, or maybe
two, some of them always
struggle with that and never
get over it. But now that
they have to do it in all their
classes, I think they're much
more comfortable with that. "
Before the Rich Township district
turned to a whole-school approach
to disciplinary literacy, Vlahakis
said he had already been teaching his students
how to read, write, and think like a historian. It
used to take him three months to teach freshmen
how to read, annotate, and think about a nonfiction
text in the way that someone working in the
history field would.
But now that students are learning parallel strategies
in their other classes, Vlahakis said students are
getting comfortable and confident at a faster pace.
The program emphasizes having teachers narrate
out loud the strategies they use to make sense of a
text so that students can see the thinking behind it.
Vlahakis usually starts the school year by reading a
short portion of the text out loud to students and letting
them hear his thought process as a history expert
reading through the text. After a few weeks of modeling
the strategy, he turns it over to the students' to
annotate and think out loud as they read a text.
" Just with simple strategies, they've gotten pretty
comfortable attacking a history reading, " he said.
About 100 districts across the country have been
trained in the program's methods, according to
WestEd. Outside of that, it's unclear how many have
k
/
a whole-school approach to literacy, even though
iterations of it date back to the 1940s.
Teachers who've gone through the WestEd program
said they've not only seen growth in students'
reading and writing skills, but they've also seen
greater student engagement.
" They're working together. They're talking
to each other about their learning, " said Helene
Boganski, a 9th grade English teacher and a reading
specialist for the Rich Township district. " It's not
just the teacher in front teaching. It's students and
teachers working together for their learning. "
How a whole-school approach to reading
impacts teacher relationships
One dividend of the whole-school approach
to disciplinary literacy has shown up in teachers'
relationships.
Before her school started the WestEd program,
Boganski said it felt like the responsibility
to get students reading at grade level
fell only on the English/language
arts teachers.
" Now, we're all working toward
the same goal, using the
same strategies, using the
same language, " she said.
It has also opened up opportunities
for cross-subject
collaboration, teachers
said. Instead of just working
with teachers within their
content area, they get to work
with teachers in other disciplines
and learn new ways to tackle a text.
" Sometimes, when you're so used to
working within your content, that's the lens that
you see everything through, " Boganski said. " But
I just had a great conversation with the biology
teacher the other day about reading and writing that
we would have never had before. It's opening up the
doors to have those conversations. "
To make the whole-school approach work,
districts need to invest a lot of time and money and
ensure that teachers buy in, teachers said. The district
invested in training and gave teachers the time
to attend it, Boganski said.
" That helps everybody understand that this is not
just a one-and-done, " Boganski said. " Everybody is
on board. Everybody wants to see this through. "
But it's a long process, said Phillips, the science
teacher.
" Some things do flop, " she said. " Some things
you will do in the classroom, and you'll feel like that
didn't benefit any of [the students], and you'll have
to restart.
" We're not looking for perfection. We're just trying
to move the needle in this direction to get [students]
to be doing better than we had them do before. "
Different Subjects, Different Reading | 13
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Education Week - November 6, 2024

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