Reading Apprenticeship is a professional development opportunity that serves educators in middle and high schools with a research-validated approach that promotes students’ engagement and achievement in subject area literacy.

      Three randomized controlled studies of Reading Apprenticeship professional development have found statistically significant gains on standardized tests in reading comprehension, biology, U.S. history, and English language arts. On many measures, students scores were well over a year ahead of the control students.

     The instructional routines and approaches embedded within Reading Apprenticeship are based on a framework that describes the classroom in terms of four interacting dimensions that support learning: Social, Personal, Cognitive, and Knowledge-Building. These four dimensions are woven into subject area teaching through the Metacognitive Conversation– conversations about the thinking processes students and teachers engage in as they read. The context in which this all takes place is Extensive Reading– increased in-class opportunities for students to practice reading in more skillful ways.

     Teachers using the Reading Apprenticeship framework regularly model disciplinary-specific literacy skills, help students build high-level comprehension strategies, engage students in building knowledge by making connections to background knowledge they already have, and provide ample guided, collaborative, and individual practice as an integral part of teaching their subject area curriculum.

     As a result, students develop the literacy competencies, subject area knowledge, and the learner dispositions they need– for school, college, careers, and life.