Reading Apprenticeship

Reading Apprenticeship is a literacy program which trains all secondary content teachers in effective content literacy instruction. Its premise assumes that all students benefit from instruction in reading with text that is specific to the studied discipline. The benefit of this kind of instruction is two-fold: students understand content at a deeper level and students overall reading proficiency increases.

Working within a countywide initiative coordinated by WISD, building facilitators have been trained for each of the comprehensive high schools. These facilitators are released for two periods of their teaching assignment on a daily basis. During this released time they monitor student achievement data, develop in-service and workshop activities, and conduct coaching and demonstration lessons. The following chart shows the assigned facilitators in each building.

Building	Reading Apprenticeship Facilitators
Huron	Maryan Mastey Amber Snapke
Pioneer	Amy Deller Vickie Munson
Skyline	Dusty Vincent

Training and professional development for Reading Apprenticeship is rigorous and ongoing. The initial session is a four-day workshop. Subsequently, RA teachers meet on a monthly basis for a half-day in a Reading Apprenticeship Professional Learning Community. Currently, our RA learning cohorts meet in conjunction with other school districts throughout the county for this work.

In previous years RA achievement has been measured with the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) test as this assessment was supported by WISD. DRP scores have shown positive results for this program as compared with national norms but never against a comparison group in the district or county.

We are now using our district’s formative reading assessment, the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) that we administer universally in grades 5 through 12. 2008-2009 is the first teaching episode in which we have pre and post data for students who are in the program and students who are not in the program. The following table shows that average Lexile scores are enhanced for students who are exposed to Reading Apprenticeship instruction.

Reading Apprenticeship - 2008/2009

School	Grade	RA Exposure	N Students	Avg. Lexile Growth
Huron	9	N	117	37.8
Huron	9	Y	200	72.2
Huron	10	N	95	26.6
Huron	10	Y	280	38.7
Huron	Both Grades	N	212	32.8
Huron	Both Grades	Y	480	52.7

Pioneer	9	N	68	25.4
Pioneer	9	Y	283	50.2
Pioneer	10	N	235	20.3
Pioneer	10	N	260	19.4
Pioneer	Both Grades	N	301	21.5
Pioneer	Both Grades	Y	543	35.4

Pioneer and Huron	9	N	190	33.7
Pioneer and Huron	9	Y	489	58.9
Pioneer and Huron	10	N	350	22.9
Pioneer and Huron	10	Y	563	28.2
Pioneer and Huron	Both Grades	N	540	26.7
Pioneer and Huron	Both Grades	Y	1052	42.5

Beginning four years ago with a cohort of 4 teachers trained as facilitators, we now have 112 teachers in Ann Arbor who are trained and implementing Reading Apprenticeship. Our building facilitators are licensed by Sopris West, research designers of Reading Apprenticeship, to train teachers within Washtenaw County.

Trained RA Teachers by School

School	N of Teachers Trained	% of Teachers Trained
Huron	50	43
Pioneer	39	33
Skyline	23	40

Note that some teachers were trained in one high school and then transferred to another high school.

We have presented at two recent annual MSAN conferences. As a result of our first presentation and a subsequent visit to Huron High School, Farmington Schools have begun a large-scale implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

Because of student achievement and teacher enthusiasm we have begun an expansion of Reading Apprenticeship to the middle school level. A building facilitator for each of the five middle schools is currently in their training year. Training sessions will be held this summer for middle school teachers as we expand this successful program.