Reading for Understanding

by Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Christine Cziko

Published in Partnership with WestEd

"A breath of fresh air! After reminding us that any teacher who puts a book in front of a student is a reading teacher, the authors give us a teacher-tested reading course for middle and high school students. They avoid the baloney in the present reading debates by paying attention to actual students. What they propose is an apprenticeship in using a tool kit for problem solving in reading. The tool kit itself is a combination of cognitive and social dimensions embedded in subjects. And, lo and behold, they can point to actual results."--Miles Myers, former executive director, National Council of Teachers of English

"Reading for Understanding should be in the hands of teachers, principals, superintAndents, curriculum coordinators, school board members, state educational leaders, university professors, and teachers in training. Engaging, to the point, and grounded in research, this book shares current work in progress, possible stumbling blocks, ideas to overcome them, and specific strategies with detailed examples. Most middle and high school teachers have little or no 'teaching reading' training. It is not too late and this book is a great start."--Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California

Easy to follow and filled with examples of student work and classroom lessons, Reading for Understanding offers a successful approach to helping students improve their literacy across all subject areas. It shows how to create classroom "reading apprenticeships" to help students build reading comprehension skills and relate what they read to a larger knowledge base. It also discusses the strategies and support systems needed to implement and evaluate reading apprenticeship programs throughout the school. The authors describe a program in which an entire freshman class in one urban high school increased its average reading scores by more than two years. Piloted in San Francisco, the groundbreaking Academic Literacy program proved that it was not too late for teachers and students to work together in boosting literacy, engagement, and achievement.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction

193 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Ruth is a passionate advocate and clear-headed researcher for best practices that improve literacy for adolescent students.

Reviews

[Kim Johnson]

A helpful tool introducing an apprenticeship approach to reading that includes the personal dimension, social dimension, knowledge building dimension and cognitive dimension with meta cognitive conversation at the heart of the process. The book is filled with case studies and resources as well as the basic fundamentals of each facet of the reading apprenticeship framework.

[Mr. Poquette]

I know, I know! It feels like cheating to put pedagogical books in my list, but I read it, dammit, so it stays.
And it should prove to be helpful in my classroom; reaffirms some of the things I've done for years, gives me some new tricks.

[Natalee]

Written by teachers, for teachers (or so my professor says, and I’m not about to question that judgement).

This is written in a very clear, easy to follow manner. The text isn’t dry like a lot of theory books tend to be, either. It seems to emphasize cognitive and sociocultural theories to reading/teaching, including practices like reading apprenticeships.

My favorite part, and perhaps the most helpful, is that Schoenbach includes many actual classroom practices for teacher to incorporate. Examples range from fishbowls to teacher think alouds to lessons on summarizing a text. Theories are all well and good, but they mean nothing without tangible approaches.

Overall, a very well written and accessible textbook. I will definitely keep this one on my shelves as a reference in the years to come.

[Mark]

This is an excellent primer for teachers about how to teach students strategic reading strategies. Perhaps more important, the authors present a philosophical ans practical framework for how to teach reading in secondary schools.

[Jennifer Fenwick]

Of all my grad school required books, this one has been the most helpful in teaching students to read.

[E]

2 Copies

[Budd Turner]

Good introduction to Reading Apprenticeship.
Second edition has triple the pages covering the same concepts.

[Connie D]

The concepts are good...but I'll finish later.

[Cindy]

This book convinced me how important reading is in all content ares.