Reading Apprenticeship: My Experience Thus Far…..September-Mid November 2014 by Christina Cannon

Likes	Gripes (Room for Improvement)
NORMS This was my favorite first day of teaching.  (I’ve only taught for 4 years but that’s still a big deal.)    The students performed a team building activity and then reflected on their experience.   They all participated and came up with some great ideas for the classroom.   I thought this set the tone for a positive learning environment while letting the students get to know each other.   We typed up the NORMS and hung them in the classroom for the first week.  IDEAS:   Go back after the first semester and revisit our NORMS.   Do we want to modify or change anything?	I didn’t have a lot of issues or areas for improvement with this one.   I wonder if the students do it in every class on their first day if it could get old after the first few hours.
Metacognitive Logs Overall I really like these.   I like it that they’re expected to THINK about what they’re reading and responsible for learning some of the material on their own.   I also like the idea of building connections with prior knowledge, images/graphs from the book.	Laminate and personalize their MC bookmarks like they do in Chemistry class. I’m concerned that the students are not really thinking anymore about these.   I would say 25% of my students really do a great job on these and do the post/preview along with actually thinking about the connections on the brain side.   I’d say 50% do the bare minimum to get full credit but I can sometimes tell that they were not actually THINKING very hard on the brain side.   The other 25%.....well….. they usually skip a big chunk of material or a preview post view.   I think I need to keep checking these periodically in class.   Maybe once a month to reiterate the process/importance?
Think Aloud My Health class did this over a text about neurotransmitters.   Overall, it did not go very well but one of the things I thought was positive was that they did seem interested in trying a new reading strategy.  When I looked around all of the students were doing the activity (or at least faking that they were doing the activity).  I think the modeling was a good idea, but I should find a reading piece that is easier to complete the activity with.  Also, I like the idea of giving the reading a purpose when we reflect.	Ideas:   My very poor readers seemed very uninterested and probably very intimidated/scared.   I need to create a safer environment and stress the importance of these skills because these are the students who need it the most.  Get a person to record and give them an example of the handwriting they should use to record.   Hers was small and cluttered….  Maybe try “Who can write this down in a way that we can all understand it?”  Example below…. The questions all seemed the same.    Two groups said “Nothing was interesting”.   How can I address that properly?   (Could it be that not everyone is interested in neurotransmitters???!!!!)
Making Connections/Graphic Organizer (We didn’t do this activity in Berkley Reading Apprenticeship PD but I think it counts as metacognition) The students did a great job creating ways that they can make connections of reading material.   I compiled a list from all 4 hours of biology.   Also, they liked coming up to the board and writing the connections.   These organizers also brought up some good questions about transpiration, mesophyll and some of the terms.	Some of the student said they were not sure about which ways the arrows were pointing and thought that part seemed confusing.