Community College Research
Group
2008-09 Report
Cindy Hicks
Chabot College
Hayward, CA
July 14, 2009
INTRODUCTION
Chabot College is a comprehensive, public, urban two-year college in Hayward,
California. It is one of two separately accredited colleges in the Chabot-Las Positas
Community College District, and offers a wide array of instructional programs including
general education, technical and career-vocational education, transfer education,
continuing education, and basic skills instruction.
The college serves more than 15,000 students per year to include approximately
4,224 full-time and 10,851 part-time students per semester. Chabot students struggle
financially: 63% of surveyed students report household income levels of either low or
low to medium, based on federal poverty rate guidelines, and over 60% of Chabot
students work 20-40 hours per week.
Chabot College is part of an exceptionally multicultural region serving one of the
ten most diverse counties in the United States. Our student body reflects the ethnic
diversity of area residents. The student population is 13% African American, 18% Asian
American, 10% Filipino, 22% Latino, 1% Middle Eastern, 1% Native American, 2%
Pacific Islander, and 28% White with the remaining population either unknown or
comprised of other heritage groups. Currently, Chabot serves a student body that speaks
over forty different languages and is 72% non-white (Chabot College Office of
Institutional Research (OIR), Fall 2003).
Low educational attainment characterizes the Chabot population. Upon entrance
to college, 80 percent require remediation in basic math and 77 percent require
remediation in basic English. Each semester approximately 50 percent of these students
either fail or withdraw from English and mathematics basic skills courses. Chabot
students are significantly under-prepared for college-level work, which limits their
educational and career options. Because of the poor academic preparation of our
students, Chabot has been extensively analyzing such areas as developmental studies,
faculty development, and academic support services to determine ways of improving
student success. My work with Reading Apprenticeship is part of this analysis to
determine ways of improving student success.
What follows is a report on one part of my RA work: classroom research
conducted with a first-semester basic skills English class, English 101A (Reading,
Reading, and Reasoning I) in Fall 2008.
FALL 2008: English 101A, Reading, Reasoning, and Writing I
About the Class
English 101A, like all English classes at Chabot, integrates reading and writing.
The primary text I use in the class is Integrations, by William S. Robinson and Pamela
Altman, which is organized around inquiry and case studies. I also include a text for the
students’ independent reading. In Fall 2008, I used A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah.
The graded assignments include:

Five three-to-five page essays, each responding to an inquiry question
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

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

Idea and rough drafts preceding each of the five essays
Summaries of three sections of A Long Way Gone
A library research project related to A Long Way Gone
An oral presentation summarizing an article found on a library database related to
A Long Way Gone
Sentence-combining exercises
In order to respond to the inquiry questions related to the cases in Integrations, the
students must have read the articles making up the case studies in the text; the articles
provide the “data sets” students need in order to form their responses to the inquiry.
(This inquiry approach to teaching writing evolved from about twenty years of research
into college composition summarized by George Hillocks in Teaching Written
Composition, published in 1985.)
About the Students
Thirty-two students began the class; four students withdrew from the class early on,
resulting in a class of 28 students, one student over the class size limit. All of the 28
students received course grades: 50 percent, or 14, received CR, which, while consistent
with the basic skills English pass rate for the college, was not the 66 percent pass rate my
students usually experience. Even so, all but four of the 28 students (86%) continued in
college the following semester. Two of the four who did not continue had passed my
class; two had not.
Twenty-eight students completed Student Information Sheets. Of those 28, 18 were
new to college; four had been at Chabot for a year; two for two years, and four for more
than two years.
None of the students had attempted English 101A previously. Two students
identified themselves as having learning skills issues; both had taken at least some of our
learning skills classes. Though three students had been in the U.S. for fewer than three
years, only two students identified themselves as ESL students and only one had taken all
of the college’s core ESL classes. Eleven students first spoke a language other than
English and all eleven indicated they speak a language other than English at home,
though they have been speaking English and living in the U.S. for many years. Seven of
these students spoke Spanish first, two spoke Tagalog, one spoke Vietnamese and one
spoke Russian.
Four of the students were enrolled only in English 101A in Fall 2008. Two were
enrolled in one class in addition to English; nine were enrolled in two classes in addition
to English; eleven were enrolled in three additional classes; and two were enrolled in four
additional classes.
Ten of the students worked while attending school. Twenty-two indicated they had a
favorite book.
My Reading Goal for the Students
One of the challenges with basic skills English students involves having them
experience how one needs to read for college. All of my students answered that they
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could read, and in the sense that they can decode and often literally understand text, they
were correct. Students have great difficulty applying (analyzing, synthesizing) what they
read in order develop a reasonable response to an inquiry, however. They often describe
this difficulty as resulting from their inability to remember what they have read, and, in a
sense, this, too may be correct. They may have difficulty remembering because they do
not recognize how text is organized; do not recognize and know how to solve reading
problems; are unable to determine a purpose for reading; and are still developing a sense
of what discipline-specific reading looks like. My goal was to give the students access to
my and their reading processes in order to enable them to apply their reading to solving
the problems posed by the inquiry questions they were working with.
My RA Research Question
How will regularly and intentionally involving students in metacognitive routines
affect their participation in class, their perception of themselves as readers/learners, and
their ability and willingness to question in deeper, more interesting ways?
Data Sources Collected
Student Information Sheets, Personal Reading Histories, 4 CERAs, 3 TttT
(attached to CERAs); Evidence/Interpretation T-Chart; 4 TttT with partners’ rough drafts
of essays; Reading Survey; students’ use of the reading in their essay; student retention
and pass rates; various Classroom Assessments related to the memoir assignment,
including: Finishing and expanding upon a sentence starter, “Reading the memoir is
like…”; a current article summary + connection to memoir; golden lines and relation to
possible themes. Because of the amount of data collected, I followed four students:
Jonathon, Laurie, Nathan, and Denis, selected because they all received credit and
enrolled in my second-semester class, enabling me to do follow-up observations. The
data I’ll be analyzing closely includes: the CERAs, TttT, the classroom assessment, the
summary of an article related to the memoir, and the reading survey.
Talking to the Text
I introduced TttT immediately in the term, modeling it with the course syllabus,
and then having the students complete TttT with the syllabus. Students then pair-shared
their TttT with a partner, and then the whole class discussed the syllabus. I followed a
similar routine with each TttT activity through about midterm. At midterm, I modeled
less and occasionally asked the students to TttT when they were reading at home.
Students always shared with a partner and then with the whole class.
I may have made a mistake with my modeling TttT. I started always with the
assignment, and recommended students pay particular attention to the information needed
to develop a response to the inquiry question. This focus may explain why the TttT I
collected so often included summaries of the content. Also, students didn’t note difficult
passages, even when TttT with difficult text. One student, in particular, noted in his
CERA that he was able to get the information he needed to write the assignment from the
class discussion.
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Jonathon
Jonathon, a filmmaking and music composition major with plans to transfer,
enrolled in my English 101A class during his third semester at Chabot. He appears to be
in his early twenties. Mine was the first English class he had taken at Chabot, and in
addition to English this semester, he was taking sociology. He was not working at the
time he was enrolled in my English 101A class.
Jonathon indicated he was not the best reader. He noted he gets bored when he
reads, though he had a favorite book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S.
Thompson, which he described as a “crazy fun entertaining story that actually interests
me, not to mention it’s one of the only books I’ve actually read all the way through.” He
also noted that he regularly read magazines, including Mad, Maxim, CQ, and
Entertainment. Jonathon identified himself as working with our Disabled Students
Resource Center on his reading: He put our outside reading text, A Long Way Gone, by
Ishmael Beah, in Kurzwile to make it an audio-book so he could stay focused and more
interested by listening to the book.
I asked all students to describe a time they had learned something well. Jonathon
described how he learned to play drums while living in the Dominican Republic. He was
taught by professional drum players and learned by jamming with them, adding tonguein-cheek that the Caribbean rum helped the learning process.
Jonathon interested me because, while he acknowledged problems with his
reading, he was a confident student, one who expected to pass the class because he felt
his writing was strong. He also was willing to question/challenge me, making me explain
why I was introducing various RA strategies in the class.
CERA # 1: Luis Cardenas’s Career Possibilities
I had the students turn in their TttT for the third case study of the semester, a case
about Luis Cárdenas, a recent college graduate trying to decide on two job options. The
students also turned in the CERA.
Jonathon’s TttT and summary indicated he was noticing his reading and perhaps
focusing on the text. His TttT notes were often questions. For example, next to “Luis
Cardenas lives in the largest city in the state, where he was born and had deep family
roots,” Jonathon wrote, “What city/state?” and “How old is he?” This was the third case
we had read, so I was expecting Jonathon to ask questions related to the writing
assignment The names of the city and state would not be relevant to the inquiry. On
second thought, however, I realized Jonathon, as a reader, wanted to know these details.
Despite TttT notes that didn’t appear to me to be helpful to summarizing the case,
Jonathon’s CERA summary was accurate, if broad. He wrote, “Luis has two choices as
to where he works. He can work for a big shot business or be an elementary school
teacher.” He indicated that TttT was unnatural and he needed to get accustomed to doing
it. In response to the question about the kinds of things happening in his mind as he read
the text, Jonathon wrote only that he was talking to the text. What helped him understand
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the reading was reading slowly, underlining important details, and reading it twice. He
found the reading “not too hard” and felt he understood it “pretty well, probably better
than the last two stories.” (Students often refer to all genres in my English classes as
“stories,” perhaps because stories are involved in all the texts we read. Also, we hear
about “news stories.” I try to remind the students of more specific names, such a
“article,” or “case study,” or “memoir,” but I need to have them identify features of each
type of “story” if I believe it’s helpful for them to make the distinction.)
The essay Jonathon wrote, in which he needed to determine which of the two
positions would be best for Luis Cardenas and why, was well developed: he received 75
percent (CR) of the total points possible. Jonathon had indeed attended to the important
details in the case study. His final essay included more summary than analysis, but it
indicated he was on the right track for achieving the goals of this reading, reasoning, and
writing class.
CERA #2: Lavonne Williams’ Working Future
Jonathon did not do the second CERA.
CERA #3 and Related Activities
The third CERA focused on the memoir, A Long Way Gone. Prior to the CERA,
the students had responded to a classroom assessment: Please finish this sentence and
then expand on your thought in a paragraph: Reading A Long Way Gone is like….”
Students also found “golden lines,” which they read aloud and which formed the basis for
class discussion. Finally, the students found a current event article related to the memoir
and then summarized the article and noted the connection to Beah’s book.
Jonathon did not develop a metaphor for the sentence starter, instead indicating
that he found A Long Way Gone interesting, adding, “I don’t read often unless I have to
and this book has been a really good story. When I read I take into account all the
important and major details and write them down for when the time comes to write my
summary.” He adequately summarized a current event article about a child soldier in
Sierra Leone whose experiences were similar to Beah’s.
Jonathon’s CERA included the reading on pages 88-91 of the text. (Since the
students were reading the book independently, I asked them to continue reading from
wherever they were in the book for their CERA.) He noted that he understood the pages
he read “quite well” and that the reading was “not too hard”; however, his brief summary
was lacking in detail: “Beah tells about the mood and atmosphere that he and his group
feel after having buried one of their friends who had suddenly turned ill and died.”
In this CERA, unlike in the earlier one on the case study, Jonathon identified a
process for reading: he visualized. He indicated no difficulty when reading this text, but
based on his summary, I suspect that Jonathon is remembering a highly emotional
moment in the text and not seeing how this moment relates to a bigger picture. I believe
Jonathon is noticing his reading but has not yet gotten to the level of focusing on his
reading. He seems, however, to be building a reader identity and he notices the memoir
lends itself to visualization.
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CERA #4: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe
The final TttT I collected from the students was of a difficult text, an opinion
written by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority in Santa Fe
Independent School District v. Doe. After they talked to the text, the students discussed
the text and their notes with a partner. Then each group came back to share with the
whole class (think/pair/share). Students then worked on Evidence/Interpretation charts
that they shared with one or two classmates. The purpose of the Evidence/Interpretation
chart was to provide support for a class discussion.
Jonathon’s TttT had progressed from the beginning of the semester. He asked
such questions as “a location? An organization?” next to the phrase, “…fundamental
limitations imposed by the establishment clause.” He also guessed at meanings of
phrases, restated points in his own words, and wrote exclamation points indicating strong
agreement.
The Evidence/Interpretation chart I collected from Jonathon and his partner didn’t
really provide much beyond a summary of the final point of the majority opinion. That
the chart didn’t work is my fault—I hadn’t introduced it earlier in the semester and the
students had not practiced using it. Since none of the students came up with a helpful E/I
chart, I won’t address the E/I charts further in this report. I clearly hadn’t provided the
scaffolding the students needed.
In the essay Jonathon wrote in response to this case, he was able to summarize the
justices’ opinions adequately, which, given the difficulty of the reading, pleased me. He
also was able to support a conclusion about the validity of the majority opinion. He
earned a CR on the essay.
End of the Semester Reading Survey
In his reading survey responses at the end of the semester, Jonathon wrote that he
would describe himself as a reader now the same as he had described himself at the
beginning of the semester. He still doesn’t enjoy reading and doesn’t read unless he has
to. However, he also noted that he has now read two books in their entirety and that he
noticed himself getting drawn into Beah’s story and finding the reading becoming easier.
When reading the case studies, especially the final, most difficult text, Jonathon said that
in order to understand the reading he read it multiple times and he rewrote the Supreme
Court opinion in his own words and kept notes. He rated himself as a “usually ok” reader
of academic texts, which was the middle ranking. He also noted in his CERA responses
about how hard the reading was. Though he did not indicate he reads anymore outside of
school reading, he did not check reading as a school task that is difficult for him, as he
did at the beginning of the semester.
Summary
Jonathon was resistant to some of the RA strategies I introduced, especially TttT,
but he progressed in his TttT over the course of the term, making more meaningful
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notations. And while he still didn’t describe himself as a reader, he was very pleased to
have now completed a second book and he no longer singled out reading as a difficult
academic task.
Laurie
Laurie, a returning woman in her thirties, didn’t respond to how long she has been
a student at Chabot, but English 101A was her first English class. She was enrolled in an
additional course the semester she was in 101A, Health 1. She is a real estate major who
hopes to transfer. English is her native language. At the time she was taking English
101A, she was working, though she didn’t say how many hours per week. She did not
indicate that reading was a serious problem for her. She identified the Bible as her
favorite book because she finds “it very interesting.” She reads Ebony, Jet, Glamour, and
the San Francisco Chronicle regularly.
In her description of a time she learned something well, Laurie wrote, “In 2003, I
learned how to do refinance and purchases, loans. As a result of learning how to do
loans, I became very good at it and I was a top producer for the office. My experience
with learning to do loans gave me a lot of confidence and I made a lot of money. I
learned by doing loans hands on; the broker who hired me gave training and that helped
me quite a bit. I can’t think of anything that hindered me.”
Spelling errors (please see the original) in Laurie’s brief response made me
suspect that she may have some learning skills issues. Later, her struggles with
organizational skills and time management contributed to this impression, though she
proved good at compensating for any learning skills issues.
CERA #1: Luis Cardenas’s Career Possibilities
Laurie began her TttT with the assignment, which appeared prior to the actual
case on the copy I handed out. She drew a conclusion about the text based on the title of
the case and restated the assignment in her own words. Throughout the text of the case,
she appeared to be underlining key ideas, especially as the ideas related to the topic,
though at first I found it hard to follow her underlines, since they seemed disconnected—
instead of underlining a whole phrase or sentence, Laurie underlined individual words
making up the key idea. In the margins, she restated the ideas.
Laurie indicated she found the reading easy, and her TttT and summary statement
made it appear that she indeed easily grasped the main ideas. She responded to the
second question on the CERA—“What kinds of things were happening in your mind as
you read this?—with a personal connection. One of Luis’s career options was to be a
loan officer, and Laurie wrote: “I was thinking that real estate is my background, but I
also know about pursuing your passion [which, for Luis, was teaching].” Laurie
responded that she didn’t know how to answer question 3 about what she did to help her
understand the reading other than to note that she read and thought about each point.
Laurie’s grade on the essay was a B-. She summarized the case (and had some
very strong sentences, including some with appropriate use of the concessive) but she had
difficulty developing her paragraphs. She tended to list information rather than expand
on her points.
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CERA #2: Lavonne Williams’ Working Future
This case study is in the same chapter as is the Luis Cardenas case in Robinson
and Altman’s Integrations, indicating it is roughly the same level of reading. Laurie
indicated on her CERA that the reading was easy and her summary indicates she
understood the case study’s main points. The page of the case I presented to the students
didn’t have the assignment on it, and Laurie’s TttT showed that she was trying to figure
out what the writing assignment would be. She took a guess and then continued asking
questions of the text that she needed to answer in order to solve the “problem” in the
assignment. In response to question #2 on the CERA—“What kind of things were
happening in your mind as you read this?’’ Laurie wrote: “I was wondering does she
have the time to take this promotion. This is a chicken joint. She should not accept this
job.” In response to what she did that helped her to understand the reading, Laurie wrote
that she re-read it.
It seemed to me that Laurie progressed from CERA #1 to #2 in that she was
asking questions—“Is this important to her?”—and acknowledging her own values—
“This is a chicken joint.”
CERA #3 and Related Activities
As noted above, the third CERA focused on the memoir, A Long Way Gone.
Prior to the CERA, the students had responded to a classroom assessment: Please finish
this sentence and then expand on your thought in a paragraph: Reading A Long Way
Gone is like….” Students also found “golden lines,” which they read aloud and which
formed the basis for class discussion. Finally, the students found a current event article
related to the memoir and then summarized the article and noted the connection with
Beah’s book.
Like Jonathon, Laurie was not able to develop a metaphor to finish the sentence
starter, “Reading A Long Way Gone is like…”. She wrote: “How did he survive? Given
what Beah went through. The author is saying we are able to endure whatever is put
before us and go on.” It was interesting to me that Laurie fell back on a cliché in her
response and I wondered how much she was getting out of the independent reading.
Laurie’s golden line was from page 85 of the text: “It was then that we realized
that Saidu had left us,” which referred to the same scene Jonathon had noted. She chose
an article titled, “Questions for Sierra Leone Hostages” from the BBC News, but her
summary of the article and the connection between the article and the memoir were not
clearly written, and they were one sentence each. Laurie didn’t respond to the CERA
questions. My guess is that Laurie isn’t regularly reading the Beah memoir.
CERA #4: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe
Laurie’s TttT with Justice Stevens’ writing for the majority indicated she was
focusing on key points: her notes were summaries and questions about the meaning of
words. There isn’t evidence that she was able to find the key details. On her CERA, she
wrote that she thought the reading was pretty easy and that she understood it well enough
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to write the assignment. She didn’t have any questions. The strategies she used to
understand the reading were, again, to read and reread and to look up definitions. On the
essay, Laurie received a CR-. Her summary of the case was strong, but her analysis was
superficial, which was in keeping, I think, with her TttT comments on only major points.
End of the Semester Reading Survey
Laurie entered the class feeling she was a very good reader and she left feeling the
same. She rated herself very high as a reader of school texts. To understand difficult
text, Laurie continued to read slowly and “reread the sections I did not understand.” She
added that she now TttT. Laurie’s response to the first question in the survey interested
me because it was only vaguely responsive to the question. The question was “At the
beginning of the semester, I asked you to write your personal reading history. I’d like
you to reflect and write about your reading now, after English 101A.” Laurie wrote: “I
enjoy reading real estate investment books like how to become a Real Estate Millionaire
by Dean Grazzo.”
Summary
Laurie earned a CR in English 101A, but I wasn’t confident that she developed
her ability to read difficult academic texts, despite her belief that she could. My sense is
that more than anything, Laurie’s lack of organization and time management skills got in
her way. She sometimes felt overwhelmed, getting caught up in the details so that she
would lose her focus and fail to see the connections. While I like that she is confident as
a reader, and I don’t want to shake her confidence, I worry that I have not been able to
get through her organization and time management challenges to help her reading
development. Even so, she participates in class and demands that her peers focus on the
questions at hand, because they are questions she wants answered.
Nathan
Nathan, a recent high school graduate and native speaker of English who has lived
in CA all his life, was in his first year at Chabot and English 101A was his first English
class. He is an administration of justice major who hopes to transfer, and at the time he
was enrolled in English 101A, he was also enrolled in AJ, math, and history courses for a
total of 15 units—19 if his English 101A units are counted. He was working part-time
and mentioned he has difficulty with time management and staying organized. His
favorite book is The Great Gatsby, which I expect he read in high school. In response to
the question, “Describe a time you learned something well. How did you learn it?”
Nathan wrote: “In math class, we learned the Pythagorean Theorem. I learned that
concept quickly and I was hecka happy about that so I just got very good at it.” (Nothing
like quick success to motivate.) Nathan rated himself as a good reader of academic texts.
CERA #1: Luis Cardenas’s Career Possibilities
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Like Laurie, Nathan began his reading with the assignment and making a note of
what the task would be. He then underlined key points related to the task and
summarized information that might be important to consider. He went beyond Laurie
and Jonathon, however, by interpreting some of the information in the text. He took mere
factual information about the teachers’ complaining about their low pay and interpreted
“a concern with teaching is the low salary.”
Nathan misread one line; the word “resigned” threw him off. The line was:
“…he did not expect to find a full-time teaching job in his hometown and had resigned
himself to finding some sort of part-time job and working for several years as a
substitute.…” Nathan wrote: “…[he] resigned as a full-time teacher in his hometown
and became a substitute.”
Nathan’s summary of what he read was much more detailed than either Laurie’s
or Jonathon’s. In his response to the kinds of things happening in his mind as he read, he
wrote: “I was checking for important facts and main ideas that would prove which option
would be the best.” He wrote that TttT helped him understand the reading because it
caused him to slow down and take notes. He found the reading easy.
Nathan’s first CERA indicated he was already beginning to focus on his reading,
in that he identified a purpose, noted key ideas in relation to the task, and he wrote a
brief but thorough summary. He did not identify any difficult parts of the text and did not
immediately catch the miscue noted above, however.
Nathan earned a solid C on the essay he wrote on Luis Cardenas’s career
possibilities. He had passages with choppy sentences, but he brought in information from
the text to develop his recommendation.
CERA #2: Lavonne Williams Working Future
Though the assignment was not included in this TttT activity, Nathan used the
title of the article to guess the assignment: “Lavonne has to make a big decision?” He
then summarized key points on the page he was given to read, points that he guessed
might be important to completing the writing assignment. His summary of the page he
read was vague, restating the decision Lavonne Williams needed to make rather than
focusing on the information on the page. The kinds of things happening in his mind as he
read this involved organizing the information for the upcoming task: “When I was
reading, I was thinking about the pros and cons of becoming a manager. I was also
thinking about how work will affect her schooling. He identified TttT as the only
strategy he applied to understand this easy text. The following question Nathan asked
was interesting, given his guess that the writing assignment would involve making a
recommendation to Lavonne about whether to take a promotion at work or continue with
her schooling. He asked: “What choice did Lavonne choose and why did she pick it?”
Optimistically, I am hoping he was engaged with the page of text he had read and was
wondering about the outcome of the Lavonne’s story.
I believe Nathan is still focusing on his reading. He seems to have learned how to
go about passing an English class. Jonathon and Laurie had not made this connection by
this time in the semester.
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CERA #3 and Related Activities
Nathan chose pages 95-100 of A Long Way Gone for this CERA., and his
summary was accurate. I was pleased to see that Nathan was using another strategy to
aid his comprehension; he was visualizing and connecting to himself, writing: “I was
visualizing Beah and his friends running through the bushes and how it must have
looked. I visualized them sitting in the coffee fields afraid of the rebels.” He found the
selection easy to read.
Nathan used the sentence starter in his response, writing “Reading A Long Way
Gone is like I’m there in each chapter. This book is more interesting than the case studies
because you get to follow the story and the events that take place. I got into the reading
because of the emotions in the book and how it makes me feel. Reading A Long Way
Gone is fun because I kind of get lost in it.” Nathan is having the reading experience that
I hoped for with the independent reading.
In describing his reading of the case studies, Nathan described them as problems
that could be resolved by weighing the evidence and coming to a conclusion.
Nathan chose a current event article on human rights violations in Sierra Leone,
making the straightforward connection on the violence described in Beah’s memoir with
the human rights violations described in the article.
Nathan is progressing toward taking control of his reading.
CERA #4: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe
For some reason, Nathan did not turn in his TttT with this CERA, so I have only
the CERA itself available. His summary indicates that he struggled with the reading. He
writes: “The prayers at schools is affecting the Establishment Clause,” for example,
indicating that he knows the topic, but he isn’t getting the focus of the reading. His
focus is on the writing assignment and he notes that he felt he got enough information
about the reading from the class discussion in order to write the paper. He fell back on
stating that TttT helped his understanding. Indeed, his grade on the essay was NC, since
he earned only 50 percent of the total points possible. Though he said the reading was
“not too hard,” I’m not sure he really grasped the majority opinion written by Justice
Stevens.
With this challenging reading, Nathan reverted back to the limited strategies he
had available to him at the beginning of the semester. He reminds me of myself when I
was skiing. I was a fairly good intermediate skier, but when I accidentally got on an
advanced slope, I went back to snowplowing, trying to not die.
End of the Semester Reading Survey
Nathan indicated that he felt he had improved in reading over the semester
because he learned he could slow down to make sure he understood what is going on. He
particularly found TttT helpful because it led him to question the text. He used TttT and
highlighting as two major strategies in reading for his history class. He ranked himself as
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a “usually ok” reader of academic texts. No longer did he identify time management and
organization as his two major challenges in school. Now he noted reading and keeping
focused as his challenges.
Summary
Nathan has taught me a lot about my teaching this semester. My using the RA
routines to scaffold reading did help Nathan progress in his reading development. My
sense is that he progressed more than Jonathon and Laurie did, even though he indicated
less assurance as a reader than they did. Nathan ended the semester aware of the
challenges of academic reading and is, therefore, positioned to continue to develop.
I needed, though, to help him and all the students identify areas of difficulty and
broaden their strategies. A reading strategies list, which I was reluctant to use because a
colleague mentioned that students tended to take it literally and try to apply every
strategy to every situation, may have helped.
Denis
A recent high school graduate, Denis was in his first semester at Chabot and
English 101A was his first English class. Although his first language is Russian, he has
lived in the U.S. seven years, and doesn’t identify himself as needing ESL classes beyond
those he took in middle school.
Denis had not yet identified a major, but he wants to get his associates degree and
transfer. His goal for English 101A was to “have fun and make sure to study.” In
addition to English 101A, Denis was enrolled in 10 units: astronomy, algebra, and a
psychology-counseling course. With 14 units total, he was busy, but he did not work
outside the home.
He did not indicate that reading for school was hard for him, but he also did not
have a favorite book. His response to “Describe a time you learned something well.
How did you learn it?” was: “Driving. At first I was afraid to drive because I thought I
could crash a car, and my dad taught me how to drive. I practiced a lot to improve my
driving.”
CERA # 1: Luis Cardenas’s Career Possibilities
In his TttT, Denis underlined a lot and wrote margin notes that summarized the
text, especially the pros and cons of each job available to Luis. Denis was clearly using
the TttT to prepare for the writing assignment.
The summary in his CERA focused on the main ideas related to the writing
assignment. He wrote: “Luis wants to become a teacher but he couldn’t find work for
awhile. Then he was offered a position in teaching and becoming a commercial loan
officer but there are benefits in each of the offers. He needs to choose one of them and
become something in his life.”
When describing what was happening in his mind when he read the case study,
Denis indicated that he was confused about which job Luis should choose. “ Luis (italics
mine) needs to think carefully about what he wants to be.”
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To understand the reading, Denis read slowly and carefully, and “pointed out
some things from the reading.” He noted the reading was easy and he understood it well
enough to do the writing assignment.
This first CERA indicates that Denis is noticing his reading and focusing on the
writing assignment.
He earned only 65 percent on his essay, for, although he cited the facts from the
reading, Denis did not show how the facts related to Luis’ career choice.
CERA #2: Lavonne Williams Working Future
Denis did not do the second CERA.
CERA #3 and Related Activities
Denis wrote his CERA on pages 114-117 of A Long Way Gone. His summary of
the pages, however, focused on only one event; he did not summarize all three pages.
His response to what was happening in his mind as he read the text indicated that
Denis was visualizing, I think. He wrote: This is horrifying as a child going to war and
seeing gruesome things. The description was very good and in my mind I made up what
was happening.” He noted that he found the text easy to understand and that he read it
slowly until he came to action parts, which he read faster.
Denis didn’t respond to the “Reading A Long Way Gone is like” assessment. He
did try asking a question about the book that might lead to some insight into a theme,
something I had modeled for the students by brainstorming with them words, images
concepts that came to mind when they thought about the text and then choosing one of
the resulting items and asking a “why” or “how” question about it. Denis asked: “Why
did Beah fear of (sic) his future?” His answer was: “People don’t know what the future
holds because anything could change their future at any moment. The future is changed
by people or things around them.” I was struck that Denis didn’t connect his answer with
the text.
Denis’s article related to the Beah memoir was by Tina Moore, “Family Talk
Heals Scars of War.” His summary of the article was brief, highlighting only the point
apparent in the title. His connection to Beah was somewhat off: “Ishmael tried to forget
about his family’s death, but he couldn’t talk to anyone so he can’t forget about his
family.” In the text, it’s clear that Beah’s family was murdered. He had opportunities to
talk about this and other horrors he experienced as a child soldier with his uncle and with
the counselors and, in particular, a nurse at the rehabilitation center, and Beah describes
in the text how the nurse, especially, was able to help him open up. Eventually, Beah did
learn to cope with the trauma.
CERA #4: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe
Denis TttT with the minority opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
He indicated the reading was confusing at first because of the “lawyer language,” but as
he read, he began to understand the text. He found the article “not too hard” and he felt
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he understood it well enough to do the writing assignment, but he hoped for more class
discussion.
His summary, however, focused on just two points in the text; Denis was not able
to summarize the key points of the minority’s argument. He also remained confused
about when “minority” referred to the justices who didn’t agree with the majority’s
opinion and when “minority” referred to the people whose faith was other than Christian.
His TttT echoed these confusions, since, again, Denis focused on summarizing the
points in the text rather than focusing on difficult passages and noting what was going on
in his mind as he read this very difficult text. He is functioning still at the top of the
metacognitive funnel.
Denis’s essay on this case essentially summarized various sections of the case.
He tried to pull it all together in the concluding paragraph, but, instead of showing how
the majority’s argument was the more valid, he personalized the issue, writing that he
thought Santa Fe Independent School District was wrong, and that they were trying to
outsmart the Supreme Court. He received NC on the essay.
End of the Semester Reading Survey
Denis indicated he had improved his reading and writing skills in English 101A,
in part because he used “Talking to the Text” and in part because he “read carefully.” He
added that going over the case studies in class was most helpful to him when the reading
was difficult, indicating to me that he hadn’t develop reading strategies for handling
difficult texts independently. He ranked himself as a good reader of academic texts.
Summary
Denis never really engaged in a metacognitive conversation, relying instead on
already-established practices for getting through school. He focused on the assignment,
read as best he could to get information he could write into his essays, came to class
every day, listened to the discussion, and participated with his peers in figuring out the
reading and the essays.
Discussion of Semester’s Observations
While I was disappointed with the pass rate of my English 101A students this
semester, I did accomplish one of my goals. The students I studied closely did appear to
develop a better sense of how the two types of text we studied—case studies and the
memoir—were organized. They began to recognize patterns in the two genres.
In retrospect, I realize my goal statement for the class was flawed: there is way
too large a gap between “give the students access to their reading processes” and “apply
their reading to problem solving.” I needed to much more carefully plan for all that
comes between recognition of process and problem solving.
I engaged the students in too few strategies for solving reading problems.
Students didn’t identify specific reading problems to solve very often, perhaps because
the early cases were easy to read and by the time they came to the more difficult reading,
they looked for other ways to get the information they needed to accomplish their writing
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assignments. I focused the students too much on solving the dilemma posed by the
inquiries before I had laid the groundwork for them to “move through the metacognitive
funnel.” It’s becoming a delicate balance I need to achieve—helping the students
become more proficient and independent readers, and, at the same time, helping them
apply their reading in order to write their essays.
Even so, I am able to answer my inquiry question based on this semester’s
observations. I regularly and intentionally involved students in metacognitive routines,
especially TttT, CERA, and think/pair/share, and I did observe increased participation by
the students in class. Their perceptions of themselves as readers/learners changed for
some of them. Those who indicated slightly less confidence in themselves as academic
readers seem to realize that academic reading is a complex task. Though few of the
students were questioning in deep and interesting ways, most of them were asking better
questions by the end of the semester than they were at the beginning. Twenty-eight
students stayed in the class through the entire semester, and 24 persisted to another
semester in college.
My plan for better achieving the balance between reading and writing instruction,
practice, and learning is to more consistently engage the students in more metacognitive
routines, providing additional scaffolding, for example, for metacognitive journals,
effective use of T-charts, prereading activities that involve some reading of the text,
unlinking TttT with the writing assignment at first, and keeping TttT focused on the four
dimensions of the metacognitive conversation. I also want to be certain that the routines
include students’ identification of difficult text and strategies for dealing with the
difficulty.
Two of the students I studied closely provided insight into how I can better
support their learning in their descriptions of how they learned something: both indicated
they learned by doing with an “expert” mentor available to help them. In other words,
the apprenticeship model worked for them.
As I become more proficient at Reading Apprenticeship, I am beginning to see
more clearly where and how I can improve my own teaching in order to better support
my students’ learning. Even though fewer of my students were able to pass my Fall
semester English 101A than usually do, they taught me a lot about my need to plan better,
to be more consistent in the routines I introduce, and to provide my students with
experiences that help them make the specific reading/writing connections they need to
make.
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