On February 2-3, 2012, the Strategic Literacy Initiative hosted a sold out annual Reading Apprenticeship™ Winter conference at the WestEd offices is Oakland. Nika Hogan and Cindy Hicks facilitated the conference, which was evenly split between “RA veterans” who have attended a Leadership Institute or a three-day seminar or have taken the online course “Reading Apprenticeship for Community College faculty,” and “guests” who are new to RA. Twenty-four California community college faculty received 3CSN scholarships to cover their registration and lodging, which further supported this robust learning and networking event.
Extremely useful. I have been exposed to many new and potentially useful ideas in my teaching. I am grateful that we have established a mechanism for collaborating as we attempt to implement these new practices.
On Thursday morning, “guest” attendees who had not yet taken part in RA professional development participated in a 3-hour introductory session on RA while “RA veterans” took part in focus groups on topics relevant to RA implementation in their setting.
On Thursday afternoon, all participants came together for two brand new workshops of urgent relevance to community college instructors. The first explored the relationship of the RA framework and professional development to accelerated curricula and pedagogy. We ended the day by examining various assessment tools that might be used to advance faculty inquiry into RA as an instructional approach in an “RA Assessment Toolkit” jigsaw activity.
On Thursday evening, many of us continued our conversations and networking at the Executive Inn and Suites’ Happy Hour. Also, Daryl Kinney, Network Coordinator for 3CSN, hosted a dinner for ESL faculty who you incorporating Reading Apprenticeship™ into their instruction.
Friday morning began with another brand new workshop, exploring the impact and implications of new technologies on Reading Apprenticeship™ approaches. The focus of the session was on sharing ideas about how to use technological innovations to support the RA framework, both in classroom and professional development settings.
Finally, on Friday afternoon, everybody had the opportunity to participate in two workshops:
- Question/ Answer Relationships (a framework for conceptualizing and encouraging independent questioning in the classroom), and
- Reciprocal Teaching (an instructional activity which scaffolds the students in becoming the teacher).
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