An inquiry approach to literacy and science
We created these projects as part of a three-year professional inquiry into literacy in
science with our colleagues at the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd. The two
yearlong literacy routines we developed are based on Reading Apprenticeship, an
instructional framework offered by the Strategic Literacy Initiative (Schoenbach et al1999) to support middle and high school student literacy
in content areas. Reading Apprenticeship encourages
reading in classrooms as an active problem-solving
process. Students and teachers engage in a shared inquiry
into literacy by taking mental risks as they read together
and discuss their reading processes, confusions, and
methods of resolution. Creating a classroom climate that
supports inquiry is essential to both science and literacy
learning. This connection to inquiry made the Reading
Apprenticeship approach a natural fit in our science
classrooms (Schoenbach et al. 2003).
Yearlong metacognitive convers