notes from Manaiakalani wānanga - Woolf Fisher Research Summary

 Rebecca Jesson (slides) is asking us to consider what has the greatest likelihood to work for our students. What is likely to work for a child and what is working for that child? Look closely and interrogate our practice. Refine and review. 

executive function / inhibitory control - how children manage and regulate themselves. Important in reading.  making sure what you are doing is going to be successful for you. Reading with intent: 1. Purpose, 2. Learning Intentions, 3. Strategies.

If we don't have purpose for reading - will we care? (affective?) Learning intention telling children what to notice. Strategy that you think is important.

We think with language. background knowledge important underpinning of what we're reading. Avoid 'hodge-podge' vague collection and use connected text, layers, builds from one to another. Building unified theme. 

Knowledge of learners to influence text selection 'mirrors, windows and glass sliding doors'. Opportunities to be thinking about experiences in text - without having to live them. (as in Mantle of the Expert - 'rehearsing for reality')

Questioning - we are good at asking literal questions. Some open ended questions. If you don't plan for a higher order question, you don't get to higher order question. Or if saved til end, some learners may not get to them. Carefully plan how to get to them. 

Discussion - different to questioning. Teacher commonly using open ended questions but children use short answer response. Teacher leading/in control of questioning. Looking for pattern that goes around children rather than in and out from teacher (dialogic pedagogy). Discussion has higher effect size than questioning. Need to teach children to discuss and listen. Children have learned and practised q and a. Productive discussion must be deliberately taught. This really reinforces the learning some of us did with Susan Sandretto around dialogic pedagogy. How can we build on this?

Critical Literacy - thinking that goes on around evidence. evaluating power structures of text. forming opinions. assessing validity and accuracy of text. 

Engagement - choice, high interest texts, meaningful goals, social collaboration. Transfer strategies taking something you know and doing different things with it, creating with it - 0.86 effect size on learning.

Share - what is role of share? reflecting on learning, opportunities to think about what you learned, compare with what others learned - deeper learning, reciprocal, relational. Working memory - larger meaningful chunk more you can remember. 

Reading programmes - if our goal is for teachers and learners to become experts - how are our programmes doing this? Reading Recovery does this (for small number of our learners). Sharp Reading used with fidelity has potential to do this too. A further focus within Sharp Reading could be text selection and follow up learning activities including further texts, student choice, creativity, sharing and reflecting. Unfortunately our first year of Sharp Reading professional learning has been impacted greatly by Covid interruptions.