Enjoying Pearson's keynote. Things that stood out for me:
Love the point he just made. People often mention that kids lack prior knowledge - but the more they comprehend, the more they BUILD knowledge. Today's new knowledge is tomorrow's prior knowledge.
Around Independent Reading - If we are going to do, need to make sure: * Kids have things to read * Kids DO read * Provide incentives, support, accountability…
Murphy and Hennssey's recent research on talk: *You get what you pay for, especially for critical thinking. If you focus on literal, that's what kids do. If you want them to be inferential, you need to set up these situations. And if you want them to think critically, it needs to be explicitly set up in the conversations you structure. * the effects on talk are more important for students in the bottom half of achievement distribution. *time matters - need to stay the course and give this time to take hold.
Accountable talk - kids and teachers asking students "what in the text made you think that?" (one of our mantras at DSC) That's what helps these conversations authentic and grounded in text.
Gradual release of responsibility
Vocabulary - build through experience, reading, talk and more talk...
It's REALLY important for kids to USE words to help remember them. We learned this in our development of Making Meaning Vocabulary as well.