So, in short, they formed a book
study group, which is a powerful strategy we find,
and enjoyed learning more about their own reading processes.
In that pleasure, what happened?
Well, they started then to work together to build inferencing strategies
into their literacy work in every classroom, for every age group.
And the thing that we really loved, we've studied the practices
at this school quite a lot, is that they developed
there older students as reading inference coaches for their younger ones.
So, that they build, really, a reading community,
but not only that, they built a teaching
and learning community for all ages and stages.
And it will be possible for you, we would really encourage you, to watch
the video that that they made of their work called Learners in the Lead.
Because you can see the social and
emotional connections but also the intellectual connections,
as these young, rural learners help each other with their reading processes.
And what was the result?
Well, after the end of two years,
adults knew a tremendous amount about inferencing
and so did the young people.
They learned so much about it, that they
actually became a bit of a center of excellence,
that drew in, from a word
of mouth perspective, educators within driving distance
of the school, to come and see their work, and learn more themselves.
So, one anecdote related to that that was interesting to us is
an experienced primary teacher came and watched what the learners were able to do,
and exclaimed at the end the sentence - instead
of saying, wow, this is really fascinating and how powerful -
her observation was, "Learners this age should not be doing this,
and shouldn't be thinking in this way."
And we thought that was really interesting because I think with
an adaptive expertise mindset, you might have taken a pause and said, "I
wonder how this works, and I wonder how some of this repertoire
could be brought to my setting", but it was just so foreign to
what she'd experienced so far in her teaching,
that she found it difficult to absorb.
Hopefully, she had more chances to come and visit and see what was being created.