Teaching for Transfer August 2, 2017 Turn and talk about what you know about moving fish from one bowl to the next. What is needed to keep them alive?

What skill is easy for you? Think about something that you are an expert at… What was your learning curve? When were you able to apply this learning to new situations

What skill is still hard for you? Think about something that you still haven’t mastered. Why is it hard? What do you need to be successful with it?

What is your understanding of transfer? How do you teach for Transfer in your classroom?

“The heart of transfer lies with the adult, who must create instructional activities that enable children to recognize the transferability of their knowledge and its potential for working out new problems in different places.” ~Apprenticeship in Literacy, Dorn & Jones, 2012

Self Regulation Ability to guide Ability to monitor Ability to correct learning action for different purposes and across changing contexts. All of this with flexibility and independence.

Low road transfer... How do we define? Based on what we see in the video. What is happening? Why was the baby successful?

Low Road Transfer Takes place when the initial learning task and the transfer task are so similar that the learner automatically applies his initial learning to the transfer task. Example: you initially learn to drive a Chevy sedan, drive it for a while, and then buy a Ford pickup. You can probably drive the Ford with little effort or thought.

Conditions for Low Road Transfer to occur The skill needs to be automatic, requires no conscious effort. (repeated readings: rate, accuracy and prosody improve enough that fluency becomes automatic and transfers to other texts). The skill must be practiced in varied contexts (encounter a word in a book, use it in a written review, see it in the history text, hear it on the evening news). The context of practice and the context of application must be similar (use of authentic text as opposed to workbook pages).

High Road Transfer Knowledge learned in one context is applied in a new context. More challenging and requires deliberate metacognition. The learner has to do some thinking and make a conscious effort to apply initial learning to the transfer task. Example: You initially learn to drive a Chevy sedan with automatic transmission and then buy a Honda with a manual transmission. Learning to drive a stick shift will require some thought and extra effort.

Article: Teaching for Transfer in the common Core Era Choose a reading strategy that you use often. TURN AND TALK - WHAT IS IT? WHY DO YOU THINK THAT YOU CAN APPLY IT TO THIS NEW TASK? Think about that reasoning as you read. Explain why you wouldn’t want to use a high road transfer with material that is new learning.

Think of your students… Using the Common Core targets, which do you think would transfer easily? Which do not? Copy of common core targets from Burke book - make and bring copies when decide which ones to use

Small group discussion Low Road Transfer targets High Road Transfer targets

Teaching for understanding (Wilhelm, 2008) 1. Make learning matter by asking the questions or posing the problems that led to the development of the taught knowledge in the first place. 2. Provide real and varied situations for students to learn in, and provide repeated practice in contexts of actual use. Web resources, drama, simulations, labs, and workshops all help in this regard. 3 implications of the research in cognitive science that can help us to teach for understanding. Wilhelm article….

Teaching for understanding 3. Refocus from retention of content to using content to do real work, thereby developing strategic capacity instead of just factual recall and skills. This moves learning from the schoolish to the toolish (Smith and Wilhelm, 2002). 4. Focus—do less to achieve more Wilhelm, 2008

The ultimate goal of intervention is to empower students to regulate their learning for task specific purposes. Left is student example from intervention. Right is student example from lit/comp class. Lessons were around text to self connections and how reader response ties into what we do with text. My purpose here was to have students make a "feeling" connection to pictures, then song lyrics (they are familiar with), then quotes from shared texts the students knew, then be able to transfer to their own work. Worked beautifully!

Students must understand that knowledge can be transferred to different contexts and for different purposes and goals.

Interventions that Work Dorn & Jones CIM is a framework for aligning instruction across classroom and supplemental settings. Transfer is facilitated as the student learns the new task in an environment with reduced distractions and tailored support, then applies the knowledge to environment with normal distractions and distributed support. CIM supports transfer

Teachers collaborate with one another to promote students’ transfer of knowledge across multiple settings. We need to let students in on the fact that we are learning in order to transfer that information to our learning in the future.

“Students depend on adults to observe what they know and to select appropriate materials and activities that help them realize that learning is generalizable” ~Apprenticeship in Literacy

How do we and how can we collaborate within our school to promote transfer? Share info about CER’s and the impact that this has had with common language

After their initial learning, What steps can you take to explain to your students when, where, how and why transfer is important?

Ask your students… Do you have evidence of what you’ve learned in intervention from (Writing, Reading, Social Studies, Math)? Do you have evidence of what you’ve learned in (Writing, Reading, Social Studies, Math) from intervention? Print and give copy of this slide

HOW DOES THE 10,000 HOUR RULE APPLY TO TRANSFER our learning this week?

Food for thought When we accept the low road, we miss the high road that leads to deep knowledge and masterful application. -Jeffrey Wilhelm “The Problem for Teaching for Transfer: Taking the Low Road or the High Road; May 2008, p 47)