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Supportive digital resources are key to supporting educators' pedagogic practices in teaching children to be literate. But locating suitable resources can be confusing, with as claims about products being educational, aligned with curriculum outcomes, and even as 'silver bullets'. In Australia, a lack of specificity in national and state curriculum guidelines about resource selection creates inconsistencies within and across schools. We investigate how teacher-selected digital resources are used in early childhood classrooms to support literacy learning. Drawing on three independent Australian classroom-based studies, we share three examples of children engaging with digital resources. Together, they show that not all digital resources promote active and engaged literacy learning in meaningful and socially interactive contexts. We propose principles for selecting digital resources to promote playful, scaffolded, and exploratory literacy learning.

Classroom spaces are complex social worlds where people interact in mul­tifaceted ways with spaces and materials. Classrooms are carefully designed agents for socialisation; however, the complexity and richness of learning experiences are partly determined by the teacher. This chapter draws from sociocultural perspectives to consider processes of thinking and learning as distributed and mediated across people and resources within the learning space. We argue that learning and well­being cannot be separated as students activate their social and emotional literacies when navigating the classroom environment. Drawing on data drawn from an ethno­graphic study of classrooms located in a community of high poverty, we critique how teachers describe their classroom spaces and selection of resources to facilitate their teaching of writing. We illustrate how geographies of place, movement and resources, interact with, and expand the social dimensions of classroom spaces.

Examining how young children learn to write is increasingly important as global society moves further towards a knowledge economy, where the production of texts of various kinds is an increasingly ubiquitous practice in everyday life and work. While there has been recent policy and practice focus on children's writing performance in standardised tests, in this article, the authors focus on what can be learned by listening to children's voices as they are engaged in 'draw and talk' methodologies. While children's drawings have a material reality, they are also representations of children's perceptions of their experiences with learning to write. In this article, the authors explore the processes, practices and relationships involved in learning to write, depicted in children's drawings when they are asked to draw themselves learning to write. The authors identify representations of writing, evident in the children's drawings focusing the relational, the material and the spatial elements of writing

While it is acknowledged that mastery of constrained literacy skills is a predictor of later literacy proficiency, Paris (2005) observes that no research has found it to be a causal relationship. That is, no correlation exists between early mastery of skills such as phonic knowledge and later literacy achievement. Of course, mastery of the constrained skills is necessary, but only in that it allows us to develop increasingly unconstrained, complex and contextualised skills for living rich literate lives.

That an educator should read texts aloud to children is a cornerstone of literacy pedagogy. And although it is well established that reading aloud to children occurs frequently across educational contexts, less clear is the ways those unique contexts shape the text choices, teaching strategies and expectations for children's engagement with these literacy learning experiences. The findings shared in this paper sit within a larger study examining the changing literacy demands for learners across their schooling years. The paper examines the literacy learning demands during acts of reading aloud as they were offered in two pre-school settings (prior-to-school) and two Kindergarten classrooms (the first year of formal primary schooling). Analyses of classroom observations and teacher semi-structured interview transcripts through the interactions, the time structures, the use of space and of resources illustrate Bernstein's theory of visible and invisible literacy learning pedagogies evident in these representations of reading aloud. Considered in the paper are implications for children when pedagogical decisions constrain and enable early literacy learning. The paper contributes to existing understandings about early literacy learning by arguing for greater clarity in the ways the teaching of reading is positioned and articulated for children.

Teaching relationships between sounds and the ways they are represented as letters and letter clusters - phonics - is foundational pedagogical work in the first years of school. It sits alongside teaching comprehension, phonemic and morphemic awareness, vocabulary development, fluency, and critical thinking to name a few. While there is agreement that the purpose of teaching reading and writing is to develop the ability to make meaning, it seems there is always debate about how this is achieved. A current focus is the so-called "phonics debate", a response to the Australian Governments proposed "phonics screener". This standardised assessment draws on the UK model where children are scored while reading "real" and "pseudo" words in a list. Children who fail are the target of an intervention using synthetic phonics, an approach that addresses letter sound relationships in isolation from the act of reading and writing continuous text. This article shares accounts of explicit and systematic teaching of phonics in early years classrooms. It explores implications of these practices within current debates in an effort to reiterate the expertise of teachers and acknowledge their ability to identify and respond to their students' learning progress without taking on another standardised test.

Advertisements are persuasive texts designed to communicate ideas explicitly and implicitly through visual grammar. Counter-advertisements allow students to engage with advertising texts as creators rather than consumers and challenge media messages. Based in critical media literacy theory, this paper explores how elementary students interpret and redesign advertisements to create meaning. This study focused on the messages upper-elementary school students created about alcohol following a 10-lesson alcohol media literacy programme. Text from the counter-advertisements (n = 161) was analysed using discourse analysis. The counter-advertisements were also content analysed for message content, persuasion strategies and production components using a media literacy framework. The content of male-targeted, female-targeted and gender-neutral ads was compared using chi-square analyses. The four main themes identified in the discourse and content analysis were 'vomit', 'sick', 'danger' and 'poison', highlighting an emphasis on short-term consequences of alcohol misuse. Sensory (un)appeal was the most frequently used persuasion strategy, while objects/symbols and colour were the most frequently used production components. The use of these devices differed depending upon the advertisement's target gender. Involving elementary students in the redesign of advertisements is a powerful pedagogy that enables students to demonstrate their understanding of media literacy practices and create health promotion messages.

Early childhood is a precious and sacred time when learning and developmental foundations for future succes are eslabli hed. It is widely acknowledged that par­ent are the child' first educator (Stephen er al. 2013) and U1at families "play an li:nportant role in providing children with opportunities Lo acces and use digital tools at home, which in turn influences their learning' (Neumann 2014, p. 112). The ho.me environment is often the fir t context where children acce and experience digital technologies. It has been the focus of research (e.g. Pahl 2010; Marsh 2006) with strong argument for the need to continue to examine these context to under­stand how technology can "enrich rather than hinder children's play experiences" (Johnson and Christie 2009, p. 285). With increased access to the Internet in many homes, comes increased variety in the types of technological activities available to children. The importance of the decisions made by families regarding digital tech­nologies is clear. Indeed, "it is parents who 'are the real experts in their toddlers' use of screen technologies" (Holloway et al. 2015, p. 1 ). Additionally, it is noteworthy to mention that when we talk about families, it is not only parents who influence young children's experience with digital technologies but also other family members such as older siblings (e.g. Matsumoto et al. 2015).

Objective. Alcohol media literacy (AML) programs have achieved positive results for alcohol prevention; however, gender may moderate program effectiveness. This study investigated gender differences for an Australian AML intervention. Method. Fifth and sixth graders (N = 165), allocated to an intervention or wait-list control group, participated in an AML program. Student questionnaires were administered at three time points. Results. The intervention resulted in significantly higher media deconstruction skills but did not lead to less preference for branded merchandise or greater understanding of persuasive intent, and these effects did not differ by gender. Gender differences were present in social norms for drinking and alcohol expectancies. Conclusions. AML education likely has appeal and benefit to both genders as it connects with students' lifeworlds. Social norms may be more difficult to shift for males due to a more ingrained drinking culture. Future research could explore contextual factors responsible for gender differences.

Standardised educational assessments are now widespread, yet their development has given comparatively more consideration to what to assess than how to optimally assess students' competencies. Existing evidence from behavioural studies with children and neuroscience studies with adults suggest that the method of assessment may affect neural processing and performance, but current evidence remains limited. To investigate the impact of assessment methods on neural processing and performance in young children, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify and quantify the neural correlates during performance across a range of current approaches to standardised spelling assessment. Results indicated that children's test performance declined as the cognitive load of assessment method increased. Activation of neural nodes associated with working memory further suggests that this performance decline may be a consequence of a higher cognitive load, rather than the complexity of the content. These findings provide insights into principles of assessment (re)design, to ensure assessment results are an accurate reflection of students' true levels of competency.

This article examines the resources, tools, and opportunities children enact as they engage with teacher-devised writing experiences within their classroom space. We begin with discussion about classroom writing time from the perspective of both the teacher and children of one Grade 1/2 composite class. We also reveal resources within the classroom space to consider the expertise available during writing times. We then examine a 5-week unit that focused on multimodal text construction. Using optical flow computer vision analysis to examine the movement of children during four video-recorded independent writing instances, we provide commentary about how the classroom writing experiences have been interpreted as the use of space, resources, and interactions come to the forefront. In taking this approach, this article will explore learning to write from a sociomaterial perspective, as we investigate the operation of the classroom.

Classrooms are complex environments. Ethnography can help researchers understand these complexities as they gather information by watching and talking with people, reading available reports and records and mapping out the environment. This case adds to existing literature on ethnography as we share our own experiences of what we refer to as classroom-based ethnography. Ethnography is sometimes overlooked in educational research due to its time-intensive nature and the general ‘messiness’ involved in collecting and making sense of data. However, when ethnography is applied to classroom-based settings, researchers are able to interrogate and explicate the complex material and immaterial processes that occur for educators and children. Methodological questions might include the following: How might you pose your research questions? How might the cyclic nature of ethnography ‘work’ in classrooms? How can you collect the most appropriate data? How do you analyse these data forms? How do you report back to the field? Without offering definitive answers, this case begins to offer some clarity by describing how we have responded to these questions in our own work: what we did, the difficulties we encountered and insights generated from these types of data and analysis. This case provides an account of how we three have planned, managed and analysed ethnographic data in classroom-based settings.

Storytelling is a practice that enables children to apply their literacy skills. This article shares a collaborative literacy strategy devised to enable children to create multimodal stories about their familiar school environment. The strategy uses resources, including the children's own drawings, images from Google Maps, and the Puppet Pals Director's Pass app, to leverage children's experiences in their school and community contexts for a meaningful and authentic literacy learning opportunity. The children use both paper-based materials and digital technologies to create multimodal stories. The process and work samples are provided to illustrate the strategy in practice.

Background: Alcohol media literacy programs seek to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of alcohol advertising on children's drinking intentions and behaviours through equipping them with skills to challenge media messages. In order for such programs to be effective, the teaching and learning experiences must be tailored to their specific cultural context. Media in the Spotlight is an alcohol media literacy program aimed at 9 to 12 year old Australian children. This study evaluates the process and implementation of the program, outlining the factors that facilitated and inhibited implementation. From this evaluation, a pedagogical framework has been developed for health professionals implementing culturally responsive programs in school settings. Methods: Process measures included: semi-structured interviews with teachers before and after the program was implemented (n = 11 interviews), program evaluation questionnaires completed by children (n = 166), lesson observations completed by teachers (n = 35 observations), and reflective journal entries completed by the researcher (n = 44 entries). A thematic analysis approach was used to analyse all of the data sets using NVivo. Inductive coding was used, whereby the findings were derived from the research objectives and multiple readings and interpretations of the data. Results: Five key pedagogical considerations were identified that facilitated implementation. These were: connecting to the students' life worlds to achieve cultural significance; empowering students with real-world skills to ensure relevance; ensuring programs are well structured with strong connections to the school curriculum; creating developmentally appropriate activities while providing a range of assessment opportunities; and including hands-on and interactive activities to promote student engagement. Three potential inhibitors to implementing the alcohol media literacy program in upper-elementary school classrooms were identified. These inclu

Reading and creating stories is a longstanding pedagogical approach to literacy learning in elementary school classrooms because stories offer personal and human experiences to which students can relate and respond. Stories, including digital forms such as short films, offer accounts of what it is to belong to a community and its worldviews and practices. Opportunities to identify, challenge, and respond to these views in the creation of their own texts develop in students broadened understandings of themselves and others. This teaching tip reports on Australian grade 6 students responding to messages they identified in a short film. The students used iPads to plan, create, and share stories that convey alternative perspectives on the messages they identified.

This poster presents part of a larger research which aims to understand young children's digital play in relation to their imaginative play - a major force of psychological development in the early years. The poster will be of interest to DiGRA/FDG audience as it focuses their attention on the need for theoretical and research based criteria to appraise developmentally sound apps suitable for preschoolers (3-5 years of age).

The increased availability of tablet technologies in many homes and early childhood educational settings has transformed play-time and the subsequent opportunities that emerge for literacy learning. What children do with the digital applications (apps) on these technologies demands our attention, particularly as we consider the ever-increasing market of apps marketed to enhance the basic literacy skills. While there are varying degrees of quality amongst available apps, some apps have potential to foster children's play and language development in unexpected and interesting ways. As educators, we need to acknowledge the role 'digital play' can play in our pedagogical interactions and the possibilities these offer for literacy learning. To do this, we need to examine ways that children engage with technology as they learn to read, write, listen, and communicate. This paper argues children's digital play offers teachers new opportunities to support, inform, reform, or transform the literacy with experiences we encourage children to participate.

The face of early childhood education continues to change. In Australia, the national early childhood guidelines, Early Years Learning Framework (2009) and the National Quality Framework have articulated and defined the work of early years' educators in a range of areas, including literacy. Both frameworks state that their aim is to maintain the focus of the Development Strategy provide all Australian children with an educational foundation to support them throughout their lives. In this climate, and some years after the implementation of these guidelines, it seems timely to examine the literacy programmes, practices and perspectives of prior-to-school environments as they prepare children to transition to the early years of primary school. This paper reports on the findings of a study that aimed to explore the nature of literacy programmes, practices and perspectives, and in particular how such programmes support educators and children in one prior-to-school setting, as they prepare to transition to the first year of formal schooling. Analysis of the experiences offered in prior-to-school centres revealed a number of learning experiences that illustrated Bernstein's notion of visible and invisible literacy learning pedagogies. It was found that viewing these learning experiences along a continuum from invisible to visible pedagogical practices was a useful framework for categorising the range of experiences in which the children engaged. It is suggested that such a continuum would be a useful framework for both prior-to-school and kindergarten teachers to better support children as they transition across settings. However, we must add a caveat, namely, that such a framework should not lead to increase pressure on prior-to-school settings to increase 'visible pedagogical practices' in order to 'teach' literacy skills.

Objective: Alcohol media literacy programs in the United States have increased students' media literacy skills and lowered pre-drinking behaviour. In Australia, no such programs have yet been implemented or evaluated. This pilot study aimed to examine the feasibility and potential impact of an alcohol media literacy program for Australian upper-primary school children. Methods: Thirty-seven Year 5 and 6 students (aged 10-12) from one school in the Sydney region participated in 10 one-hour media lessons. Teacher interviews, student exit slips, teacher observations and a researcher reflective journal were analysed to examine the implementation process, while a pre- and post-questionnaire was analysed to measure outcome. Results: Key factors in implementation were the importance of school context; attainment of English and PDHPE learning outcomes to differing extents; program's useability provided flexibility; perceived complexity and achievability of the lessons and program's engagement and relevance for the students. The program significantly increased media literacy skills and understanding of persuasive intent; decreased interest in alcohol branded merchandise; and lowered perception of drinking norms. Conclusion and implications: An Australian alcohol media literacy program for upper-primary school children appears feasible, and has potential to lead to measurable outcomes.

In this article we introduce a heuristic for orientating to the language content of the Australian Curriculum: English. Our pedagogical heuristic, called 'Playing with Grammar', moves through three separate but interwoven stages: (i) an introduction to the learning experience, (ii) a focus on learning, and (iii) an application of new knowledge where students read and/or write with grammar in mind. We draw on aspects of Bernstein's sociological theories to consider the implications of keeping the content of the Language, Literature and Literacy strands together or apart. We also theorise different pedagogical approaches where teachers or learners control the sequence and pacing of content within the learning experience.

Perhaps you've met Patrick? Patrick (pseudonym) is in Year 5. He is a reader who struggles to cope with the reading demands of the Year 5 classroom. His teacher reports he is reluctant to read any genre of text, refuses to read aloud with the teacher or with another support person and becomes quite agitated when he encounters something he does not know in his reading. The reading challenges Patrick faces are more common in an emergent reader, but perhaps more difficult to address with an older reader where ineffective practices have become learned. In this paper, we share the case of Patrick, a Year 5 student participant in our EMMA project. EMMA is an acronym combining eye movement technology (EM) with miscue analysis (MA), an established reading assessment for understanding the way a reader orchestrates the reading process. Here, we consider what we can learn from the analysis of Patrick's miscues, from the retell accompanying that reading, and what is added when we have the opportunity to understand the ways Patrick uses his eyes as part of that meaning making process.

Research plays a powerful role in shaping effective teaching and learning experiences. By demystifying the research process, Research for Educators assists readers to develop and use research skills in a range of educational contexts. This introductory text steps the reader through the research process from identifying an initial question for research through to communicating the findings. It encourages educators to become discerning consumers of research, as well as active participants, in order to make informed decisions about classroom practices. Using examples from their own work in a range of educational fields, the authors explore the practices required to conduct quality research that is valid, reliable, ethical useful and socially responsible. Throughout, they emphasise the link between reflective practice and being a researcher in the classroom.

This chapter has been co-authored with Lisa Kervin, University of Wollongong. It considers the importance of building on children's innate creativity and imagination. This aspect will be discussed alongside the role of imaginative play in language and literacy development. The relationship between traditional play and digital play as a new way of playing with language is also explored.

Objective: A 10-lesson alcohol media literacy program was developed, underpinned by the message interpretation processing model, inoculation theory, and constructivist learning theory, and was tailored to be culturally relevant to the Australian context. This program aimed to increase students' media deconstruction skills and reduce intent to drink alcohol. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in achieving these goals through a short-term quasi-experimental trial. Method: Elementary schools were assigned to either the intervention group (83 students) or a wait-list control group (82 students). Student questionnaires were administered at three time points (baseline, after the intervention group completed the program, and after the wait-list control group completed the program) to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Results: The intervention and wait-list control groups reported significantly higher media deconstruction skills as a result of the intervention. Both groups reported significantly lower social norms, whereas the wait-list control group reported significantly lower positive alcohol expectancies. There were no significant changes to self-efficacy to refuse alcohol, preference for alcohol-branded merchandise, and understanding of persuasive intent as a result of the intervention. Conclusions: To date, the majority of alcohol media literacy studies have been conducted in the United States and have focused on deconstructing television and print-based ads. This evaluation provides evidence that an alcohol media literacy program that was developed for a specific cultural context, and that incorporates a broad range of multimodal advertisements, can have a positive impact on beliefs and attitudes that are known predictors/precursors of drinking behaviors.

This study builds on and contributes to research on digital play with young children. Previous research has examined digital play from different viewpoints, but no studies have specifically addressed young children's perspectives as they interact with applications (apps) that have been designed specifically for their age group. While our review of the literature provides insights from investigations of young children's perspectives, there is limited research on preschoolers' views on the apps designed for them by adults. In this article, we discuss young participants' perspectives on the apps that they engaged with in our research. In particular, we emphasise the importance of various contexts for digital play in relation to meaningful conversations and social interactions. Our findings provide insights about how children choose to engage in digital play and through this, pose implications for the design of apps.

In children's literary texts, ideologies aligning readers with discourses of certain communities often remain uncontested, potentially privileging those views and values over others. Critical literacy, therefore, is important so children can contest positions taken in literary texts and consider how their own texts in turn position others. This inquiry examined redesign as a pedagogical approach for developing critical literacy with 12 year old students as they deconstructed messages they identified in a short film and then reconstructed alternative viewpoints with new digital literary texts (redesigns). Findings revealed that the redesign cycle supported learners as they moved through a process of interpreting the text, critiquing ideologies they perceived and then working to imagine new perspectives and alternate viewpoints in their own literary text creations. This paper explores the implications for supporting learners with different critical literacy skills to develop those skills and express their understandings through the creation of digital literary texts.

Since digital technologies entered the realm of education, there has been strong debate as to whether they are appropriate, useful, or even harmful for young children. The concept of 'screen time' has been debated with concern (well supported by research) that sitting in front of a computer screen can be detrimental to children's posture, muscular development and body weight, as well as to their eyesight and attention span. Recommendations have suggested the exposure of preschoolers to computers should be limited to 20 minutes, and for those under 2, nil. Digital technologies are becoming increasingly mobile, making previous concerns about posture, obesity and screen 'radiation' redundant. Yet, there is no clear guidance about young children's appropriate usage of mobile technologies. This is worrisome given that tablet technologies are rapidly entering many households. There is evidence that children as young as 6 months old are becoming regular tablet users. Our current research focuses on young children's use of digital tablets. So far, it indicates that it is not the use of digital tablets themselves that is an issue. Rather, the concern is the quality of the apps children are exposed to, and the social contexts within which the apps are used.

As adults, what do we expect from children when we talk with them? Should we expect their close attention and active engagement in return? Do we wish that they'd put down their electronic device so we could talk with them without distractions? And how often do we stop to consider what we are modelling for them ourselves?

This paper reports on the digital writing practices of a Grade Three primary school student as he used an iPad to plan, produce and share digital texts. The case study acknowledges that writing is undergoing a period of great change in many classrooms and works to show how a student author has interpreted and produced digital texts with new technologies. In particular, the specific practices, digital materials and literacy concepts will be explicated through analyses of two digital texts created by this author. This focus acknowledges the ways texts can be planned, produced and shared using multiple modes and media. These social practices and the wider learning opportunities afforded through the flexible and recursive ways students produce text have yet to be fully explored. This paper also extends current understandings about digital writing practices through its examination of the connections between and among multiple apps as an author crafts digital text.

This chapter explores the 'marks' that children make in order to revisit the important relationship between drawing and emergent writing. It presents a case study of one child's drawings and the surrounding talk in order to offer insights for teachers of writing.

Creating text using digital resources presents new opportunities and challenges for what we know about the writing process. Drawing upon foundational research from Graves, Walshe, Smith and Calkins, we examine the process for creating text from the perspective of Emma, an eleven-year-old child from a Year 5 class.

Playing with toys has been an established part of early childhood education for many years. Educators and theorists agree that opportunities to engage in make-believe play provide a wide range of avenues for enhancing literacy practices in the early years as children make meaning of their surrounding contexts. The increased availability and accessibility of mobile digital technologies has seen children more frequently engage in screen-based or "digital" play, sometimes leaving behind traditional forms of make-believe play with physical objects in physical spaces. However, when combined traditional make-believe and digital play complement each other in providing a rich texture for making meaning. An instance of onscreen and offscreen play is deconstructed to show the meaning-making complexities for child participants. This paper examines four propositions associated with meaning making - space, mediation, materiality and embodiment (Burnett, Merchant, Pahl & Rowsell, 2014) to discuss the complex and diverse relationships between the immaterial and material experience in a literacy episode which combines onscreen and offscreen play. Reported herein are the ways that imaginative play and literacy practices are enriched in the environments which blend physical toys and digital experiences.

Professor Donald Graves' published research into how children learn to write revolutionised the teaching of writing in the 1980s, particularly for practitioners working in the early years of schooling. When Don passed away, in September 2010, he had written 26 books, numerous articles and spoken at many professional gatherings and conferences. He communicated with passion, reframed and raised learning expectations around student achievement and encouraged all educators to reflect powerfully and personally on their deepest teaching beliefs. To honour the importance of Donald Graves' contribution to the teaching profession, ALEA and PETAA support an annual Donald Graves Address. This address revisits key messages from Donald Graves' writings and research and draws connections with contemporary practice. This PETAA Paper, which takes in the 2015 Donald Graves Address by Associate Professor Lisa Kervin, identifies pertinent messages from Graves' work and considers what these might mean as children write with new technologies.

presented at The Inaugural Early Start Conference, 28-30 September 2015, Wollongong, Australia

Standards-referenced educational reform has increased the prevalence of standardized testing; however, whether these tests accurately measure students' competencies has been questioned. This may be due to domain-specific assessments placing a differing domain-general cognitive load on test-takers. To investigate this possibility, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify and quantify the neural correlates of performance on current, international standardized methods of spelling assessment. Out-of-scanner testing was used to further examine differences in assessment results. Results provide converging evidence that: (a) the spelling assessments differed in the cognitive load placed on test-takers; (b) performance decreased with increasing cognitive load of the assessment; and (c) brain regions associated with working memory were more highly activated during performance of assessments that were higher in cognitive load. These findings suggest that assessment design should optimize the cognitive load placed on test-takers, to ensure students' results are an accurate reflection of their true levels of competency.

Alcohol media literacy is an emerging field that aims to address the link between exposure to alcohol advertising and subsequent expectancies and behaviours for children and adolescents. The design, rigour and results of alcohol media literacy programmes vary considerably, resulting in a number of unanswered questions about effectiveness. To provide insight into some of these questions, a systematic literature review of alcohol media literacy studies was conducted. The review was guided by the following research question: What considerations are needed to develop an effective school-based alcohol media literacy programme? On the basis of a critical synthesis of 10 interventions (published in the period 1997 to May 2014), our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the descriptive, methodological and outcome characteristics of this small body of significant research. The review provides considerations for future alcohol media literacy programmes, including the need for an interactive pedagogical approach within the naturalistic school setting, implementation fidelity and a holistic approach to programme evaluation, a means for maintaining relevance, consideration of gender differences, relevance for an international audience and use of follow-up and longitudinal data.

This paper shares findings from part of a larger project exploring students' interpretations of children's literature during independent reading time. Examined in this paper are interpretations by students in Grade 4 (aged 9-10 years) about the messages conveyed in the almost wordless picture book 'Mirror' by author and artist Jeannie Baker. 'Mirror' shares a multicultural perspective on life through its portrayal through collage of the lives of two families living in different countries. Data were collected as semi-structured interviews and observations recorded as field notes. Chambers' (1994) 'Tell Me' framework informed the question schedule of the semi-structured interviews, which were designed to promote opportunities for students to share their interpretations following independent reading time. Emerging themes from data analysis are considered through critical literacy lens (Janks, 2010). Further, implications for the use of almost wordless picture books in classroom reading experiences are identified in connection with the development of children's cultural awareness and sensitivity (Short, 2003).