Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: Recently, I saw results of a meta-analysis that showed phonics instruction to have a much smaller effect size (.19) than many other approaches to reading instruction. Doesn’t that mean that we are overdoing phonics? If we want to improve reading comprehension it looks like it would make more sense to emphasize motivation, fluency, and inferencing than teaching phonics.RELATED: Which Reading Model Would Best Guide Our School Improvement Efforts? Shanahan responds: In 1986, Gough and Tunmer presented a model indicating that reading comprehension was the product of decoding ability (the ability to translate written or printed text into oral language – that is, ...

Teacher question: I’m the lead reading coach in our school district. We want to present one of the reading models to our teachers and administrators to guide our efforts to improve reading achievement in the elementary and middle schools. Which of the models do you favor (e.g., simple view, Scarborough’s rope, active view)?RELATED: If You Want Higher Reading Achievement, You’re Going to Have to Deal with the COVID Aftermath Shanahan responds: All those models have some value… and they all miss a key issue it seems to me. Let’s first take a quick tour of those models that you are trying to choose among ...

Teacher question: I’m a fourth-grade teacher. This year, because of the COVID shutdowns, I’m seeing more students than ever before who don’t know how to decode. I don’t see how I can teach them what I have in previous years, and I don’t have the ability to deal with the decoding problems. Our district is making a long needed serious effort to upgrade to phonics in our K-1 classrooms, but my students won’t benefit from that. What can I do?RELATED: Shedding Light on Reading Skills and Strategies Shanahan responds: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing these kinds of complaints from across the ...

John Carroll (1963/1989) proposed an innovative model of academic learning. According to Carroll, learning was a function of five variables: student aptitude, opportunity to learn, perseverance, quality of teaching, and ability to understand. It wasn’t the list of variables that was so provocative, but how Carroll defined each.   He operationalized all those in terms of instructional time. For instance, aptitude – then usually a score on an IQ test – was, for Carroll, a matter of the how much time was needed to learn something. A young Einstein may be able to master a K-12 physics curriculum in 42 minutes, while it ...

Recently, I wrote about the science of reading. I explained how I thought the term should be defined and described the kind of research needed to prescribe instruction. Today I thought I’d put some meat on the bone; adding some details that might help readers to grasp the implications of a scientific or research-based approach to reading. What does it mean when someone says an approach to reading instruction “works”? The term “it works” has gnawed at me for more than fifty years! I remember as a teacher how certain activities or approaches grabbed me. They just seemed right. Then I’d try them ...

The literacy field has long been beleaguered by generic terms that no one seems to understand – or more exactly, of which nobody agrees on the definitions. Terms like whole language, balanced literacy, direct instruction, dyslexia, sight words, and guided reading, are bandied about in journals, conference presentations, newspaper articles, and teacher’s lounges as if there was some shared dictionary out there that we were all accessing. Even terms that seem like they would be widely understood like research or fluency often turn out to be problematic. This plague of vagueness is exasperating, and I think it prevents productive dialogue or ...