Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: I am an Assistant School Superintendent. We are moving toward explicit phonics instruction this year and are debating between using the nonsense words assessment or the decodable words assessment. Do you have thoughts about this? I have consulted with several people who I respect, and opinions are varied and passionate. RELATED: Is digital text a good idea for reading instruction? Shanahan response: I feel your pain. Recently, a colleague asked me to make a similar recommendation to help figure out something about a grandchild’s reading. I suggested the use of DIBELS Nonsense Word test, given the specific purpose and its easy availability. You’d have thought I’d recommended drowning ...

Teacher question: I’ve heard that having students read digital texts is a bad idea, but our school has purchased tablets for everybody and wants us to use these for much of our instruction. What say you? Good idea or bad idea?RELATED: Knowledge or Comprehension Strategies -- What Should We Teach? Shanahan responds: Generally, research has found that digital books are read with lower comprehension and more mind wandering (Clinton, 2019; Vargas, Ackerman, & Samerón, 2018). Admittedly, most evidence on this comes from studies of college students. However, even when the studies have focused on elementary age students, the results are the same. Kids ...

Teacher question: Are we supposed to teach reading strategies or not? I keep coming across contradictory information. Some writers say the research supports strategy teaching and some say that we should teach background information instead. I respect your opinion. What do you think?RELATED: Can we really teach prosody and why would we want to? Shanahan response: Many studies – hundreds actually – have shown that teaching comprehension strategies can improve reading comprehension (Filderman, Austin, Boucher, O’Donnell, & Swanson, 2022; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). That’s a pretty strong argument for teaching strategies. That’s why I’ve taught them to students myself. That’s why ...

Teacher question: I am hoping that you can clarify a question that some of us are debating. I've sought out the wisdom of Kelly Cartwright and Katie Pace Miles as well. Can you clarify the difference between language comprehension and listening comprehension? And where does linguistic comprehension fit in here? I'm asking because when we refer to the Simple View of Reading, so many people use listening comprehension (which is inaccurate) but this leads to the question of what are the nuances or subtleties of them all! Thank you!RELATED: How I Teach Students to Use Context in Vocabulary Learning Shanahan responds: Awhile back, I posted a blog that dared mention that ...

Teacher question: I recently read an interview that you did. When you talk about kids needing to recognize when they don’t know a word and how to figure it out – did you mean to leave them on their own to do that? When you mention ‘passive scaffolding’ it makes me think you do. I know a lot about vocabulary instruction and my view of passive scaffolding as a first-line technique is pretty dim. Glossaries or dictionaries are frustrating. What kids need is to be able to integrate relevant aspects of word meaning into the context to come up with an ...

Teacher question Our school is trying to follow the science of reading. We are teaching phonemic awareness and phonics in Grades K-2 and assessing student progress in those skills throughout those grade levels. However, we don’t begin to assess or teach fluency until mid-first grade. Are we doing it right?RELATED: What about the new research that says phonics instruction isn’t very important? Shanahan response: I think it’s okay to neglect fluency instruction until later in first grade, at least with most students. However, I suspect that you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to teach your students to read disfluently. I hope I can ...

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 ...