Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: I wonder if you could comment on your blog about this crazy idea that the reading specialists should change the program every 12 weeks if a student is not showing growth on the one-minute reading fluency measure. I have second grade student who reads 80 wcpm with 97% accuracy. She made great growth in the fall but has leveled out this winter. She is being removed her from my “program” to Wilson because an outside evaluator said that is what she needs. What do you think? Shanahan response: One thing is clear: No matter how I answer this question, somebody is going to be mad at me. That’s okay ...

Teacher question: I am a reading coordinator. We are in our first year of implementing a new reading program. As we have rolled out the new curriculum, we've been explicit about the reading instructional practices and routines that we expect to see used each day. We’ve had lots of PD. How else are we going to know the impact that the series has on our achievement data if we don't have fidelity our first year? That's the direction that we've taken. I'm sure that you appreciate the “change” process. We've changed a lot of behaviors but I'm afraid that we haven't changed a lot of beliefs of teachers about reading instruction. Our mid-year reading performance data ...

Blast from the Past: This blog posted on November 19, 2017, and was re-posted May 21, 2022. I would love to say that its original posting ended the practice of round robin reading. Alas, too many teachers continue to cling to the practice – main, I suspect, because they know not what else to do. And, at least some of the teachers who do manage to eschew the practice try to rely solely on silent reading, which is just not sufficient (monitoring students’ oral reading progress is informative, particularly in the primary grades). This blog may be worth a second ...

Teacher question: I am a reading specialist at a K-5 elementary school and I am working with classroom teachers to implement a book buddy program where older students (2nd and 3rd grade) will read to younger students (K and 1st grade). I am planning to spend some time with the older students to coach them on selecting appropriate books and engaging their buddies by reading with prosody and stopping to ask questions, make observations, etc. I would love to hear if you have done any research on the effectiveness of such programs or if you have any tips on how to ...

Teacher question: I coordinate reading interventions for my district. I have been told to stop referring to the National Reading Panel, as it is old and no longer relevant. Our universal screener is based on the 5 components of reading, and our basal interventions are also aligned to the "big 5". I don't think there is any way for me to stop referencing the NRP. Would you please comment? Shanahan's response:  That’s about as dopey as it gets.   The National Reading Panel reviewed a great deal of empirical study in the late 1990s (we published the NRP Report in 2000). There was not a ...

Teacher question:             What makes good readers? What are kids lacking making them not so good readers?  Shanahan response:             I love this question because it cuts to the heart of everything we do. If teachers don’t have clear purchase on what it takes to become a good reader, and what some kids might be missing, then their instructional successes will be fortunate accidents. The same can be said for the professors who prepare teachers and for the principals and coaches who supervise them.             So what is the answer?             Let’s start with something pretty self-evident, but that is worth mentioning… the only thing ...

Teacher Question:             Is there a point at which it does not make sense to use a particular challenging text with a particular student? For instance, take an 8th grader who reads at about a 3rd grade level. The student can decode reasonably well but is dysfluent and, due to learning English, has poor comprehension resulting from low vocabulary knowledge and lots of confusion caused by complex syntax. Would you still say scaffold grade-level text to provide access for this student-- or at a certain point, the scaffolding would need to be so extensive and it would take the whole year to read a grade-level novel-- use easier text?             ...

Letter I received: I found these troubling quotes in the Report of the National Reading Panel: "Fluency, the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression..." "Fluent readers can read text with speed, accuracy, and proper expression..." My dismay is due to (a) listing rate first in both statements, and (b) using "quickly" and "with speed" rather than "rate" (or "appropriate rate" as in the CCSS fluency standard). I wonder if this wording may have encouraged folks who now embrace the notion that "faster is better" (e.g. "better readers have higher DIBELS scores--wcpm") In my own work I often refer to Stahl & Kuhn (2002) ...

Teacher Question:             A question has come up that I don't know how to address and I would love your input.  For years, we have used the Hasbrook/Tindal fluency norms as one of the ways we measure our student's reading progress.  For example, the 4th grade midyear 50th percentile is 112 CWPM.  The fourth grade team has chosen a mid-year running record passage and is finding that many of students have gone down instead of up in their CWPM.  One teacher said that is because the common-core aligned texts are more challenging and that the passage is really ...

School Administrator Question:  Dr. Shanahan...for grades 3-5 does it make sense to use classroom time to have students partner read? If our ultimate goal is improving silent reading comprehension, I wonder at this age level if we are not using time efficiently. Shanahan's response.: I get this question a lot. Since our kids are going to be tested on their silent reading comprehension, why should we bother to have them practice oral reading? The purpose quite simply is that oral reading practice has been found to have a positive impact on students’ silent reading comprehension. The National Reading Panel reviewed 16 experimental studies ...