Literacy Blogs

Back in the 1930s, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney always seemed to be putting on a show. They were going to be sent to a farm to work for the summer in Babes in Arms, but they wanted to go to Broadway instead – and they did! I love that whole idea of Judy and Mickey with their teenage backs to the wall, singing and dancing their way to success (and into our hearts). Younger folks might prefer a more recent analogy—like Footloose—but then I’d have to be a younger blogger who is less than 6-degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. I’m not the only one who appreciates ...

Welcome to 2018.   During the interim, several intriguing questions have been submitted and soon I’ll be taking those on. This posting responds not to your questions, but to some public comments made by various colleagues concerning complex text and its use in instruction. My comments are responses to their handwringing over the requirement that we teach kids to read complex text.  We should be concerned about the use of complex text for instruction because text complexity has a negative correlation with reading comprehension and reading fluency.   The premise here is correct, but the conclusion is false. This is what logicians refer to as the ...

Teacher question: Aren’t “teaching with complex text” and “teaching close reading” really the same idea, just in different words? Some of my teachers are confused by these terms. Some of them, like me, think they are the same idea, while others think they are really two different standards. How can I clarify this for them?  Shanahan response: I must admit that the first time this confusion presented itself to me, I was pretty darned surprised. I was supposed to make two presentations to some California teachers—an AM and a PM talk, and the reading supervisor wanted to know the two titles. I suggested one ...

I’m vacationing in Aix-en-Provence. I’ve written before about teaching myself to read French, and now I’m enrolled in a spoken French class. Très hard!!!   Maybe not much of a vacation, and, yet, I’m gaining valuable insights into what we must do to teach successfully with complex text.   Our tour includes about a dozen people; some are studying French, and some are not. Because our group is petite, they could only provide two French options. One for absolute beginners, and the other a mid-level French course attended by immigrants to France.   My self-taught reading lessons—and sporadic forays with Duolingo and Rosetta Stone—placed me well beyond the beginner class. The advanced class is ...

Boy, oh, boy! The past couple weeks have brought unseasonably warm temperatures to the Midwest, and unusual flurries of questions concerning teaching children at their, so-called, “instructional levels.” Must be salesman season, or something.           One of the questions asked specifically about my colleague Dick Allington, since he has published articles and chapters saying that teaching kids with challenging text is a dumb idea. And, a couple of others queries referred to the advertising copy from Teachers College Press (TCP) about their programs. Both Dick and TCP threw the R-word (research) around quite a bit, but ...

Blast from the Past: This entry was first issued on September 6, 2016 and it was reissued on June 27, 2020. This week several readers on social media have reposted some of my earlier writings on teaching with complex text, and this month American Educator published a new article of mine on this topic. Given that, I thought it might be a good time to pull this blog back which suggests several practical steps to teaching students to make sense of complex text. If a better question doesn't emerge in the next couple of weeks, perhaps i'll write a new ...

We just started close reading in our district last year. Our second graders were given text that was a grade level above their reading level. We were told to let them figure it out. They could not even read the first sentence it was too hard for their reading level. The reading coaches said they will learn to read it by letting them struggle with it. The kids would become so upset and began to hate reading because of they were so frustrated at how the district was making us implement close reading. For it to be of any value ...

Blast from the Past: This blog first posted April 3, 2016 and was re-posted on June 9, 2023. It contains an important reminder that the ultimate purpose of a reading lesson is NOT to ensure that kids accomplish high comprehension of the texts that we are using to teach reading comprehension. So many teachers -- and supposed authorities on reading -- have lost sight of this. That's why they have developed so many ways that make high comprehension (of that day's text) certain, but that do little to make students stronger and more independent as readers. This blog entry highlights ...

Question: I’m confused. Our standards say that we have to teach kids to read at 820 Lexiles, but my third-graders aren’t even close to that. They are instructional at Level N on the Fountas & Pinnell gradient that my school uses. This makes no sense. How can I get my kids to such a high level in the time that we have? Shanahan response:             I receive few letters on this, but when visiting schools this confusion is often apparent. Teachers either ignore the level specifications of the standards or assume that teaching kids at "level N", as they have been doing, must be ...

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 ...