Literacy Blogs

I am a classroom teacher (grade 3) and a follower of your blog.  I also have an M.A. in Reading. Last year our new principal told us that our RtI students do not need to be in the classroom during grade level instruction. I strongly disagree. I think that these students benefit from scaffolded grade level instruction and benefit from the kind of thinking and reading the class is being asked to do during this time.  Am I wrong to insist my students be in the room during regular reading instruction? If so, please set me straight.    Dear Perplexed: The point of RtI is ...

Blast from the Past: This entry posted initially on July 10, 2016 and was reposted on June 18, 2022. This blog explores how to teach an aspect of reading comprehension that most teachers have no idea how to teach. It provides an example drawn from the Common Core standards. This might seem out of date since some states have withdrawn from those requirements (or were never part of them) – however, I did a quick check of the states that have made a big deal of not having CCSS standards… all of them (e.g., Florida, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska, Arizona, ...

We in education tend to have very strong beliefs. And, those beliefs can overwhelm our knowledge—or even our willingness to gain knowledge. Last week’s entry here focused on teaching kids with more challenging texts than we’ve been told to use in the past. The reason for the change wasn’t some brilliant insight on my part, but a gradual accumulation of direct research evidence. Evidence that shows beyond beginning reading there is no benefit to controlling the difficulty of texts in the way that we have done—matching kids to books with various accuracy criteria. I certainly understand the suspicions of those who have ...

Blast from the Past: This entry posted on June 26, 2016, and was re-posted on January 31, 2018. Since this entry was first posted several states have backed out of their commitments to see that kids are taught to read more complex text than in the past. I certainly understand their fear of having to tell teachers that teaching children to read at "their levels" is not such a good idea for the kids. It makes teaching easier admittedly because it means you don't have to teach very much. But what is easier for the teacher is a rip off of ...

"Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping, and the cotton is high..." It is summer and not a good time for a long blog on literacy teaching. So, I took the time to write a short one. I didn't want to get worked up in the summer heat, so have provided a pithy critique of 5 popular myths about reading instruction. 1.  No, the fact that you do not use a textbook to teach reading does not make you a good teacher. The idea that good teachers don’t follow a program and weak ones do has been around since ...

Think-Pair-Share in Reading Instruction: Is it Effective?   Teacher Question: Our reading coach has encouraged all of our teachers to use a lot of the “think-pair-share” reading strategy. I’m an upper elementary grade teacher. Is “think-pair-share” research based? Shanahan responds:            This seems like such a straightforward question, but it has been tying me in knots for days. It all depends on what you mean by “research based.”            You might be asking me whether there is there any empirical evidence showing that if you use “think-pair-share” in your classroom your kids will end up with higher reading achievement by the end of the year. If that ...

Why do you support the use of basal readers for teaching reading? Isn’t it the teachers that make the difference, not the textbooks?           What an peculiar—but all-too-common—question.            What has led to this weird belief that schools can have either textbooks or good teachers? That investments in teacher development and textbook adoption are opposites? Or, that the good teachers will run screaming from the room upon textbook purchases?            The real issue isn’t whether teachers or programs matter, but whether students are best served by a corps of good teachers ...

I’m a literacy coach, and one of the teachers in one of my online classes asked the following question: “The article mentions that using a dictionary to define a word is a superficial method of vocabulary acquisition. While it may be too rash to discontinue using dictionaries, how should they be used in vocabulary instruction, and how much should teachers rely on them in the classroom?” Vocabulary teaching is currently in vogue; there are lots of good books and articles out there on how to teach word meanings. That’s good, as far is it goes.         Steve Stahl used to ...

Teachers question: I have just been hired as a reading coach in a school where I have been a third-grade teacher. My principal wants me to raise reading achievement and he says that he’ll follow my lead. I think I’m a good teacher, but what does it take to raise reading achievement in a whole school (K-5) with 24 teachers? Shanahan's answer:             It’s easy J. Just do the following 9 things: 1.    Improve leadership.                                 Literacy leadership matters. You and your principal will need to be a team. The more the two of you know and agree upon the ...