Literacy Blogs

There is an incredible yearning for specific information on the implementation of the common core standards. Everyone it seems is hurrying out common core materials, some of which are helpful, and some of which would best be kept in the drawer reserved for help that we can’t use.   An example of the first is some guidance recently released by the International Reading Association’s CommonCore State Standards Committee (of which I am a member). Nothing startling in this one, just accurate information clearly stated. I suspect this will be helpful to many educators.   A not-so-positive addition is the Aspen Institute’s recently issued “Primer on Close Reading.”   This ...

Blast from the Past: This was originally posted October 11, 2012, and was re-issued on October 5, 2017. These observations were relevant concerning Common Core originally, but it is relevant to most or all of the states' standards now. The CCSS model has been a persuasive one: it has led states to focus on fewer but bigger, well-organized standards. That means trying to pick the important ones is no longer a smart way to go. Recently, I received a note from an educator trying to develop “power standards” for the common core. Power standards is a concept developed by Doug Reeves ...

            When I was working on my doctorate, I had to conduct a historical study for one of my classes. I went to the Library of Congress and calculated readabilities for books that had been used to teach reading in the U.S. (or in the colonies that became the U.S.). I started with the Protestant Tutor and the New England Primer, the first books used for reading instruction here. From there I examined Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller and its related volumes and the early editions of McGuffey’s Readers.             Though the authors of those have left no record of how those books were created, it is evident that they had sound intuitions as to what makes text challenging. Even in the ...

Okay, so you’re thinking: “This guy is even more nuts than I thought. How can he root for kids to write poorly?"   I hope I’m not nuts, but one of the major new tests to be used to monitor student performance against the common core state standards is well designed (truth in advertising: I serve on the English Language Arts Technical Work Groups for that test). However, those new designs are almost certain to lower student writing scores, which I hope will be good for kids—at least in the long run.   PARCC is a 23 state consortium that is designing new English ...

Originally posted July 31, 2012; re-posted September 7, 2017. Although I posted these comments 5 years ago, these questions continue to come up frequently at my presentations, particularly with regard to how large a gap can we scaffold with older students. Theoretically, the answer is that there is no reading gap that can’t be scaffolded, but there are practicalities that impose such limits in regular classroom life. I recently received the following letter and thought you might be interested in my responses: “I found your August 21, 2011, blog post on "Rejecting Instructional Level Theory" eye-opening and helpful.  I'm a high school ...

                  Recently, I've been fielding questions about guided reading (à la Fountas and Pinnell) and the Common Core; mainly about the differences in how they place students in texts. Before going there, let me point out that there is a lot of common ground between guided reading and Common Core, including a focus on high-quality text, the emphasis on connections between reading and writing, the concern for high-level questions and discussion, the idea that students learn from reading, and so on. Nary a hint of conflict between the two approaches on any of ...

Blast from the Past: This blog first posted June 22, 2012 and was re-posted on May 24, 2016. Earlier this week I posted a blog distinguishing comprehension skills and comprehension strategies. More to be written on these issues this weekend. However, when the Common Core State Standards did not include comprehension strategies this blog entry provided my reaction to that omission. It is still timely and I'll have more to say about this as well.  I’ve been fielding a lot of complaints recently about the lack of comprehension strategies in the common core state standards. And, in fact, no reading comprehension ...

Teacher question: What do you feel is "best practice" for middle school ELA instruction? Our district has a 6/7 middle school, and the subjects of reading and language arts are taught separately. The middle school principal will speak to how this is "best practice".   With the reciprocity of reading and writing, and the expectations of the CCSS, the current schedule seems counterintuitive to me. Shouldn't students be grouped for, say, a 90 minute ELA block that encompasses reading and language arts? Or am I off base on this? Shanahan reply: How schools are organized in terms of this kind of scheduling does not matter very ...

Blast from the Past: Re-issued March 22, 2021 and August 3, 2017. First published June 18, 2012; Of all of my blog entries, this one has been read, cited, and distributed most often. Obviously a lot of people have found it to be useful, so I have reposted it for those who might not have seen it before. However, I had another reason this time. These days the term "close reading" is increasingly being used by teachers as a synonym for reading comprehension. Teaching reading comprehension and teaching close reading overlap in important ways but they definitely are not the same ...