Blast from the Past: This blog first posted on January 26, 2019, and reposted on May 2, 2026. I haven’t received this kind of question lately, and yet, the recent kerfuffle over how much phonics should be taught reminded me of it. It seems to be hip right now to talk generally about these things: more phonics, less phonics. But more or less than what? And what else need be taught? I thought it would be timely to reissue this one. I’ve added some research references and revised the writing, but the content is the same as the original. I’ve included a link to the 18 comments the original elicited as well.
Teacher question: If you were teaching second grade what would your schedule look like?
Shanahan response:
I start from the premise that kids deserve 120-180 minutes per day of reading/writing instruction. The more challenged the kids are, or the greater the learning gains we’re seeking, the more time I want to devote to literacy.
Given the ambitious learning goals we are striving for, I see no possibility of success with fewer than 2 hours per day. On the other hand, no matter how great the literacy needs, I can think of no situation where I’d devote more than 3 hours per day to these goals because of the importance of math, science, social studies, the arts, etc. You can only do so much with a 6 ½ hour school day.
Considering various surveys and observational studies reported since the early 1960s (e.g., Austin & Morrison, 1963; Baumann & Heubach, 1996; Baumann, et al., 2000; Kaufman, et al., 2018; Kraft & Novicoff, 2025; NAEP, 2023; Shanahan& Duffett, 2013), it appears that English language arts (long dominated by reading) usually gets about 90 minutes per day on average. This works out to about 2 hours per day in the primary grades and an hour in upper elementary—with a 90-minute average.
Most schools these days are proud of their 90-minute reading block. That means they’ve institutionalized the average. I push for a greater investment than that (2-3 hours) with the idea that more time leads to more literacy learning (e.g., Fleming, 2013).
I don’t love the idea of all schools providing equal amounts of reading instruction either, since that ensures that the lowest, least-advantaged learners never catch up.
Another dimension of this has to do with the need for attention to multiple literacy components. Teaching devoted to word knowledge, oral reading fluency, writing, and reading comprehension all may lead to higher reading achievement. I’d pay roughly equal attention to each of these key components. (In some situations, such as with English Learners, I can be persuaded to add explicit oral language instruction to this mix, dividing the time in five).
One more thing. I’m not a big “reading block” fan. Block time can make it difficult to schedule a school day. There’s no inherent learning benefit from block scheduling — and often I see kids getting less than the scheduled time because of questionable assumptions about block sanctity.
If your school day begins at 8AM, and your literacy block goes from 8:00-9:30… what are the chances kids will receive 90 minutes of instruction? My bet (and past observations) say that the first 10-15 minutes there’ll be no teaching: pledge of allegiance, morning announcements, lunch money collection, attendance, pencil sharpening, circle time, and so on are not reading instruction.
With those basics out of the way, let’s start with a simple example.
8:10-8:40 Reading comprehension
8:40-9:10 Text reading fluency
9:10-9:40 Word knowledge (including phonics, spelling, morphology)
9:40-10:10 Writing
That plan would satisfy the criteria I set above, and in some cases, it might even make sense. However, as noted, elementary school days can be complicated, so here’s another perhaps more realistic example:
8:10-9:10 Reading comprehension
9:10-9:40 Word Knowledge
9:40-10:10 Text reading fluency
That one seems like a problem; too much comprehension time and no writing at all. I probably wouldn’t do this in Grade 2 admittedly, but I might in the upper grades. Often teachers at those levels want a greater amount of time for reading longer selections and it’s possible to trade reading comprehension and writing time across days. If this balances out over a couple of weeks, no problem.
However I’d scheduled the total reading comprehension time, I’d want the kids reading during about half of that time – rather than engaging in discussion or receiving explicit teaching from me. That isn’t special to reading comprehension either. During phonics kids should spend much of the time decoding and encoding words, and writing should involve lots of writing and revising.
Another scheduling possibility:
8:10-8:40 Reading comprehension
8:40-9:40 Math
9:40-10:00 Word knowledge
10:00-10:30 Art
10:30-11:00 Text reading fluency
11:00-11:30 Writing
11:30-12:30 Lunch/recess
12:30-12:40 Word knowledge
This schedule shows that you don’t need a reading block. It’s not a problem to work on literacy, to do something else, and then to do more literacy. That won’t interfere with learning. In this case, the school’s math consultant hasn’t read the research, but she’s sure that morning teaching works best (that’s not what the research says). I’m willing to keep her happy by adding math to my morning schedule, even if it bumps some literacy teaching to the PM.
Oh, and the divided word knowledge time? That might be problematic for some lessons, but in this case, it provides “interval training.” I could teach a skill in the morning, and later in the day have a productive review session with more practice. That kind of time spacing can lead to better recall (Cepeda, et al., 2006).
The word knowledge instruction would focus on decoding, spelling, and morphology. That instruction aims to make sure kids can read words, write words, and understand the meanings of the words.
And what about the text reading fluency teaching? It isn’t enough that kids can read words, they must read them in text and that’s a somewhat different thing. There are lots of ways of doing it, but most often I’d engage kids in supervised paired-reading practice. I’d divide the class into pairs; they’d take turns reading pages and giving feedback to each other. While they did that, I’d move from pair to pair to help with the reading and the feedback, to collect data on student performance, and to keep kids on task.
Another planning variant can free up additional time. What if today’s reading comprehension lesson was taught with the science or social studies book or the writing lesson was linked to that content? That would reduce the time needed to address an ambitious elementary curriculum.
Of course, this kind of schedule says nothing about interconnections among the parts. We can’t tell from these agendas whether the kids will write about the text used for reading comprehension, or whether the word work or fluency work will be based on that text. Perhaps the class is working on a project or report and the texts used for reading comprehension are topical text sets. The schedule may look the same, whether the degree of integration is low or high.
If my kids were especially low in literacy, I may increase the total time to as much as three hours. That would give me more time to address each component. I know some schools that require 2 hours for reading and writing and another half hour for in-class intervention time, providing reteaching opportunities for kids in need.
One district I know fulfills that two-hour commitment, but they add an additional 30 minutes a day to foster a love of reading (e.g., reading to the kids, independent reading, computer games, book clubs). I’m not a big fan of that approach because those activities do little to improve reading ability and there’s no evidence that they lead to love of reading, but at least it isn’t taking the place of the required reading instruction.
These examples are limited, but they highlight some important points:
- The amount of instruction should be maximized and varied based on student need. Down time and activities with low learning payoffs must be minimized.
- The actual amount of instruction students receive is more important than how much time is scheduled, and there is a difference.
- Schedules should be aimed at intended learning outcomes not at activities one might want to use for teaching.
- Many different activities can be used to accomplish any learning goal – there is more than one way to teach something. Effectiveness is what matters.
- Literacy instruction should include lots of oral and silent reading, writing, decoding, spelling. Kids need explicit instruction and guided practice in doing these things.
- Schedules should be dynamic and flexible, allowing teachers to better meet the needs of students rather than honoring traditional – and often unsubstantiated claims – like kids learn more in the morning or small groups are always better than whole class.
- Integration across the language arts and content areas can have a multiplier effect. Using text materials and topics from your content classes during language arts can increase learning and free up time in your busy schedule.
References
Austin, M. C., & Morrison, C. (1963). The first R: The Harvard report on reading in elementary schools. New York: Macmillan.
Baumann, J. F., & Heubach, K. M. (1996). Do basal readers deskill teachers? A national survey of educators’ use and opinions of basal readers. Elementary School Journal, 96(5), 511-526. https://doi.org/10.1086/461842
Baumann, J. F., Hoffman, J. V., Duffy-Hester, A., & Ro, J. M. (2000). The first R yesterday and today: U.S. elementary reading instruction practices reported by teachers and administrators. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(3), 338-377. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.35.3.2
Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354.
Fleming, N. (2013, March 14). Expanded learning time linked to higher test scores. Education Week.
Kaufman, J. H., Opfer, V. D., Bongard, M., Pane, J. D., & Thompson, L. E. (2018). What teachers know and do in the Common Core era: Findings from the 2015–2017 American Teacher Panel. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018.
Kraft, M. A., & Novicoff, S. (2025). Time for school: Assessing the inequality of access to instructional time across the United State. Education Next, 25(1), 32-39.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (2023). 2022 reading survey questionnaire results. Washington, DC. httos://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/survey-questionnaires/?grade=4
Shanahan, T., & Duffett, A. (2013). Common Core in the schools: A first look at reading assignments. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Forham Institute.
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