Blast from the Past: This entry first appeared on March 11, 2023, and is being reissued on July 25, 2026. The reason for bringing it back is due to the great loss of instruction that has occurred since the COVID disaster. Chronic absenteeism rates have soared, and many kids aren’t even coming to school (Barragan Torres, 2025; U. S. Department of Education, 2025). These days, schools are often struggling with teacher absences too (Hansen, Aggarwal, & Wagner, 2025). This blog explains why amount of reading instruction is so important and it provides practical advice about how to make every minute count in the classroom. A link is provided to the comments made on the original posting.
John Carroll (1963/1989) proposed an innovative model of academic learning. According to Carroll, learning was a function of five variables: student aptitude, opportunity to learn, perseverance, quality of teaching, and ability to understand.
It wasn’t the list of variables that was so provocative, but how Carroll defined each.
He operationalized all those in terms of instructional time.
For instance, aptitude – then usually a score on an IQ test – was, for Carroll, a matter of how much time was needed to learn something. A young Einstein may be able to master a K-12 physics curriculum in 42 minutes, while it might take Tim Shanahan 42 years!
Opportunity referred to the amount of instructional time schools provided. If teachers devoted 100 hours to physics instruction, Einstein would have it made given his aptitude, while I might be better advised to become a reading teacher.
Even if schools allotted 42 years to physics, I still might not make it. What are the chances I’d sit still for all those laws of motion, electrons, and quarks? Perseverance, the time students are willing to be taught, figures in learning as well.
Even quality is a matter of time in Carroll’s scheme. If the quality of teaching is low, then kids will need relatively more teaching to be successful.
No one has come up with ingenious ways to measure those time-based variables. However, the point it made about instructional time was invaluable.
In the 1970-1980s, researchers following Carroll’s lead explored time and its relationship to academic achievement, including in reading (e.g., Fisher, Berliner, Filby, Marliabe, Cahen, & Dishaw, 1981). As a result, educational scientists now have a different conception of instructional time and how it should be thought about.
Studies continue to demonstrate the power of amount of instruction in determining student learning (Gay, Sonnenschein, Sun, & Baker, 2021; Sonnenschein, Stapleton, & Benson, 2010; Walberg, Fraser, & Welch, 1986).
Given the amount of evidence, I believe that reading educators don’t think enough about the importance of the amount teaching.
Here are 7 key ideas about instructional time that every reading educator should know.
1. There’s a difference between allotted time and academic learning time.
When scholars first looked at the amount of teaching, they discovered there wasn’t much connection. That led them to distinguish allotted time from academic learning time (ALT).
ALT refers to the amount of time students are actually engaged in academic tasks likely to lead to learning (Fisher, et al., 1981). That is often quite different than what’s in a teacher’s schedule.
Observational studies reported big differences in ALT (Smith, Lee, & Newman, 2001). Sometimes as much as 100% between teachers.
Ms. Jones may provide 90 minutes a day of ALT, while Ms. Smith’s kids only get 45.
Year after year, the Jones’ kids test out higher than the Smith kids, and Ms. Smith concludes, “Yep, the principal always gives me the lowest kids.”
Scheduling 90 or 120 minutes of literacy instruction doesn’t mean kids get that much teaching.
Some teachers struggle with classroom management, or they may be pushed into grouping schemes they can’t handle. Those kinds of things are time robbers. They prevent allotted time from being translated into ALT.
Another time drainer? Unruliness, misbehavior, and noisiness reduce the learning of everyone.
But mismanagement is not always an issue of poor discipline. Some kids lose out to inattention, daydreaming, and obeying but not engaging… the kids who sit politely and quietly but who fail to engage with the lesson. The page turners who don’t read.
Remember, allocated time is not the important issue, ALT is!
2. Time is a value, not a variable.
When researchers began looking at instructional time, they treated it as a variable. It was routinely included in lists of factors that influence learning (e.g., ability, motivation, quantity of instruction, quality of instruction, classroom climate, home environment, peer group, mass media exposure).
However, that isn’t the way scientists have learned to deal with time.
An example here may help.
We know that iron rusts when the metal molecules bond with the moisture in air. But scientists used to think that it was time that caused rust.
Modern scientists blanch at the thought of that now. For them, time can never be a causative factor, only a measure of such factors. With rust, oxidation (that bonding of molecules) is the cause and the amount of time the iron is exposed to humidity is a measure of the amount of oxidation exposure.
In education, time itself shouldn’t be the issue. No, it’s the kind of teaching, the kind of educational environment, or the kind of curriculum that make the difference. Time is a valuable way to estimate how much exposure kids are getting to those kinds of teaching and curriculum.
Unfortunately, we tend to say things like, “phonics works,” or “research supports comprehension strategies.”
What we should be saying is, “kids benefited from 30 minutes of daily phonics instruction for a school year,” or “we had measurable comprehension improvement from 8 weeks of strategy teaching.”
Time should be seen as dosage. Too often we’re satisfied that teachers are teaching writing or teaching phonics. But we should always ask, “Are they teaching enough of those things?”
3. Think components, not overall time.
Principals often proudly tell me that their teachers are required to teach reading/ language arts for 2 hours per day. That’s not nothing, but it’s not enough.
I think the lack of specific attention to time is why many teachers neglect certain aspects of reading, while overdoing others.
I’ve visited kindergarten classes with no phonemic awareness instruction, and third grade classes without writing (since their goal is higher reading scores). I have vivid memories of a second-grade class with an overwhelming 90 minutes per day of phonics and spelling. I’m often asked if having the kids read a paragraph for fluency practice is enough (no, I don’t think so).
None of that makes any sense.
In Chicago, we overcame that problem by portioning the literacy instruction time among word learning, text reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. That meant kids got a lot of attention to all the key components of reading development.
Making sure that enough time is allocated to each of those curricular components research has identified as making a difference in reading achievement is not micromanaging.
What we found was that when teachers knew they were required to spend considerable time on fluency instruction or vocabulary, they got very interested in how best to teach those things. It’s easy enough to hide your weaknesses in a 90–120-minute block if no one is paying attention to how those minutes are divided. But when you find out you have 30 minutes of fluency instruction to provide, how to accomplish that becomes a much more important question.
4. Aim at learning goals not instructional activities.
Some time-based instructional schemes prescribe specific daily activities: student reading time, small group instruction time, writing, teacher read alouds, ABC Reading Program), and so on.
Those schemes help teachers to fill their days.
But filling up a day’s schedule and curating a powerful set of learning experiences are not the same thing.
Organize your instructional time around what you are trying to accomplish, rather than on certain activities. If you have set aside time to teach kids to bring their prior knowledge to bear on the text that they’re reading, then your minutes of reading comprehension this week should be focused on that. The texts and activities that you choose should be aimed at accomplishing that goal.
Focus on increasing kids’ vocabulary knowledge, not on teacher read alouds. You may decide to structure a teacher read aloud in a way that will help address that vocabulary goal, but there are other effective approaches that could be considered. When it comes to time, keep eyes on the learning prize, not to certain activities that may be used to address it.
5. Rate and time are not the same thing.
Time has to do with the numbers of minutes or hours that we devote to a subject. Rate is more bound up in what happens within that time allotment.
For instance, research suggests that the number of interactions that take place between students and teachers (like how many questions they get to answer) matters (Allen, Gregory, Mikami, Lun, Hamre, & Pianta, 2013; Folmer-Annevelink, Doolaard, Mascareño, & Bosker, 2010). Often the amount of interaction is limited. The teacher asks a few questions and calls on a couple kids to answer them. No one must think about the information because they aren’t likely to be called upon.
That suggests a useful way of evaluating classroom instruction. How many opportunities do kids have to respond in an hour? The traditional teacher might end up with a very low rate of response – asking few questions, calling on few students. In another classroom, the teacher might provide white boards, and all students are expected to respond at least in writing to every question.
In decoding lessons, I’m often concerned about how many words kids get to segment, or sound out, or spell. Some teachers move those lessons along better, getting everyone to do those kinds of things multiple times in a lesson.
And what about the amount of writing that occurs in a writing lesson or the amount of reading in a comprehension lesson? (How many words are written or read in the time provided?)
We want substantial amounts of time devoted to key aspects of literacy learning. But these time allotments should be replete with high rates of action and response.
6. Not all learning time is equivalent.
Too often teachers assume that all activities common to language arts lessons are equally valuable. That’s not the case. Some activities have higher payoffs – in terms of learning – than do others.
Some examples: studies of free or independent reading in which kids pick the texts and read on their own with little teacher involvement provide learning opportunities. However, studies show that the payoffs from using time in that way is markedly lower than when engaged in instructional activities with more teacher input (e.g., text selection, purpose, monitoring, feedback, direct instruction) (Shanahan, 2022).
Or think about a phonics lesson. There is likely to be more learning payoff from a highly interactive lesson that provides opportunities to hear sounds matched to letters and words, and to sound out words with teacher guidance than would accrue from having students completing worksheets quietly at their desks. Kids need to learn to connect phonology (sounds) with orthography (spellings) and that is best done with audible lessons.
I understand that at times teachers need time fillers, but instructional planning should always be a quest for what kind of lesson is most likely to foster the learning that we’re aiming for.
7. Time and Tier 2 success.
Some kids have trouble learning. They don’t make the same progress as the other kids.
That’s the reason for Tier 2 programs; additional opportunities for kids to catch up and keep up.
This extra instruction should target skills the students lag in, whether those are decoding or language/comprehension skills.
Tier 2 programs should provide enhanced learning opportunities – focused, purposeful, specific, well-presented lessons with minimal distractions and minimal need for adjustments for student heterogeneity.
These programs – and here is the time issue – should provide additional instruction, not replacement instruction. Pulling kids out of reading lessons to get other reading lessons down the hall is unlikely to increase learning. Tier 2 programs should provide kids with a double dose of instruction, but that means schools need to schedule such teaching in ways that adds to the amount of teaching that we provide.
If you want to raise reading achievement, take a careful look at the amount of time allotted for reading, how that time is divided among key learning goals, how engaged children are in that time, and the amount of actual reading, writing, and interaction taking place. I think you may surprised at the result. We can do better.
References
Allen, J., Gregory, A., Mikami, A., Lun, J., Hamre, B., & Pianta, R. (2013). Observations of effective teacher-student interactions in secondary school classrooms: Predicting student achievement with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary. School Psychology Review, 42(1), 76–98.
Barragan Torres, M. (2025). The relation between absenteeism and student learning in a postpandemic context. Learning Renewal Series. Chicago, IL: Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC), Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois. https://dpi.uillinois.edu/appliedresearch/iwerc/current-projects/learning-renewal/
Carroll, J. B. (1989). The Carroll Model: A 25-year retrospective and prospective view. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 26-31.
Fisher, C., Berliner, D., Filby, N., Marliave, R., Cahen, L., & Dishaw, M. (1981). Teaching behaviors, academic learning time, and student achievement: An overview. Journal of Classroom Instruction, 17(1), 2-15.
Folmer-Annevelink, E., Doolaard, S., Mascareño, M., & Bosker, R. J. (2010). Class size effects on the number and types of student-teacher interactions in primary classroom. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 45(2), 30-38.
Gay, B., Sonnenschein, S., Sun, S., & Baker, L. (2021). Poverty, parent involvement, and children’s reading skills: Testing the compensatory effect of the amount of classroom reading instruction. Early Education and Development, 32(7), 981-993. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2020.1829292
Hansen, M., Aggarwal, P., & Wagner, R. (2025). State data shows K-12 teacher absences surged post-pandemic. Washington, DC: Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/state-data-shows-k-12-teacher-absences-surged-post-pandemic/
Shanahan, T. (2022, February 12). Why don’t you encourage reading practice? https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/why-dont-you-encourage-reading-practice
Smith, J. B., Lee, V. E., & Newmann, F. M. (2001). Instruction and achievement in Chicago elementary schools. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research.
Sonnenschein, S., Stapleton, L. M., & Benson, A. (2010). The relation between the type and amount of instruction and growth in children’s reading competencies. American Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 358-389. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831209349215
U.S. Department of Education. (2025). Chronic absenteeism. https://www.ed.gov/teaching-and-administration/supporting-students/chronic-absenteeism
Walberg, H. J., Fraser, B. J., & Welch, W. W. (1986). A test of a model of educational productivity among senior high school students. Journal of Educational Research, 79(3), 133-139. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1986.1088566
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