Literacy Blogs

  Blast from the Past: This entry first posted on September 7, 2019, and reappeared on February 10, 2024. It seems to be that time of the year again. Principals are being encouraged by central administrations to put on the full court press for higher test scores this year. I know that, not because of Mardi Gras or Groundhog Day, but because I'm starting to get those questions from teachers. Here is one that just came in: "Dr. Shanahan, you have stated that STANDARDIZED reading test items analysis is a 'fool's errand.' My district requires me to complete an items analysis ...

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 ...

Re-posted August 9, 2017; originally posted July 28, 2015. Recently, I was contacted by a principal wanting to find this posting. Her district is dealing with how to evaluate and report student progress in reading and the language arts. We have a tendency in education to pendulum swing between too little information for students and parents (like a single grade in ELA) or way too much (like a grade for each standard). This entry provided she and her faculty with a little practical guidance in what might be included in a report card.  Teacher Question: I wanted to ask your opinion regarding the ...

      An Open Letter to the Candidates                 Ladies and Gentlemen. We're quickly sinking into the quicksands of yet another presidential campaign. I'm writing to help with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) issue. I don't want any of you tripped up by a feeble or foolish argument, and there are lots of ways of doing that. I'm sure you all know not to rely on your 13-year-old kids for policy advice, and not to sigh audibly and roll your eyes since it will look like you sent your 13-year-old to debate in ...

            My daughters are Erin and Meagan. When they were little, Meagan would get upset because we always “ran Erins,” but never “ran Meagans.”             That’s cute when a little one doesn’t know the meaning of a word. But such miscommunication can be a real problem in Common Core State Standards implementation.              It’s getting so that I hate to hear the term “close reading” because it is misused so often these days.               A comment from a reader of last week’s blog entry challenged me to evaluate an online video of a close reading lesson. I gave it a quick review and replied.               It’s been bugging me ever since, ...

            Spoiler alert: This blog entry is a two-parter. The first part (today’s entry) describes a problem to which the second entry will offer some nifty practical solutions (nope, no practical solutions today).             An idea heavily promoted in Common Core (CCSS) discussions is the notion that we shouldn’t talk about students’ “prior knowledge,” and that avoiding such discussions somehow “levels the playing field” when it comes to learning to read. Researchers in the cognitive sciences rediscovered the importance of people’s knowledge in learning and comprehension back in the 1970s (revisiting ideas previously explored by Bartlett, Kant, Plato, etc.).             Research ...

Blast from the Past: This first posted on October 11, 2014; and reposted on June 6, 2018. Surprisingly, the term “guided reading” continues to confuse. When I talk about complex text the issue arises. These days there is another widely held conception of guided reading not discussed here, that it is the method that encourages kids to guess at words based on context. I’ll write about that soon, but for now, it would help if teachers recognized the contradiction between current guided reading encourages conceptions and what state educational standards require of teachers. Oh, and poor George Clooney continues to decline. Once when visiting the Big Easy, a young woman ...

  Pat Wingert has an article on Common Core in Atlantic this month that I figure in: Atlantic Magazine: When English Proficiency Isn't Enough   

I've been working (visiting research professor at Queens University, Belfast), and vacationing in Ireland for the past few weeks. From the Emerald Isle I've been keeping tabs on the ongoing embarrassing political mischief aimed at keeping America firmly entrenched in the middle educational ranks ("We're 25th, we're 25th!").   I certainly understand those who oppose the CCSS standards because of fears that they might cost some money to accomplish or that they might require us -- us the students, teachers, parents, political leaders -- to work harder, the way they have worked harder in all those countries that have sped past us ...

Teacher question: I have a question that many teachers have asked and would like your help when thinking through the grading process for common core. How might the children receive grades for the many standards without giving a test? The teachers are doing a lot of processing text together as a class or in partners so they are wondering about the accountability for the students and how to get a grade to measure their knowledge.  Shanahan response: Good question.   Remember there are lots of parts of Common Core, so if you are an elementary teacher and you are teaching foundational skills (e.g., phonological awareness, phonics, oral ...