Literacy Blogs

  Blast from the Past: This entry first appeared September 6, 2016, was reissued June 27, 2020, and January 25, 2025. I’ve updated it a bit – based on my new book (which is currently in production and should be out soon). Avoiding teaching students with grade level texts, holds most kids back rather than propelling them forward. This blog entry provides practical advice as to how to teach successfully with such books. Teacher Question: My district is currently "grappling" with the idea of asking students to read complex text if they are significantly below the grade level. As an example, within one fourth ...

  This blog first posted on October 7, 2018, and reposted on November 9, 2024. The reason for the repost is because of the great amount of relevant research that has been published since it first appeared. Over these six years, there have been seven additional meta-analyses, all but one concluding that we comprehend screens less well than paper (Clinton, 2019 – 29 studies; Delgado, et al., 2018 – 54 studies; Díaz, et al., 2024 – 49 studies; Furenes, et al., 2021 – 39 studies; Kong, et al. 2018 – 17 studies; Öztop, & Nayci, 2021 – 12 studies). The one exception ...

Okay, okay… “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Reading teachers know the relationship between words and pictures is a lot more complicated than that. Research, for instance, has shown repeatedly that when you’re trying to teach kids to read a word, it is best to ditch the pictures. Word learning requires that attention be focused on the sequence of letters, not the accompanying photo or drawing. Those are just distractions. Another problem with pictures and words is that when kids have trouble with some words in a text, they may try to depend on the picture context. The pictures may give ...

I’m reading a book about Herman Melville and Lewis Mumford (one of Melville’s autobiographers). Last night, before sleep, I read about 20 pages. The author alternates chapters – one on Melville, then one on Mumford. I didn’t get the organization immediately, but whatever is revealed about one author will be implicated in what will be divulged about the other, though the connection isn’t always explicit. Last night’s pair was about how these very despondent men each managed to find someone who would connect deeply with them emotionally and intellectually, despite the depths of their negativity. That sounds like I was comprehending what ...

Teacher question: You say that we cannot successfully teach comprehension skills like main idea. But our standards require that we teach main idea, and our state tests ask main idea questions to assess whether our students are accomplishing that goal. I don’t get it, your advice on this is not helpful.RELATED: Should We Still Teach Sight Vocabulary? Shanahan response: For years, comprehension skills like “main idea” were taught by having kids read texts and answer main idea questions. The idea is that question-answering practice will improve the ability to answer the kinds of questions the students are practicing with. Often the question types themselves ...

Teacher question: I’m writing to you about high school progress monitoring for reading comprehension. Our school has learning goals for Reading Comprehension. Every two weeks, students read an on-grade level passage and answer 5 multiple-choice questions that assess literal comprehension and main idea. Our data are not matching well with other data that we have (such as course passing rates and state assessments). What might be a more effective progress monitoring process, that go beyond the literal level, and that would provide information the teachers could use to improve instruction. RELATED: Shared Reading in the Structured Literacy Era Shanahan response: I’m not surprised that approach ...

Teacher question: One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We’re using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he’s our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He’s really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? RELATED: Shared Reading in the Structured Literacy Era Shanahan response: Your colleague is partly right. Knowledge about the world is a valuable commodity in ...

Awhile back, I posted an opinion piece calling for the explicit teaching of sentence comprehension. With schools aiming to expose kids to complex text, it would seem that such instruction would be de rigueur. Texts are often complex because they include complicated sentences and experience tells me that students often fail to grasp the meaning of individual sentences – undermining their ability to identify main ideas, make inferences, draw conclusions, or answer any of the other question types.   Given that comprehension lessons tend to focus on “prior knowledge,” vocabulary, text reading with follow-up questions, comprehension strategies, the lowly sentence gets ...

Teacher question: You say that we should teach students to read with grade level texts. But my professor (I’m working on a master’s degree in reading) says that would be a big mistake since harder texts have been found to lower students’ fluency and comprehension (Amendum, Conradi, & Hiebert, 2017). Your research says one thing and his says something else. How can I sort this out? I kind of think that he is right since my students don’t read as well when I put them in the grade level books. Shanahan response: This is an easy question to answer: I’m right and your ...

Last week, I posted five literacy education pet peeves. I whined about the lack of balance in balanced literacy; calls to end the reading wars that fail to address their root cause; the use of research to cover one’s tracks rather than to support sound decisions; the use of drive-by conferencing in place of deep discussions of text; and instructional schedules tuned to teachers’ comfort levels rather than kids’ learning needs. As promised, here are five more. Pet Peeve #6:  Research claims based on the wrong kinds of research. Recently, a claim of mine was challenged on Twitter. Someone pointed out that there ...