Literacy Blogs

This week’s challenging question: I had a question from some schools people that I’m not sure how to answer. I wonder if anyone has data on what progress can be expected of students in the primary grades getting extra help in reading. Let’s assume that the students are getting good/appropriate instruction, and the data were showing that 44% of students (originally assessed as “far below”) across grades 1-3 were on pace to be on grade level after 2 years of this extra help. Is this expected progress for such students or less than what has been shown for effective early reading interventions? Shanahan’s ...

Boy, oh, boy! The past couple weeks have brought unseasonably warm temperatures to the Midwest, and unusual flurries of questions concerning teaching children at their, so-called, “instructional levels.” Must be salesman season, or something.           One of the questions asked specifically about my colleague Dick Allington, since he has published articles and chapters saying that teaching kids with challenging text is a dumb idea. And, a couple of others queries referred to the advertising copy from Teachers College Press (TCP) about their programs. Both Dick and TCP threw the R-word (research) around quite a bit, but ...

         In my last entry, I explored some ideas concerning what role authors play in our interpretation of text. As with many controversies in the garden of literary criticism, nothing is settled, but an exquisite tension has been created. It is this tension that mature readers need to learn to negotiate—and that we have to prepare them for.          My take on this controversy is this: it is respectful, responsible, and wise to try to get back to “the author’s intended meaning.” That means we need not only to think about what a text says, but what we thought the author ...

I’m often asked if the questions I publish here are “real.” That is, do teachers, really ask me these things? The questions definitely are real. Though they come to me in a variety of ways.            Not long ago a colleague contacted me for my advice on a question she’d been asked. She was surprised to see that one show up on my blog. Other times, I might be giving a talk and a question comes from the audience. I remember it later and answer it again for you.            This week’s “question” is ...

Letter I received: I found these troubling quotes in the Report of the National Reading Panel: "Fluency, the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression..." "Fluent readers can read text with speed, accuracy, and proper expression..." My dismay is due to (a) listing rate first in both statements, and (b) using "quickly" and "with speed" rather than "rate" (or "appropriate rate" as in the CCSS fluency standard). I wonder if this wording may have encouraged folks who now embrace the notion that "faster is better" (e.g. "better readers have higher DIBELS scores--wcpm") In my own work I often refer to Stahl & Kuhn (2002) ...

Last week I answered a teacher’s question about free reading time during the school day and its relationship to reading motivation (e.g., making kids like reading). I pointed out that such reading time has a rather weak relationship with learning (various kinds of instruction exert about an 800% greater influence on learning than on having kids reading on their own during the school day) and that the connection with motivation appears to be even more tenuous. I then compared the DEAR/SSR practice unfavorably with theories and research on what motivates human beings. Not surprisingly that generated much comment. Although the following ...