Literacy Blogs

Last week, I posted a blog that described how effective comprehension strategy instruction works. I said that students won’t use strategies forever and that I didn’t believe that strategies eventually morphed into skills (at least not skills that look anything like the strategy). I think strategies work more like true scaffolds; they operate as a temporary support that allows kids to read on their own more effectively, but not in the same way they will need to read on their own later. The problem is that strategies are cumbersome and no one will use them for long. Frankly, when a ...

There is no doubt research shows that reading comprehension strategy instruction works. The National Reading Panel said so. Although comprehension studies have been short-term, there are just so many of them (more than 200 such studies).   That doesn’t mean everybody agrees with strategy teaching. Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown have argued strenuously against such teaching. They claim teachers would be better off having kids read text and engaging in a deep discussion of the ideas.   I respect Isabel and Moddy, but how can you ignore so much research? I think the disagreement lies in a basic misconception about the purpose of strategy instruction.   There are three ways to ...

First posted May 11, 2009. Blast from the past July 20, 2017 Here we are at the height of summer... I just got back from the International Literacy Association conference and I was hearing about teachers already preparing to start back to school this month! Summers used to mean baseball--not the school year. This blog might remind everyone of a key characteristic of effective of reading teachers. Teaching should follow research, and teachers ought to use the kinds of tools and routines that have been found to be effective in the past. In the Chicago schools, I imposed time standards to make sure ...

The next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is going to be quite different from “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB). That’s both good since real changes are needed, but it’s a little scary, too, because NCLB represented a remarkable and positive break with past federal education policy.   A quick pre-2000 history lesson: At the federal level, Republican and Democratic views of education had evolved into an unfortunate stalemate. Republicans usually opposed federal education spending for Constitutional and budgetary reasons. Their argument was that education was the responsibility of the states and that Uncle Sam should stay out of the ...

Blast from Past: First posted March 30, 2009; reposted May 3, 2018. I didn’t think I’d be re-issuing this one, but this week, I heard two of these myths repeated so, perhaps, time for a reminder of the facts.   Last week, I heard from the Education Writers Association requesting information about what happens to children who don’t learn to read well by third grade… Do they drop out of high school? End up in jail? Become wards of the state? Go into politics? (Okay, they didn’t really ask that last one, I was just checking to see if you were paying attention.) The Writers had checked NAEP reports and ...

The main point of “guided reading” is to make sure kids are being taught from books that are not too far beyond their skills. If a book seems like hieroglyphics to a kid, then not much learning could be expected. (Likewise, books can be too easy… presenting neither challenge nor much to learn). Trying to get kids into the “just right” reading level has been an issue of long interest in the field of reading.   The independent/instructional/frustration level scheme has now been around for about 60 years (since Emmett Betts described these levels in his landmark textbook). Frustration level is the ...