Literacy Blogs

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 ...

I was asked to write the following for a local high school that wanted to provide some writing guidelines for its students. This might be of use to you, too. I hope so. Ten things good writers do… 1. Good writers make a good first impression. They put extra effort into their introductions and first paragraphs because they want readers to read on. Consider this wonderful opener from E. B. White:”When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son was born, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.” That simple sentence took a lot of work, but it sure makes ...

Blast from the Past: This blog originally posted March 13, 2009; and was reissued on November 29, 2017. Teachers often experience frustration when it looks like the kids are regressing as a result of teaching. This entry may be a healthy reminder as to what is actually going on. Keep teaching.         I was speaking with a teacher who was not a big fan of phonics instruction. It was not that she was totally against it, in fact, her concerns had arisen from observing the children who she was teaching phonics too. She was concerned because, often, when she introduced ...