Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: This blog first appeared on August 14, 2021, and was reissued with minor revisions on September 20, 2025. Reading education – like the lengths of skirts and the widths of neckties – tends to be trendy. That’s unfortunate for those kids who happen to be in school when phonics isn’t cool and learning styles are. I often reissue these entries when I sense renewed interest in a topic. This time it is just the opposite. I’m not hearing much interest in this lately, and I think this neglect is a serious problem for kids. Maybe this ...

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 ...

Teacher question: I am an elementary school principal. I've heard a lot recently about disciplinary literacy. Our school isn't doing enough with that in my opinion. What do you think? What should I have my teachers doing with disciplinary literacy? Shanahan responds: Over the past three decades research has shown that people read differently in the different disciplines. Historians, for instance, read different kinds of texts, for different purposes, and they weigh evidence differently, and focus on different kind of information in the texts that they read than do literary critics or scientists. Reading starts out pretty generalizable. The skills we use to ...

Teacher question: In graduate school, we are being taught that we should use “hybrid texts” to teach content subjects. As a middle school math teacher, I think this is a horrible idea given our scant resources. Where do you stand on the use of hybrid text? Shanahan response: I share your concerns. I think hybrid text or mixed-genre text is an instructional idea that misses the point and leaves kids ill prepared for the future. Hybrid text is an expository text that includes narrative elements. A widely known example would be the Magic School Bus books. Those books present various social studies or science ...