Literacy Blogs

Previously, I discussed two observational studies (a landmark from the 1970s and a valuable recent effort). Both aimed to determine the amount of reading comprehension instruction in American schools. That’s an endeavor that requires clear definitions. According to the older study conducted by Dolores Durkin (1978), comprehension instruction included any action teachers took to help children “understand or work out the meaning of more than a single, isolated word.” The newer study, this one by Philip Capin and colleagues (2024), didn’t provide a definition as much as a list of acceptable actions: teaching word meaning knowledge, developing background knowledge, selecting texts ...

Teacher question: Could you tell us how to teach “Executive function skills”? We don’t teach them at our school, and our core program doesn’t emphasize them. However, the graduate program I’m in says they are important. Our school district emphasizes the reading rope, and it doesn’t even mention executive function. But my professor showed us the “Active View of Reading Model” which does include it. Which of these is the science of reading and what should I be doing to teach executive function? I teach third grade. Shanahan response: Let’s first try to figure out what executive function is. Basically, the term executive ...

Teacher question: "My district is trying to shift literacy instruction to be in line with the science of reading. We are wondering where comprehension strategies fit into Scarborough’s Reading Rope? Inferences and making connections are part of Verbal Reasoning, but what about other skills my students still need to be taught, like understanding and using text structure, summarizing, visualizing, questioning? There is much research to support explicit instruction in comprehension strategies, so where do they fit?  Also, even when our teachers do a good job of scaffolding students’ comprehension of complex text, our at-risk students struggle to independently process texts on ...