Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: This entry first appeared on August 19, 2018, and was reposted on October 3, 2026. The reason for reposting is because research on the pedagogical value of morphology teaching continues to burgeon. What might have been a forward-thinking article in 2018, seems obvious in 2026. That’s if one pays attention to the studies showing the positive impact that morphology instruction has on students’ abilities to recognize and spell words and to comprehend text throughout the grades (for both older and younger children). The only big change to this entry is the inclusion of a list of ...

This blog first posted on January 8, 2022, and was re-issued on May 3, 2025. These days there is much interest in reading fluency, but writing fluency has an important role to play in literacy development, too. As I predicted in this piece, new research would eventually demonstrate that writing quality depends greatly on writing fluency (Kim, 2024). In fact, without writing fluency, you are not likely to see much good writing. If students cannot effortlessly get their words onto paper, they will struggle to write well. This blog provides several practical recommendations for making this happen and it cites ...

Teacher question: I teach kindergarten. We’ve been arguing over whether we should teach spelling or developmental spelling. Which is best? Shanahan response: You’re asking if learning to spell comes more surely from “transmission” (teaching by telling or demonstrating) or from “construction” (learning through discovery or operating on the world). Arguments in educational psychology have raged over this for decades. I think the dispute – at least with regards to spelling – is misleading. The two approaches are posed as contradictory, that teachers must choose one way or the other. I don’t see it that way. Explicit spelling versus invented spelling is a false dichotomy. I encourage ...