Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: I’m interested in whether personal grief trauma and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) effect reading comprehension or learning to read. Over the years, I have had students who have lost parents or siblings, and some who are witnesses to (or victims of violence). What does research say about these students’ reading ability and what should we be doing to make sure they learn to read as well as possible? Shanahan response: You’re not the only one who has wondered about this. Researchers, educators, researchers, and lawyers have all taken a swing at it – conducting correlational studies, crafting potentially valuable instructional responses, and ...