Literacy Blogs

  Parent question: My son is 11 years old, and he suffers from dyslexia. I’ve been told you oppose accommodations for dyslexic children. That is irresponsible. I don’t think you understand how these children suffer.RELATED: Eight Ways to Help Kids Read Complex Text Shanahan responds: I do oppose some – though not all — accommodations for students with dyslexia. The purpose of accommodations is to enable people with disabilities to access and participate in activities, jobs, and learning. An accommodation is an alteration to an environment that increases individual access. Examples of accommodations that I fully support are modifications to curbs to allow those who depend ...

Teacher question: I am hoping that you can clarify a question that some of us are debating. I've sought out the wisdom of Kelly Cartwright and Katie Pace Miles as well. Can you clarify the difference between language comprehension and listening comprehension? And where does linguistic comprehension fit in here? I'm asking because when we refer to the Simple View of Reading, so many people use listening comprehension (which is inaccurate) but this leads to the question of what are the nuances or subtleties of them all! Thank you!RELATED: How I Teach Students to Use Context in Vocabulary Learning Shanahan responds: Awhile back, I posted a blog that dared mention that ...

Teacher question: I was wondering if you are able to provide me with a clearer understanding of what a “silent Reading and Listening Capacity Test” is all about.  Shanahan responds: The whole idea of administering silent reading and listening capacity tests is two-fold. A silent reading test would be used to determine how well a student can comprehend text when reading silently. Typically, such a test would be administered using graded or leveled passages. Thus, if the student could read the fourth-grade passages with 75% or higher comprehension, but could only read the fifth-grade passages with 50% comprehension, we might say something like, ...

Blast from the Past: This entry was first published on November 30, 2014, and was re-issued September 4, 2020. This blog entry has new relevance with so many teachers and students engaged in distance teaching/learning. Some schools are doing the right thing--making sure that schoolbooks are in the home so that students can engage in reading within their Zoom-based lessons. Others have prohibited sending books home. This has encouraged many teachers to replace reading comprehension with listening comprehension under the pretense that these are really the same thing. But learning to decode while thinking about the ideas in a text ...