Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: This blog entry posted first on February 22, 2020, and was reposted on March 21, 2026. The major update to this piece is the inclusion of a reference list, only one of the studies included in it would not have been available in 2020. Aside from that and a few minor wording changes, this is the same blog entry that originally generated 26 comments. That version is linked here for those who want to the reaction. Teacher question:  Everyone says reading and writing are connected. But our school focuses on only reading. We have a reading program (we ...

This blog first appeared on February 22, 2020. It has been a while since I have written about how writing instruction can boost reading achievement. When I first started writing about that (almost 50 years ago), it was virtually an unknown topic. These days, most teachers tell me that they agree that writing can improve reading, though they don’t seem to have much understanding of the concept and quite often they skip the writing because of pressures to get higher reading scores. So it goes. Given recent experiences with such conversations, I thought it would be a good time to ...