Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: Can you provide clarification on how to promote shared reading in the structured literacy era and how that differs from shared reading in the balanced literacy era. I would think a teacher could certainly initially read the text aloud to students to model fluency and expression, but then must ensure students can get the words off the page and reread by decoding the words, rather than parroting the teacher or memorizing the shared reading text that may be a rhyme/song that is catchy. Shanahan response: There are many reasons to read to children. Most of them are pretty sensible. Some are more ...

"Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping, and the cotton is high..." It is summer and not a good time for a long blog on literacy teaching. So, I took the time to write a short one. I didn't want to get worked up in the summer heat, so have provided a pithy critique of 5 popular myths about reading instruction. 1.  No, the fact that you do not use a textbook to teach reading does not make you a good teacher. The idea that good teachers don’t follow a program and weak ones do has been around since ...

Blast from the Past: First posted November 21, 2007; re-posted July 26, 2018. Advice on reading books with kids. I means this advice mainly for parents, but it is relevant to teachers in terms of how and what they should read to kids. Since Common Core such advice has become more common, but this was first issued years before CCSS.         I'm frequently asked about reading to children. Obviously reading to kids is a good idea, though this is one of those satisfying times when the research literature actually supports the good idea. Research clearly shows that reading ...