Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: This piece first appeared on June 4, 2022, and was re-released on July 26, 2025. I continue to feel strongly that speech-to-print is the best way to go when it comes to beginning phonics instruction, yet as this entry admits – that is not yet proven. That hasn’t changed over the past few years, and yet data continue to accumulate on that side of the ledger. For example, Yan, et al. (2024) demonstrate the importance of a neurological speech-to-print convergence in reading, something that suggests the potential value of such instructional approaches. Likewise, there is more ...

Teacher Question: What is your thinking on teaching cueing systems? Shanahan Response: When I was a young boy, I learned about King Canute. He was the one who revealed the limits of his power by ordering the tides not to come in. They came in anyway. More about that later. This question about cueing systems was posed to me a couple of weeks ago by a colleague I hadn’t spoken with in a long time. I wasn’t surprised by his question. He knew I was a fan of explicit phonics instruction and over the past couple years some states have banned three-cueing. I’ve written about ...

Blast from the Past:  This entry first posted on June 4, 2022, and reposted on August 17, 2024. Recently, I received a couple of similar inquiries, so thought it might be worth reposting.  A quick review of recent research revealed studies focused on the importance of cognitive flexibility in phonics development (Boldrini, et al., 2023; Vadasy, et al., 2023) which suggest to me that adding spelling to the phonics regime may contribute to a stronger understanding of the conditional nature of decoding patterns. Since speech-to-print and print-to-speech are not just reverse processes, grappling with both may contribute to the necessary ...

Principal Question: We are trying to do better in reading achievement – our school is second lowest in our district. I’m convinced structured reading is the way to go and I’m willing to use my budget to pay for our primary teachers to attend the XXXXX professional development program. I’ve heard that having teachers take that training is an effective way to improve reading achievement. However, several of my teachers say they don’t want to go, and I can’t require it. I know they respect your opinion, what do you think of that training?RELATED: Small Group Phonics in the Classroom – Good ...

Teacher Question 1: Our district adopted a systematic phonics program and instruction is delivered whole class for each grade level for about 30 minutes per day. We have a wide range of learners in each class, so my question is, is whole class instruction an effective use of instructional time since some students are being exposed to phonics instruction beyond their level? For example, a second grader who still hasn’t mastered CVC words, but is focused on whole class instruction focused on CVCe words. Is there any research to substantiate that exposure to explicit phonics instruction beyond their current level of mastery is going to be ...

Teacher question: I know you typically don’t talk about specific programs, but I really would like to know your thoughts. I had always wanted more training in a structured literacy program/approach. I always thought Wilson, and specifically OG approaches, were the gold standards. More recently, I began reading about programs labeled as speech to print. Proponents of speech to print methods claim it is much faster to teach kids to read (and spell) than OG based approaches. Is there research to support this? Are these studies comparing programs based on OG (that mainly follow a more print to speech approach) and ...