Literacy Blogs

Years ago, I posted a blog that recommended teaching “text structure” (March 17, 2019). Such instruction can improve reading comprehension – as proven by copious numbers of rigorously designed research studies carried out with a wide range of students (e.g., across the grades, English Learners, kids with learning disabilities). Texts are not just lists of sentences. Authors organize what they have to say so that readers can follow the discourse and remember the information For example, stories depend on plot structure or story grammar. Characters have goals and confront problems in trying to achieve those desired outcomes. Accordingly, stories include one or ...

Teacher question: You say that we cannot successfully teach comprehension skills like main idea. But our standards require that we teach main idea, and our state tests ask main idea questions to assess whether our students are accomplishing that goal. I don’t get it, your advice on this is not helpful.RELATED: Should We Still Teach Sight Vocabulary? Shanahan response: For years, comprehension skills like “main idea” were taught by having kids read texts and answer main idea questions. The idea is that question-answering practice will improve the ability to answer the kinds of questions the students are practicing with. Often the question types themselves ...