Literacy Blogs

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 ...

  This blog first posted on October 7, 2018, and reposted on November 9, 2024. The reason for the repost is because of the great amount of relevant research that has been published since it first appeared. Over these six years, there have been seven additional meta-analyses, all but one concluding that we comprehend screens less well than paper (Clinton, 2019 – 29 studies; Delgado, et al., 2018 – 54 studies; Díaz, et al., 2024 – 49 studies; Furenes, et al., 2021 – 39 studies; Kong, et al. 2018 – 17 studies; Öztop, & Nayci, 2021 – 12 studies). The one exception ...

  Teacher Question: An educational consultant came to our district and she and I disagreed over the idea of fluency instruction in the middle school. Our middle and high school classrooms are mostly homogeneously grouped, with many struggling readers three or more grade levels. She said that if we are teaching fluency, there should be a plethora of data to support it, and that all students do not need fluency work. I disagree with her, but I was not sure if I should push it because maybe we are not exactly "teaching fluency." (We are less teaching fluency, than having students practice it). If all ...

Blast from the past: Originally posted February 2, 2013; re-issued October 12, 2024. Over the past 15 years, I have issued several blogs concerning the value of teaching students to read more challenging texts than we have used in instruction in the past. Despite a growing body of evidence showing that teaching students at their “instructional reading level” provides no learning benefits – and that sometimes it limits learning – most teachers continue to avoid challenging text by moving kids to easier text, reading texts to the students, or replacing texts with other sources of information (e.g., videos, teacher presentations). ...

The Role of Letter Names in Learning to Read is Still Curious The original blog entry included a misinterpretation of a study by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley. I assumed that when they introduced letters into their PA intervention that they named the letters. I was incorrect in that assumption as Christopher Such a vigilant reader of this blog noticed. That means that there is no evidence that teaching letter names improves reading achievement (though including plastic letters in PA instruction was positive). There is also no evidence that students are benefited by not teaching letter names or that it is better to ...

Blast from the Past: This blog entry first posted on June 22, 2019, and was re-issued on September 21, 2024. The reason I’ve resurrected this one is because recently many of my podcasts have been greeted by jeers on social media claiming that pretty much any research-proven approach to reading instruction would be better replaced by opportunities for independent reading in the classroom. I agree that the more students read the better readers they are likely to become, but that is not best accomplished by sacrificing instructional time since instruction does more for reading achievement growth than does independent reading. ...

Parent question: What does the research say about students and “one-minute reads” for homework. My son is expected to read the same passage every night for a week, and we mark how many words he reads per minute. We get a new passage weekly. Although I understand WPM as an assessment measure of fluency, what positive and negative effects does this practice have on students? I notice he reads as quickly as possible and hates the task. I fear this is not encouraging appropriate speed and accuracy to support comprehension while also possibly taking away his want to read. Therefore, I’m ...

  Blast from the Past: This entry first posted on September 12, 2020, and reposted on August 24, 2024. Recently, I noticed a couple of research studies published in 2024 about seatwork and it reminded me of this blog. Like most professors, I have long looked askance at worksheets and their role in reading instruction (though I had relied upon them as a teacher). These newer studies (e.g., Amendum, et al., 2024), suggest that they are not as bad as we have been led to believe (Taylor, et al., 2005). Good teachers often use a mix of direct instruction along with ...

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 ...