Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: Our district is exploring and embracing Personalized Learning. We have a committee that has been going to professional development all year and a small group that is trying this out in their classrooms. Next year another group of teachers will be brought on to implement personalized learning and mentor under those trying it this year.   Coinciding with this, our elementary building will be undergoing renovation and a committee has been working on plans. Construction is to begin next school year. We have not seen the final plans. They will not show them to the staff yet. The guidelines for their ...

Teacher question:             What makes good readers? What are kids lacking making them not so good readers?  Shanahan response:             I love this question because it cuts to the heart of everything we do. If teachers don’t have clear purchase on what it takes to become a good reader, and what some kids might be missing, then their instructional successes will be fortunate accidents. The same can be said for the professors who prepare teachers and for the principals and coaches who supervise them.             So what is the answer?             Let’s start with something pretty self-evident, but that is worth mentioning… the only thing ...

I’m vacationing in Aix-en-Provence. I’ve written before about teaching myself to read French, and now I’m enrolled in a spoken French class. Très hard!!!   Maybe not much of a vacation, and, yet, I’m gaining valuable insights into what we must do to teach successfully with complex text.   Our tour includes about a dozen people; some are studying French, and some are not. Because our group is petite, they could only provide two French options. One for absolute beginners, and the other a mid-level French course attended by immigrants to France.   My self-taught reading lessons—and sporadic forays with Duolingo and Rosetta Stone—placed me well beyond the beginner class. The advanced class is ...

Teacher Question:             Is there a point at which it does not make sense to use a particular challenging text with a particular student? For instance, take an 8th grader who reads at about a 3rd grade level. The student can decode reasonably well but is dysfluent and, due to learning English, has poor comprehension resulting from low vocabulary knowledge and lots of confusion caused by complex syntax. Would you still say scaffold grade-level text to provide access for this student-- or at a certain point, the scaffolding would need to be so extensive and it would take the whole year to read a grade-level novel-- use easier text?             ...

Great report about beginning reading achievement in the most recent issue of Educational Researcher. D’Agostino & Rodgers show that, beginning literacy skills have improved annually from 2002 through 2013. Beginning first-graders have steadily improved in letter identification, phonemic awareness, concepts about print, writing vocabulary, word reading, and text reading. These gains were not just evident for the average or typical student, but for the relatively low achieving ones—though the gains for the latter have lagged those of their more advantaged peers. The researchers suggest—though do not claim to prove—that these data reflect an increased emphasis on literacy instruction in preschool and kindergarten, probably due to the reports of the ...