Literacy Blogs

31 May, 2013

Disciplinary Writing

Teacher question: I am writing to you for some suggestions and recommendations concerning working with science and social studies teachers in light of the writing standards in the common core.  I am a former English teacher with 35 years of experience and have, for the past seven years, worked to develop and present workshops and classes for content area teachers in reading – focusing on both disciplinary and content literacy.     I have been asked by a school district to provide professional development for secondary science and social studies teachers in implementing the writing standards in the common core.  Their suggestion was to ...

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28 May, 2013

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

Teachers, who otherwise are supportive of the common core, often ask me if I think it is fair that they be evaluated on the basis of test scores from tests they have never seen and on content that they are just starting to teach--often without a lot of supporting materials or professional development.   In fact, that most recently happened on Friday when I was in Franklin, TN.   I always give pretty much the same answer. I don't believe the test-based teacher evaluation schemes are ready for prime time, if it were my choice, we wouldn't make this many big changes at the ...

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19 May, 2013

Some Recent Questions, Explicit and Implied

Aren’t non-fiction and informational text the same thing? No, they are not. Informational text is factual, but that isn’t the point (or it isn’t the only point). CCSS is emphasizing the reading of literary and informational text to ensure that students are proficient with a wide variety of text. If the distinction was just fact vs. fiction, then text could be limited to narratives. Kids need to learn how to read exposition and argument as much as stories. Each of those types of text has different purposes, structures, graphic elements, text features, etc. And, that’s the point: exposing kids to all ...

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23 April, 2013

A Time For Humility

This blog first posted April 23, 2013; and was reposted on March 22, 2018. Close reading isn't as hot an issue as then, though some of these problems are still coming up. My correspondent was upset. She was writing because her teaching evaluation had not gone well. She was teaching what was supposed to be a "close reading" lesson and her evaluator thought she had done a terrible job.             The reason she was writing me was because she had modeled her lesson off of my close reading presentation. The supervisor was concerned that she asked too many "right there" questions and not enough higher order ones. The ...

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13 April, 2013

A Query About Comprehension Assessment

I received this letter recently and below is my response. I bet this goes on in lots of schools (unfortunately). Dear Dr. Shanahan, What do you believe to be best practice in assessing a student's reading comprehension? As elementary schools turn to the Professional Learning Community framework, teachers are expected to devise tests within their grade level teams to test for reading skills like inferring, author's purpose, cause & effect...etc...   In your comprehension blog, however, you stated that it was difficult to assess these skills separately since reading is an integrated process. That makes a lot of sense.   Are these Professional Learning Communities misdirected ...

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07 April, 2013

Backwards Design and Reading Comprehension

Many schools are into what they call “backward design.” This means they start with learning goals, create/adopt assessments, and then make lessons aimed at preparing kids for those assessments.   That sounds good—if you don’t understand assessment. In some fields an assessment might be a direct measure of the goal. If you want to save $1,000,000 for retirement, look at your bank account every six months and you can estimate of how close you are to your goal. How do you get closer to your goal? Add money to your accounts… work harder, save more, spend less.   Other fields? Doctors assess patient’s temperatures. ...

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05 April, 2013

Does Assigning Kids to Classes on the Basis of Ability Help to Improve Literacy?

I received a letter this week from a teacher wanting to know about ability grouping. Her principal wants to reduce the heterogeneity in reading achievement, so teachers will not have to make adjustments. She wanted to know what I thought of this arrangement.   I see a lot of these schemes these days in urban schools. Often the school will have three second-grade classrooms or three third-grade classrooms, and all the low kids end up in one room, and all the high ones in another room. The research says that these arrangements slightly advantage the top kids, but that they suppress the ...

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01 April, 2013

On Being Careful to Not Read Too Closely

Where does the author fit in common core text interpretations? Should students think about authors or is this verboten?   We (T. Shanahan, C. Shanahan, & C. Misichia) published research that considered how disciplinary experts (historians, mathematicians, historians) handle this problem. Our historians, consistent with many past studies, revealed that they focus heavily on authors during reading. They talked a lot about what they perceived to be the author’s arguments or biases.   The mathematicians we interviewed had a different take on the matter, claiming that author had no place in interpretation. They, according to their accounts, didn’t think about author at all when reading. ...

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24 March, 2013

Why Discussions of Close Reading Sound Like Nails Scratching on a Chalkboard

Blast from the Past: Why Discussions of Close Reading Sound Like Nails Scratching on a Chalkboard. First, published March 24, 2013; reissued on August 17, 2017. Here are some myths about close reading. 1.       Close reading is a teaching technique.             We have many of teaching techniques for guiding kids through reading. When I was becoming a teacher, the big shift among some was from the Directed Reading Activity (DRA) to the Directed Thinking Activity (DRTA). The DRA was one version of the typical basal reader lesson: the teacher would pre-teach vocabulary, review background information, give kids a purpose for reading, and then the text would be read in segments interspersed with teacher questions ...

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13 March, 2013

Close Reading with Struggling Adolescents

Teacher question:   I have a question regarding close reading and struggling adolescent readers. What I’ve read about close reading suggests that students should first read the text independently. I’m wondering if this still applies when students are reading significantly below grade level (2-5 years). Is reading the text aloud and modeling thinking (around Key Ideas and Details) during the first read ever appropriate?  Thanks in advance for your response! Shanahan response: Be very careful of what you read about close reading. It is not a teaching technique; when people try to make it into one, they tend to reveal all kinds of biases and ...

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