Literacy Blogs

     "Close reading" is a colloquial term used by scholars in several fields of study. Prior to its re-emergence as a big idea since Common Core has lionized it, Cyndie Shanahan and I did a study with mathematicians, historians, and chemists. Several of these disciplinary experts mentioned close reading, though they clearly didn't all mean the same thing. Only in literature or, more exactly, literary criticism, is close reading used as a term of art.        The conception of close reading that is embodied in the Common Core standards is the one drawn from literature. However, it is ...

Teacher question: I am a reading specialist working in an urban school district with struggling readers in K-5.  Do you have any suggestions on intervention programs that you find the most beneficial to students?  Currently, we are using LLI (Fountas and Pinnell), Sonday, Read Naturally and Soar to Success, at the interventionist's discretion. Is there any research supporting or refuting these programs?  Is there another program that you find more effective?  We also use Fast Forward and Lexia as computer-based interventions.  What does the research say about these tools?   Shanahan response:   The best place to get this kind of information is the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). ...

Teacher question: I'm a fourth grade special education teacher in NYC. Our school has acquired a new reading/writing program and has discontinued a grammar program we've used for several years. In the new program the grammar component is virtually non-existent. On a gut level I feel that students are struggling with test questions, even math ones, due to lack of practice/knowledge of grammar. They simply don't understand what the questions are asking. I was wondering what your opinion/research shows as far as the relationship between grammar instruction and reading comprehension. Do you have any preference as far as grammar programs/teaching methodologies go?   Shanahan response:  Great ...

A colleague sent me this link from the Washington Post. He is especially interested in history and he wrote to me about this lesson plan. Needless to say, he was horrified, and wanted me to explain how Common Core could promote such anti-historical thinking (an instructional approach that seems like an affront to historians and history teachers everywhere).   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/19/common-cores-odd-approach-to-teaching-gettysburg-address/   Here was my answer:   The problem here is that different disciplines conceptualize close reading differently. In literature/English, the idea is to give a close analysis of the language and rhetoric of this kind of text (and the lesson in the link you sent me ...

Since James Coleman’s landmark report about inequality in the 1960s, it has been common knowledge in education that there is a close relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and and their children’s school achievement. The statistics have consistently shown the injustice of a system in which the children from the least advantaged economic circumstances attain the lowest levels of literacy.   Let’s turn the world on its head.   Recently, I came across a fascinating new investigation of the relationship between reading achievement and SES conducted by Stuart Ritchie and Timothy Bates and reported earlier this year in Psychological Sciences. They aren’t educators and they weren’t ...