Literacy Blogs

Teacher question: We are trying to figure out how to help our grade 2 students. Currently, we see a big gap in the percentage of students who are meeting standards in Grade K and 1 compared to the same student results in Grade 2 (more than 90% in Grades K and 1 but only 55% in grade 2) In our assessment. We allow students to have questions read in Grade K but not at the end of grade 1. Why might we see this trend consistently across cohorts? Would you be able to recommend 1 or 2 strategies that we could implement as a district (~74,000 students) to ...

Teacher question: Can you explain the difference between central idea, main idea, and theme? There appears to be a lot of confusions with these terms.   Shanahan’s response: You’re correct. There is much confusion and disparity in use of the terms central idea, main idea, and theme. And please add topic and topic sentence to that list, too. Part of the problem here is that these are old colloquial terms. They didn’t arise from the sciences (e.g., psychology, linguistics), so, perhaps, we shouldn’t expect too precise a meaning for each. Back in the early 1980s, Jim Baumann conducted a series of studies on the “main idea” concept and the steps needed to teach students to identify main ideas. He found that professional books ...

Teacher question:  What are your thoughts about writing in Kindergarten? Is there a scientifically-researched instructional methodology that we should implement. We’ve been trying to embed writing opportunities within the literacy block related to the whole group listening comprehension text. Should students draw in relation to the prompt or question and then label, dictate, and/or write? Should teachers model phonetic spelling of words or the correct spelling? Any help would be appreciated. Shanahan response: Last week I provided a partial answer to this question. My response emphasized the importance of kindergarten writing and the value of kindergarten teachers facilitating and teaching writing. I suggested amounts of time to devote to beginning writing instruction ...

Teacher question: What are your thoughts about writing in Kindergarten? Is there a scientifically-researched instructional methodology that we should implement. We’ve been trying to embed writing opportunities within the literacy block related to the whole group listening comprehension text. Should students draw in relation to the prompt or question and then label, dictate, and/or write? Should teachers model phonetic spelling of words or the correct spelling? Any help would be appreciated. Shanahan response: Indeed, kindergartners should be writing, and kindergarten teachers should be facilitating and teaching writing. Unfortunately, we don’t have a particularly rich scientific-research base on beginning writing instruction. There are many observational studies that give us a sense of what may be ...

Blast from the Past: This blog was first posted on February 4, 2018 and was revised and reposted on August 28, 2021. Recently, a research study on "connected phonation" appeared (Gonzalez-Frey & Ehri, 2021) that addressed a problem with synthetic phonics discussed below. It found that teaching students to sound out words in a more blended fashion improved student reading performance. This reminded me of a study that Suzanna Pflaum and Ernie Pascarella did back in the 1980s; they found that explicitly teaching blending also improved synthetic phonics outcomes. The point is that one of the major problems of synthetic ...

Question: I came across your article Informational Text: Or How Thin Can You Slice the Salami and wanted to reach out to you. I'm analytical and I work with other analytical thinkers. But I am also surrounded by reading specialists, literacy coaches, etc. who think differently. When I visit schools, I observe students who are analytical. They're interested in facts and the world. They prefer expository books to narrative nonfiction or fiction.  I'm concerned that young analytical thinkers are being underserved by literacy educators, who are more comfortable with narrative writing.  Shanahan responds: Your letter came at a very good time. Recently, I’ve been working ...

Teacher question: I teach first-grade and this year I switched schools. In my previous school, we tested our students with DIBELS three times a year. The idea was to figure if the students were having trouble with decoding so that we could help them. That isn’t how my new principal does it. He has us giving kids a reading comprehension test with leveled books. I asked him about it and he said that the district didn’t care about DIBELS and he didn’t care about DIBELS (he only cares about how kids do on the ____ test). I’m confused. I thought the ...