Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: This was first posted on January 29, 2009 and reposted on August 9, 2018. As we get ready to start a new school year, it would be wise for teachers to dedicate themselves to avoiding wasting time this year having kids practicing answering certain kinds of questions. Reading is not the ability to answer particular kinds of questions, but to making sense of text. Many more research studies showing this since this posting first appeared. Here’s a big idea that can save your school district a lot of money and teachers and kids a lot of time: reading comprehension ...

Arne--   Congratulations on your recent well-deserved appointment. Your success as Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools depended greatly on improving achievement. Secretaries of Education aren’t usually held responsible for such gains, but maybe they should be. Given your competitive spirit, why not hold yourself to that standard anyway.   So what steps can a Secretary of Education take in this regard? I can think of several. Your boss campaigned on the idea of doubling federal support for preschool education. That’s $10 billion in new funding. The Secretary of Education can require that the curricula for such programs be consistent with the forthcoming National Early ...

The problems that beset America since the “new millennium” had been silently growing beneath the surface for some time without adequate response. For example, we all share the memory of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but it is important to remember that radical Islamic terrorism did not begin then. It had been growing for years. Maybe it had only seemed like a bad cold, but the 2001 attacks signaled a change in our situation. Evidently, the cold had morphed into a bad case of double pneumonia.   Similarly, our current financial crisis didn’t just blow up in October. This one had been ...

Is there really such a thing as an effective program? Your question would be like asking a plumber, “How do I select an effective wrench?” It’s not the wrench that’s effective, it’s the plumber with a wrench, and it is the same idea with teachers and instructional programs.   However, I get your point. You aren’t looking for an “effective program,” as much as for a program that has the potential of being effective if used properly by a teacher who knows her stuff. The National Reading Panel (NRP) reviewed 52 studies that showed that explicit teaching of phonemic awareness to kindergartners ...

Okay, okay, I know. The election won't really take place until Tuesday, but let's face it, it would take a miracle to prevent Barak Obama from being elected President of the U.S. His victory celebration is supposed to attract about 1 million people to a site just a few blocks from my home, and commentators are talking about how important a quick transition is going to be this year with the economic crisis. Given all of that, I don't think it is too early to let the transition team know that literacy policy is going to this president's attention (and ...

Blast from the Past: This entry posted on October 29, 2008 and was revisited on August 20, 2022. When originally issued, educators were concerned about properly adhering to the intent of various federal and state documents – which raised questions about whether phonemic awareness and phonics were to be separated. By 2022, these concerns were being raised by researchers and theorists about the proper role that letters should play in phonemic awareness instruction. This blog explains the value of combining PA and phonics instruction. The point of phonemic awareness teaching is to help students to perceive the individual language sounds ...

Okay, here is a quiz...  1. Does research show that reading to kids improves literacy? Yes or no.   If you read Jim Trelease's books, you're likely to get this one wrong. Reading to kids has been shown to improve kids' language development--and this might have a positive impact on reading--but no studies show that reading to kids improves their reading ability.... Really. 2. When you read to kids should you focus on picture books? Yes or no.   Research studies don't really tell us much about the impact of reading specific books on children's learning, but the key to having an impact on children's language ...