Blog: Shanahan on Literacy

Instruction in how to make sense of sentences can play an important role in reading comprehension. For example, when students struggle with sentences written in the passive voice, teach with some texts that use this construction.

Schools should provide students with up to 30 minutes a day of fluency instruction. But remember, this is across all classes and content areas.

A new study indicates that it is not beneficial for most students (English learners are one exception), to shift to easier texts to facilitate their reading — as long as you are ready to provide instructional support.

I suspect that our kids would read better if they knew more, so expanding kids’ knowledge of the world very well might promote higher literacy.

[I recommend] balancing the needs for sustained attention and stamina and the possibility of exposing kids to some really great novels against exposing kids to a broader and more varied experience with elements of literature, literary works, and racial

Having classes/groups of students read common texts with teacher scaffolding is a good idea, whether we are talking about the reading of a short story in an English class or a chapter from a science book.

Oral sharing and video and audio presentations have their place in the high school English curriculum. But it is a small place, so teachers need to be honest with themselves as to why they are using those approaches.

In grades 3-8, homework has a fairly consistent impact on achievement — and the payoff tends to increase as students advance through the grades (but so does the amount of homework time needed — more on that later).

While I encourage, and even require, oral reading instruction in middle schools, I don’t countenance round robin. Engage your kids in paired reading and they’ll get much more oral reading practice than in the round robin approach.