Blog: Shanahan on Literacy

Instead of front-loading the first reading, you could try front-loading the second or third — after the kids have had a chance to “pedal the bike themselves” — even if that pedaling isn’t perfectly successful.

Only part of guided reading is under challenge by Common Core. Small group instruction should afford teachers opportunities to observe student problems with reading and interpretation, and this insight should be used to shape instruction. 

When kids get the opportunity to discuss something with a partner before responding to a teacher question, positive outcomes have been seen in the primary grades in reading and in the upper grades with second-language learners.

A middle school reading coach asks if it is important for African American children to read African American literature. Alfred Tatum, author of Engaging African American Males in Reading, shares his thoughts.

Monitoring comprehension means not tabulating specific skills that have been accomplished, but what complexity of text language students can negotiate.

Vocabulary learning is incremental and there are more words that kids need to learn than we can teach. Kids need lots of opportunities to confront words in their reading and listening.

Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized or somewhat unique texts or text features in those texts that are the province of a particular field of study and the specialized approaches to reading and writing texts used by experts in a field of stud