How Much Teacher Guidance Versus How Much Independent Work?

By Tim Shanahan     2016

Teacher’s letter:
I’ve been reading your blog articles very carefully, and in one entry you recommended having the kids read a lot during the literary block time (and all other subjects), suggesting possibly 50% of the time should be spent reading. My question is how much of that reading time should be teacher-led […]

• Articles
• Learning
• Reading
• Teaching

For the Love of Reading: Engaging Students in a Lifelong Pursuit

By Daniel T. Willingham 2015

How should American teens spend their leisure time? I recently asked* American adults this question, after explaining that the typical teen enjoys approximately five hours of leisure time each weekday.1 The activity with the highest response, irrespective of race, education, and other demographic factors, was reading. Adults thought teens ought to […]

• Articles
• Parents
• Reading
• Teaching

Teaching Reading Comprehension and Comprehension Strategies

Tim Shanahan

January 2016

Teacher question:  In terms of teaching comprehension to grade 3-5 students, what is the best way to help the readers transfer the strategies they are taught so they can be independent, self-regulated readers?

Shanahan’s response:  If you want to teach reading comprehension strategies to on-grade level students between the ages of 8-10, we have […]

• Articles
• Comprehension
• Differentiated Instruction and RtI
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking
• Metacognition
• Reading
• Research-Based/Evidence-Based
• Teaching

To Lexile or Not to Lexile, That is the Question

Tim Shanahan

A teacher’s question:
Our school district is going wild over Lexiles because they are in the Common Core standards. I think they are overdoing it and don’t feel comfortable with some of the decisions that we are making. What are the weaknesses of Lexiles?

First, Lexiles is only one of several readability measures included in […]

• Articles
• Literacy
• Reading
• Teaching

Computational Competence Doesn’t Guarantee Conceptual Understanding in Math

By Dan Willingham

Commenters on the teaching of mathematics sometimes express impatience with the idea that attention ought to be paid to conceptual understanding in math education. I get it: it sounds fuzzy and potentially wrong-headed, as though we’re ready to overlook inaccurate calculation so long as the student seems to understand the concepts—and student understanding […]

• Articles
• Learning
• Math
• Teaching

Middle School Reading Interventions

By Tim Shanahan

From a district leader:
We are a K-12 district and are revamping our grade 6 through grade 8 instructional supports, which include a 40-minute additional session of reading and/or math instruction anywhere from three to five days a week. This extra instruction is provided to any student below the 50th percentile on the MAP […]

• Articles
• Reading
• Teaching

Why Standards-Based Teaching Has Failed to Raise Reading Achievement

By Tim Shanahan

Standards-based educational reform goes back to the early 1990s. Since then, test scores have see-sawed a bit, but for the most part we are doing about as well as we’ve been doing since 1970 (when we first started collecting national reading data).

That means standards-based reform has not led to higher achievement. Establishing educational […]

• Articles
• Literacy
• Reading
• Teaching

A Close Read of a Close Reading Video

by Tim Shanahan

My daughters are Erin and Meagan. When they were little, Meagan would get upset because we always “ran Erins,” but never “ran Meagans.”

That’s cute when a little one doesn’t know the meaning of a word. But such miscommunication can be a real problem in Common Core State Standards implementation.

It’s getting so that I […]

• Articles
• Common Core
• Comprehension
• Literacy
• Reading
• Teaching

Does a Listening Deficit Predict a Reading Deficit?

by Tim Shanahan

In a recent workshop I attended, the following comment was made:

“A child cannot read and comprehend at a level higher than they can listen and comprehend. A deficit in listening comprehension predicts a deficit in reading comprehension.” Could you explain this correlation further or refer me to professional reading material that would expound on this […]

• Articles
• Comprehension
• Reading
• Teaching

10 Guidelines for Dealing with Prior Knowledge

by Tim Shanahan

Don’t overdo it. Research shows that providing readers with key information about a text can improve comprehension, as does reminding them of relevant information that they already know. But in the research studies these things were usually accomplished pretty economically; often the researcher did not do more than tell students the topic. To […]

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• Learning
• Literacy
• Reading
• Teaching