Shanahan on Literacy

Recently, several organizations have started evaluating reading programs. These ratings are getting a lot of attention from school districts around the nation, but how good are they and how should they be used? This podcast will explore those issues and provide some recommendations.

Most reading interventions for older students fail. One reason for this is that they tend to focus on raising general reading achievement, instead of putting the major emphasis on helping those students to develop the reading abilities that would allow them to succeed. Think pre-remediation rather than remediation.

These days there is a great deal of interest in controlling classroom reading instruction. One approach to this is to require "fidelity" of program use. What does fidelity mean and will it improve reading achievement? This podcast explores those issues and suggests ways that programs can be used and adjusted for maximum success.

This podcast explores how classroom reading instruction is best organized -- whole class or small group? The tendency has been to promote small group instruction over all other considerations -- an approach that is not often very successful. Find out why.

This podcast explores the role that guided reading should play in reading instruction and how best to support students during such reading experiences.

This podcast explores the idea of teaching students to read at their instructional level. It explains why this is not such a good idea beyond beginning readers.

These days there is a big push to emphasize knowledge in reading programs. This has led to welcome increases in emphasis on social studies and science texts in reading. But what about literature? Is there anything to be learned from stories and poems that would count as knowledge in this new regime? This podcast will explore that issue and provide some guidance to teachers on the m

This episode explores the value of professional development for improving reading achievement. Some school districts are investing heavily in very expensive professional development programs in the hopes these will raise reading achievement.

Teachers are often told that differentiation in instruction is important and in reading that tends to mean multiple groups of kids being taught different things. Is that a good idea for phonics? Why or Why not? This episode will answer those questions.

School administrators often believe that students can be evaluated on the individual reading comprehension standards and they push teachers to teach and assess these individually. The research suggests that such efforts won't work.