Shanahan on Literacy

This podcast explores the role that pictures play in teaching decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

This podcast explains the nature of disciplinary literacy and lays out a description of what role it should play in the elementary school reading curriculum.

Middle school reading scores are stagnant or dropping all over the country. What can we do about that? This podcast explores what a science of reading based response should look like. If you want to help upper elementary, middle school, and high school readers, please tune in!

This episode explores the idea of teaching students with leveled books at their so-called instructional reading levels. For 70+ years, educators have been told that this was the key to optimum amounts of learning. This podcast challenges that idea.

"Experts" make lots of recommendations about how to teach oral reading or text reading fluency. One of those recommendations is that it is important to "model" oral reading for the students. The research is nearly silent on this issue, so what makes sense?

This episode explores what it meant by the term "science of reading" and it distinguishes that idea from a "science of reading instruction." The issue here has to do with what kind of evidence should be used to determine how best to teach reading.

This episode explores the effectiveness of Orton-Gillingham approaches to the teaching of phonics as well as which method is best for facilitating growth in decoding -- teaching students connect letters to sounds or sounds to letters.

This podcast explores the pluses and minuses of benchmark reading testing, including considerations of test frequency, time of day the tests are administered and who proctors the tests.

Many kids only want to read graphic novels. Is that a problem? This podcast explores the pluses and minuses of graphic novels when it comes to learning to read. It includes practical suggestions for parents and teachers.

The podcast dives into the ongoing debate surrounding reading instruction methods. It questions the effectiveness of small group teaching compared to whole-class approaches. Research findings reveal surprising drawbacks of small group strategies, pushing educators to rethink their methods. The discussion highlights the importance of equitable learning opportunities, especially for disadvantaged students. Tune in for insights that challenge conventional wisdom and aim to reshape reading education.