

Shanahan on Literacy
Timothy Shanahan
Timothy Shanahan is a renowned expert on the teaching of literacy. This podcast addresses practical issues in teaching students to read and to read better.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 25, 2025 • 13min
Don’t Confuse Reading Comprehension and Learning to Read (and to Reread)
Are we making our instructional decisions based upon comprehension data or learning data? Is our purpose to make sure that students gain immediate comprehension of the instructional text or is it to improve kids' reading ability so they will be more successful with future texts? The answer might surprise you.

Oct 11, 2025 • 13min
Considering Running Records, and No, I Don’t Beat My Wife Anymore
I've argued against teaching reading at students' instructional levels. Does that mean that I'm against running records and informal reading inventories? What could such tests possibly provide if you aren't teaching with leveled books? This podcast will answer those questions and many more.

Sep 27, 2025 • 19min
What Role Should Pictures Play in Teaching Reading?
This podcast explores the role that pictures play in teaching decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Sep 20, 2025 • 12min
Disciplinary Literacy Goes to Elementary School
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.

Sep 6, 2025 • 9min
Our Middle School Reading Scores are Dropping – Help!
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!

Aug 23, 2025 • 15min
Rejecting Instructional Level Theory
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.

Aug 9, 2025 • 15min
Modeling in Fluency Instruction
"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?

5 snips
Aug 2, 2025 • 13min
What is the Science of Reading?
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.

Jul 26, 2025 • 15min
Print-to-Speech or Speech-to-Print? That is the Question
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.

Jul 12, 2025 • 19min
How to do the Best Benchmark Testing?
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.


