1. Timothy Shanahan University of Illinois at Chicago www.shanahan onliteracy.com 10 KEYS TO HIGHER LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT: SOME DOS AND DON’TS

2.  Students should receive 2-3 hours per day of reading and writing instruction/practice  This time can be spread across the day and even across subject matters  10,000 hours to be an expert at anything (this provides almost half of that) 1. PROVIDE SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF READING AND WRITING INSTRUCTION

3.  This time should be divided among word learning (decoding and meaning), oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing  Teaching of these have all been proven by research to raise achievement consistently  This means that students would receive 90 hours – 135 hours per year working on key aspects of literacy 2. FOCUS ON KEY OUTCOMES

4.  Many teachers organize their instruction around activities  Each of these key outcomes can be translated into learning goals (standards)  Be specific as to what students need to be able to do with assignments and hold them to it (and get them there)  Organize instruction around goals, specify goals in lesson plans, match activities to goals rather than the other way around 3. BE GOAL FOCUSED, NOT ACTIVITY FOCUSED

5.  Many schools analyze comprehension test data by question-type  Teachers and students spend lots of time on item practice  Standardized reading comprehension tests measure a single factor (Davis, 1944; Kirsch, et al., 1993; Spearritt, 1972)  This is due in part to the nature of reading comprehension  And, in part, to the nature of testing 4. AVOID TEST PREPARATION

6. AN EXAMPLE OF QUESTION TYPES NOT MATTERING. 

7. ANOTHER EXAMPLE

8. Evidence test text matters matter?

9.  Students need to practice their literacy  Much of the fluency time should be spent reading and rereading texts aloud  Much of the reading comprehension time should be spent reading texts silently  Much of the word time should be spent reading words 5. LOTS OF READING WITHIN INSTRUCTION

10.  Most students engage in “conversational activities” very well  But much literacy work is more of a monologue  Can they sustain the conversation themselves (with the text as conversational partner)?  Increase the amounts of reading and writing and reduce the amount of support over time 6. BUILD STAMINA

11.  Summarization  Analysis  Evaluation  Synthesis  Writing about text is more powerful than reading, reading/studying, reading/discussing 7. REQUIRE WRITING ABOUT TEXT

12.  When students are starting out, it is important to facilitate “reading” – so keep the texts relatively easy (95% accuracy) and provide a lot of support  From Grade 2 on, teach from more demanding texts (80-85% accuracy), but provide scaffolds and repetition  Teach with texts of varied difficulty  Facilitate student reading of “frustration” texts 8. TEACH WITH COMPLEX TEXT

13.  Much of the focus on reading instruction emphasizes skills, strategies, techniques  However, the content of texts matters, too  It is essential that students increase their knowledge of our cultural heritage, the social world, and the natural world  Do NOT reduce the amount of science, social studies, literature, the arts—but do make sure that literacy is a big part of these subjects 9. LITERACY SHOULD INCREASE KNOWLEDGE

14.  Literacy activities should involve lots of analysis, critical evaluation, problem solving, and synthesis of ideas  Discussions and written analysis should encourage students to determine what texts say, how the texts work, and the value of texts in relationship to other texts  Students need to learn and practice explaining answers on the basis of text evidence 10. ENGAGE STUDENTS AT A HIGH INTELLECTUAL LEVEL