The Reading Instruction Show

Yes, state legislatures have the right to impose statues. Absolutely. But teacher's unions have the right, and the moral obligation to respond. The Read Act and other SoR mandates strip away teach…

In 1997 Congress asked the National Institute of Children’s Health and Development to work with the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Reading Panel. Their task was to …

Questions: How is it that one interprets the same thing differently across time? How is it that one can read a book, have an experience, or observe phenomena and draw completely different conclusion…

There are conditions that tip the scale in favor of some groups and restrict or disadvantage others. There are communities, that seem to get the economic opportunities, good schools, good teachers, …

Recently, the Minnesota State Legislature passed the Read Act, sponsored by Democratic representative Heather Edelson. It’s a law based on the fad of the day; the shiny new thing called the “science…

Dance has much to teach us about five areas of reading instruction:

1. Motivation. 

2. Practice. 

3. Dance dyslexia

4. Whole dancing.

5. Context. 

Whenever a new SoR reading law is passed, the SoR zealots …

There is only one emotion that is good for learning: happiness and all its derivations.  Joy is a derivation of happiness.  Joy is pleasurable.  Humans are rewarded by their emotions for doing things…

There are five kinds of time in a reading class.

Allocated time. There is the amount of time allocated for instruction.

Off-task time (OTT). There is OTT when students are doing things unrelated …

In becoming responsible consumers of educational research, we must ask four questions when claims are made that research has “proven these expensive, code-oriented, one-size-fits-all reading programs…

The Science of Reading zealots in Minnesota and in other states around the country (Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, and others) have done something pretty remarkable.  (It’s remarkably bad, but still remarka…

Lucy Calkins has made some tremendous contributions – but at the end of the day, she does not represent balanced literacy or a meaningful-based approach to literacy instruction. At the end of the da…

I’m spending time analyzing Jessica Winter’s article in a series of podcasts because it accurately represents the dis-representation and un-understandings of literacy instruction being portrayed by t…