Keeping Your Balance in Literacy Instruction
By now veteran teachers are accustomed to the pendulum swing in literacy instruction that veers wildly from one new best practice to another, often recycling through a back to basics heavy emphasis on phonics and then swinging back to a more holistic comprehension strategies approach. With the advent of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) the pendulum has seemingly swung in another direction with the emphasis on students doing “close readings” of more challenging text so that they may be “college and career ready”, whatever that means.The latest issue of Reading Today (September/October) that arrived on my desktop yesterday is a case in point. The swinging of the pendulum is on full display as Tim Shanahan, emeritus professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago, contributes an article entitled, Should We Teach Students at their Reading Levels? His answer is no. In the same issue a few pages further back, Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris have an article entitled, Break through the Frustration: Balance vs. all-or-nothing thinking. As the title implies, they argue for a balanced approach that includes plenty of on level guided reading.
What is the poor classroom teacher to do? How does the teacher maintain her balance as the pendulum swings seemingly out of control? Let’s see if we can make some sense of all this for the practitioner in this CCSS age.
Tim Shanahan is a very persuasive literacy expert. He writes and speaks well. Hs arguments are often thoughtful and clear and he makes his ideas easy to implement through his step-by-step instructional style. He is also often wrong and politically motivated. Shanahan is a big booster of the CCSS approach to Russ on Reading: Keeping Your Balance in Literacy Instruction: