As always, the devil is in the details. You say: "A basic limitation of his guidance, in my view, is that Shanahan—like many reading experts—sees reading comprehension as something that can be taught and assessed largely independent of a reader’s prior knowledge."
"Foreground, Background—Middle Ground: If, as Daniel Willingham asserts, reading comprehension requires relating the sentences to one another and then relating these sentences to things we already know, what is the role for learning new information through reading? How many of those sentences whose relationships we’ve analyzed need to be related to things we already know in order to understand new information and lay the foundation for tackling the next text that contains information that we don’t already know?
In an Education Week interview, Kelly Cartwright, co-developer of The Active View of Reading, summarizes the tension between knowledge-building and strategy instruction like this:
'We think about education or life in false dichotomies, because it’s easy to simplify thinking in that way. But it’s not a knowledge-or-strategies situation. Children cannot comprehend text if they don’t have the background knowledge from which to make meaning … but knowing what to do with your knowledge, and with a text to recruit that knowledge to help you comprehend, is also essential.'"
I completely agree with Ms. Cartwright's statement and have said so before: knowledge vs. strategies is a false dichotomy. But the evidence indicates that we need to put CONTENT in the foreground, not strategies, and bring in whatever strategies are appropriate to help kids understand and analyze that particular content.
As for the "chicken-and-egg problem": I don't think anyone is saying that readers need to know EVERYTHING in a text before they can understand it. That would be absurd. And I don't think we can specify any particular formula that tells us how much relevant prior knowledge we need to have before we can learn something new. Even if we could, that wouldn't be workable in practice.
Here's what I would say (and have said many times before): Once people are proficient readers (i.e., they have a good amount of general academic knowledge and vocabulary and familiarity with complex syntax), reading is probably the most efficient way of acquiring knowledge about a new topic. (Fewer adults seem to be doing this, but that's another matter.)
BEFORE people are proficient readers, the most efficient way of acquiring information about a new topic is through oral language -- listening and discussion. There's a working memory explanation for that, but in any event, we've had evidence for this since Sticht and James (1988) found that listening comprehension exceeds reading comprehension, on average, through about age 13. (https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/speaking-and-listening-content-area-learning)
So, what's the best way to introduce a new topic to kids who aren't yet proficient readers? Reading aloud books or texts on the topic, along with class discussion where students get to use the new vocabulary and talk about the concepts. Once they've got some information relating to the topic stored in long-term memory, they should read and write about that topic. Evidence indicates they'll be able to do that at a higher level than they would if they lacked background knowledge on the topic. And they'll be adding to and deepening their knowledge of the topic through reading and writing.
So no, I don't think we have a chicken and egg problem here!
Here's what confuses me: thinking that we can't synchronize the activities you describe--that they are sequential rather than integrated.
You say: "Reading aloud books or texts on the topic, along with class discussion where students get to use the new vocabulary and talk about the concepts. Once they've got some information relating to the topic stored in long-term memory, they should read and write about that topic."
I know there's solid evidence about the importance of listening comprehension, but is there evidence for the sequencing you describe? This week I will be modeling a lesson for a first grade teacher that introduces their unit on how plants and animals grow and change. The first passage is about the life cycle of the frog. I will begin with a video about this cycle and introduce the terminology, but the next activity will be diving into the passage: dictating and highlighting new vocabulary, labeling pictures and diagrams, reading together, then with partners, and finally independently--all interspersed with discussion about the information.
I do understand what you're saying--and you have certainly raised the red flag about inefficient comprehension strategy instruction--but I'm thinking that perhaps Tim Shanahan left out the sequencing you describe because he isn't sold on it.
I think it's important to intersperse -- I don't mean that kids only listen and discuss for 2 or 3 weeks, and then only read and write for 2 weeks.
Last year I actually observed a second grade class learning about the life cycle of the frog in Monroe, LA, as part of a unit on cycles in nature. The district was using CKLA but had adapted Writing Revolution activities to the content. The students had listened to a read-aloud on the frog life cycle, after which their teacher engaged them in some quick retrieval practice.
The curriculum would have then had them write a paragraph explaining the stages of the frog's life cycle. That would have been a heavy cognitive load. Instead, they were given a topic sentence and a scrambled list of detail sentences about the life cycle, which they had to read and number in the correct order. Then one student volunteered to come to the front of the class and recount the frog's life cycle orally.
This approach seemed to be working quite well, and these were kids from low-SES families. (I wrote about this in my book and also talked about it in the most recent Knowledge Matters podcast series.)
I love this activity! I think what I would add is an opportunity for each student to recount the frog's life cycle orally to a partner and use this as 'oral rehearsal' for writing a paragraph where they put in writing what they said orally--not copying from the scrambled sentences but based on their understanding. I realize you may not have had time to explain all the steps, but I wanted to mention that I wouldn't shy away from attaching the oral expression to written expression. Thanks for sharing!
I love this conversation! As someone who tutors students regularly and partners with educators/school districts to help them leverage resources to design district curriculum (that connects knowledge and strategies), I'm confident that both are necessary and powerful.
To given an example: Some of the students I’m working with currently are reading Esperanza Rising, and as I prepared to work with them, I realized that to fully understand the story myself, I needed to bolster my knowledge of the Mexican Revolution and the Great Depression.
From what I could tell, the students were reading that book because it’s a rich, beautifully written book with complex characters and a compelling story (all great reasons—but it wasn’t explicitly connected to the history featured in the book).
That background knowledge made the story far richer for me and kept me engaged—and it reminded me that the students would benefit from the same context. I found a great article that we’ll read together before diving into reading and writing about the book. My work with students always makes reflect upon my work with school districts.
There is more than one path to pairing knowledge-building and strategy instruction. Esperanza Rising could be part of a unit that was studying the historical context for deeper knowledge OR the teacher could pair that book with a short article or video beforehand. The students might not understand the historical context in the same way as they would if it were embedded in a unit, but they certainly can read carefully using strategies and the sentences within it to learn the knowledge on their own which is vital as well. If we want literacy solutions with a lasting impact, both are vital and should be used in different ways across the year.
At times the fight you’re engaged in seems like an endless war of attrition. Since I’m retired and no longer in the fray I repair to the rear and divert myself with my usual round of aimless light distraction, something Substack provides in abundance. But this piece renews hope for me that you’ll ultimately prevail. Three points persuaded me. First, you seem to have clearly outflanked the subject on the issue of content as a priority. In my experience students gain much more crucial motivation from content they connect with than any explicit goal of improving de-contextualized comprehension skills. The biggest issue is almost always the reliance on texts that present too much information (often artificially compressed for having been selected from much longer original sources) that is drastically alien to their own experience. They’re being forced to eat a too-large large meal of exotic food. The analogy is direct: how many American kids ever choose foie gras over hamburger? Secondly, from my old classroom ground-level POV the biggest impediment to advanced comprehension, a transition that should begin late-mid/early HS at the latest, is clearly the difficulty presented by complex sentence structure. Vocabulary is also a factor, but less important. ELLs are particularly effected by this. In my experience, tackling this problem required a substantial clarification of punctuation - something many ELA teachers avoid. And an overview of basic sentence structure is a necessary first-step, since none of it makes sense if knowledge of it is lacking. The exercises that at least expose students to the range of syntactical expression are as old as the hills but remain effective enough; the problem seems to be that it’s been ignored, sidelined or diminished so much for so long that we’ve ceded the job to autocorrect. Ugh. Third point: the emphasis on skills essentially obviates the point of it all. Do we read for the sake of skill building, burnishing our GPA? A lot of bright, impatient kids are going to check-out over that, bored and anxious for something better to do. Certainly the impetus for literacy that gained steam during the Reformation was based on higher stakes. But I’ve never heard anyone frame it that way.
(1) The average American school day provides 6.5 hours of instructional time. I'm uncertain why two hours of reading and writing instruction prevents teachers from teaching social studies and science content during the other 4.5. The notion that the purpose of reading instruction should be to teach kids about science and social studies because there is no other time makes no sense to me.
(2) I provide more than two paragraphs on knowledge building and use -- there are 5 full pages specifically dedicated to that in terms of recommendations for teaching (and its importance and value are emphasized throughout the book). Anyone who wants kids to build more knowledge are going to have to enable them to read complex text.
(3) The notion that comprehension cannot be taught sounds a little like the old claim that hummingbirds can't fly. Teaching vocabulary, morphology, syntax, cohesion, and text structure have all been found to improve comprehension (and anyone who has ever learned a second language knows that is true). In the arguments about the value of strategies in reading versus the value of knowledge, the role of language seems to be ignored. Reading instruction should play an important role in language development, and it has a special role to play in the knowledge development of literature. Kids should also be reading science and social studies there, but the heavy lifting of those subjects needs to be accomplished in those other classes.
Thanks again for the provocative and supportive review.
Thanks, Tim, for this response. I'll try to briefly provide my own responses, which I hope will clarify our points of disagreement for anyone following this exchange!
(1) It does seem like there SHOULD be time in the school day for science and social studies in addition to a two-hour reading block, but my experience visiting schools and speaking to groups of educators leaves me in little doubt that most elementary schools are giving scant time to any subjects other than reading and math. In my presentations, I often show a graph based on the ECLS-K: 2011 (see https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/resources/social-studies-instruction-and-reading-comprehension) showing that the average amount of time US elementary schools spend on social studies and science is about 30 minutes each, every day. When I say I suspect that's a significant overestimate, I get a lot of nods in agreement. There may be half an hour in the schedule for one of those things two or three times a week, but often even that time gets spent on one of the "tested subjects," reading or math.
That's particularly likely to happen in schools where test scores are low. Plus, struggling readers often get pulled from science and social studies for reading intervention. The theory is that spending more time on reading will raise reading scores. But if you look at the Fordham study cited above, you'll see that more time on SOCIAL STUDIES is correlated with higher reading scores by 5th grade, especially for low-SES students. More time on reading is not. Of course that's just a correlation, but it's worth thinking about.
In any event, I would argue that students don't need two hours a day on "reading" to become better readers. The evidence indicates that it would be more effective to weave reading comprehension activities--and writing--into instruction across the curriculum.
(2) Your book does make other references to knowledge, but I don't recall anything else about knowledge-building as a means of boosting reading comprehension. You say in your comment above that "Anyone who wants kids to build more knowledge [is] going to have to enable them to read complex text." What I would argue, and what I don't really see addressed in your book, is the converse: Anyone who wants kids to read complex text is going to have to build their knowledge.
(3) As for whether comprehension can be taught: What I and others are saying is that it can't be taught IN THE ABSTRACT, separately from developing knowledge of specific topics. Comprehension is a process that includes acquiring knowledge of all the things you mention (vocabulary, morphology, syntax, etc.), and that process can and should be fostered through instruction. But it's most effective to put content in the foreground and attach those other things to the content (which could be a work of literature--ideally a whole piece of literature rather than a brief excerpt--or a topic in history, science, etc.).
I completely agree that the role of language is crucial -- as I said in another comment on this post, knowledge isn't everything. That's why I keep harping on the need to teach writing explicitly. It's not the only way of familiarizing students with complex language structures and vocabulary, but I believe it's the most powerful. Again, though, kids should be getting explicit writing instruction embedded in the content of the curriculum, across subject areas. Beyond foundational literacy skills, trying to teach writing skills in the abstract is no more effective than trying to teach reading comprehension skills.
The notion that the 6.5 hour school day isn't being used well so let's reduce the amount of reading instruction is a logical mess. I have no doubt that in an hour day, teachers could accomplish 1960s reading levels -- and no writing achievement (remember writing instruction was non-existent then). We need higher reading levels however, not lower ones. Again, I see no reason why there should be no science and social studies instruction in the remaining 4.5 hours and am not willing to condone the misuse of instructional time (especially on the basis of a single correlational study with the flaws that one has).
We'll have to disagree about what is in my book. I guess readers will have to decide that themselves. But you are correct if what you mean is that I don't condone severe cutbacks to reading, writing, handwriting, spelling, literature, oral language instruction so that kids can gain information on other subjects.
We are in agreement that reading instruction should be taught with texts that are worth reading -- that is, that will increase kids knowledge, but I'll continue to argue that literary knowledge counts, too.
I’m from Poland and I failed to learn english it school, I learned it on myself studying grammar book and then reading, listening, playing video games, because English is everywhere. I vividly remember how odd english lessons were: we usually got simple text and teachers instructed us over and over again to underscore important information, reread, check new words, someone was asked to summarise the text. Like, every time we were reading something. I don’t remember how polish was taught (for sure since 4th grade onward it was grammar, orthography, creative writing, culture, reading books required by curriculum, because everyone knows how to read), but I successfully learned german over 3 years of high school. We didn’t have silly reading instruction, but solid portion of vocabulary and grammar, writing, often we were watching movies or tv, we also were tasked with buying german newspaper and summarising artictles.
I taught both my kids how to read using the 100 easy lessons workbook.
My daughter was always super interested in books, started reading around 4ish, was reading Harry Potter by herself by 3rd grade. Probably reading at a high school level by 5th grade.
My son was definitely more of a struggle, the rights we had. BUT... this last year he's made tremendous progress, he's actually requesting to read now before bed. And while the books do have pictures, they are have plenty of adults words in there.
I'm just super happy, and had to share. I firmly believe that reading a good book is one of the great joys in life. And that also being a good reader is really essential for learning.
Oh, and we also do read the Core Knowledge books together. Very much agreed that we can work on our reading abilities while learning about history or science.
I make him read, and sound out any problem words. And I quiz him if I think he might not know the word.
"Instead, he found, Kilgallon simply watched for signs of tension while kids were reading. Were they squinting, for instance, or grimacing? Kilgallon found these behaviors started to appear when their word-reading accuracy fell to a certain percentage, and he basically used that percentage for the accuracy part of the instructional level formula." Whoa.
As a special education teacher I teach children reading well below grade level and it seems to me working at their instructional level is the best way to make progress. When the text is too difficult they struggle so much to decode the words they have little capacity for comprehension. I usually have a high level of agreement with what Natalie writes, but I am skeptical on this post.
I agree: If students haven't yet mastered the basics of decoding, they won't have the cognitive capacity for comprehension of complex text. Their decoding problems need to be addressed separately.
But I would still advocate for them to be exposed to complex text through read-alouds and discussion. Kids who struggle with decoding don't necessarily also struggle with listening comprehension (and if they do, that too needs to be addressed). Read-alouds of complex text can build the knowledge and vocabulary they'll need to understand complex text independently once they've mastered decoding skills.
I completely agree on the benefit of read-alouds, but I would add that even when students have mastered the basics of decoding, they often still struggle with reading unfamiliar words, particularly multisyllabic words. Students who struggle to decode these words in text often do not need a separate advanced phonics intervention; They need scaffolded opportunities to decode in the context of reading the text itself and teacher guidance to read these words accurately. This helps to develop both their advanced decoding skills and vocabulary. The practice of students reading complex text aloud with corrective feedback is too often neglected. If a student stumbles over words, teachers need to have the tools to help them, not just tell them the word or assume it's too hard and they need to have it read aloud to them.
Thank you for this excellent analysis and review, Natalie! I have shared similar points (though not as clearly and comprehensively as you have) in other discussions about Shanahan's new book and his previous writing about this issue.
"Readability, word-novelty, or the length and construction of a sentence are significant psychologically only when the background knowledge needed for comprehension is already present. Readability makes a difference only to people who already possess the background knowledge required to understand the passage. Only then do complex syntax and word “levels” play a role in the actual readability of a text for an actual reader. In that case, the passage will take a bit longer to process, but it will still be understood. But when the needed background knowledge is absent, there’s NO difference in readability “levels” for an actual text, no matter the characteristics of the text. So, without somehow controlling for the actual relevant knowledge of the specific reader, readability is a pointless measure for deciding a text’s suitability for a child. Technical measures of word frequency and sentence length and sentence form are not descriptive of the psychological realities of the classroom nor sufficient for creating a useful and coherent curriculum.
The whole elaborate paraphernalia based on “readability” and “grade level” should be discarded by any forward-looking state and replaced with a specific grade-by grade topic sequence as a core that still leaves room for school choice among diverse materials that offer diverse treatments of the same topic sequence."
It's a shame Shanahan is not as clear and helpful in diagnosing the problem and prescribing/describing the solution.
Yes, I heard this argument about readability measures from E.D. Hirsch years ago, when I interviewed him for The Knowledge Gap. In fact, one of his complaints about the Common Core standards was their reliance on readability measures to determine "grade level" text. As with so many things, I owe Hirsch a debt of gratitude for being there first and helping me understand things that would otherwise have been obscure.
At the same time, I think there ARE aspects of written language that can interfere with a reader's comprehension even if that reader possesses relevant background knowledge. In the baseball study, for example, even the kids who were both "poor readers" and baseball experts might have been stumped by, say, a PhD thesis on baseball because of the complex syntax or vocabulary of the text.
So I don't think this is a completely black-and-white issue. Background knowledge is crucial, but it's not everything. "Readability" does play a part.
There certainly are "aspects of written language that can interfere with a reader's comprehension even if that reader possesses relevant background knowledge". This is exactly what Hirsch explains in the passage I quoted. He writes that these aspects, such as word novelty, complex syntax, etc, "make a difference only to people who already possess the background knowledge required to understand the passage. His claim is not that background knowledge is sufficient, but that it is necessary(entirely consistent with the findings of the oft-quoted 'baseball study'). Your phrase "at the same time" suggests that he was missing something. I understand him to be saying precisely the same thing as you are.
Yes, you're right. I was reacting less to Hirsch's statement and more to criticisms I've heard out there from people (critics) who say that advocates of knowledge building believe that knowledge is the ONLY thing necessary for proficient reading (along with decoding ability).
Miriam-- That is an interesting conclusion. Have you read my book? I think you may be demonstrating how "knowledge" often overrides comprehension. It appears that you're evaluating ,on the basis of a brief review, how clear or how well a 200-page book has diagnosed a problem and proposed a solution. I've heard something very different from folks like E.D. Hirsch and Don Willingham, but then they've read the book.
Thank you for another thoughtful post. I don’t always agree with your views, but I enjoy reading them.
I haven’t read Shanahan’s book. You report that he finds leveled reading wanting in part because there isn’t evidence that it improves standardized RC scores (assuming that's his proxy for "reading ability").
I read his 9/6/25 post (which you link to) on what middle schools should be doing to improve reading. His suggestions include:
1. Vocabulary instruction.
2. Reading strategy instruction.
3. “Fluency” instruction.
(1) There is little evidence that vocabulary instruction of any type improves reading comprehension scores on standardized tests. See for example:
(2) At least one meta-analysis found reading strategy instruction mostly ineffective in improving standardized RC test scores (I assume strategy instruction would be part of "teaching reading comprehension"):
(3) I’d be curious if he cites studies or meta-analyses that have found fluency instruction improves standardized RC scores. None are provided in his blog post.
Shanahan’s alternatives don’t look very promising by his own standards.
[Not sure if there is a word limit. Rest of my comment if it didn't go through:]
(2) At least one meta-analysis found reading strategy instruction mostly ineffective in improving standardized RC test scores (assuming this is part of "teaching reading comprehension" that he advocates):
(3) I’d be curious if he cites studies or meta-analyses that have found fluency instruction improves standardized RC scores. None are provided in his blog post.
Shanahan’s alternatives don’t look very promising by his own standards.
Shanahan doesn't seem to address fluency research in his book (there's no entry for fluency in the index), but I'm pretty sure there are studies showing fluency instruction can boost comprehension. I can't give you cites off the top of my head, but one of the leading researchers in fluency is another Tim, Tim Rasinski. I imagine if you Google his name you'll find something.
As for vocabulary: I think it's pretty clear that isolated vocabulary instruction doesn't have much effect, but I do think it makes sense to explicitly teach vocabulary as part of a knowledge-building curriculum. From what I've seen, it's best to highlight a few words that will appear in whatever the read-aloud or text of the day is (preferably "Tier 2 words"), but that's not going to be enough.
In his book Language at the Speed of Sight, Mark Seidenberg describes a "statistical" theory of vocabulary acquisition. Briefly, the idea is that kids need to acquire far more vocabulary that can be explicitly taught if they're going to become proficient readers. They acquire most of the words they need by making inferences about their meanings while they're reading. But to do that, you need a certain amount of prior knowledge. If you know what "tiger" and "lion" mean, and you're reading about large felines, you'll probably be able to infer what "lynx" means.
What that suggests to me (and there's research to back this up) is that the best way to increase vocabulary is to expand kids' knowledge and have them read sets of related texts.
-Yes, there's research showing some effect of "fluency" training on RC (I'm familiar w/ Rasinski's work). The issue I raised (based on your comment) is the effect on *standardized scores*, Shanahan's presumed metric of success for "reading ability." Suggate's (2016) meta-analysis found only small effects (d = .18). If Sh. is critiquing "leveled reading" based on RC scores, what replaces it should work better, no?
-Yes, sometimes you need to teach words to cover today's lesson. But when you spend 15% of your time trying to teach a few dozen words a year, as e.g. Catherine Snow's Word Generation program does, you've lost the instructional plot.
-Yes, you need to get most of your vocabulary from reading. Frank Smith, Bill Nagy, Richard Anderson, Steve Krashen, and others pointed that out decades before Seid., but good to know he got there in the end :).
-I'm all for "content knowledge"! Of course it helps. I'm glad you're emphasizing it. We've known about the effects of background knowledge (BK) on RC since at least the '60s, but people need reminding. Reading itself provides lots of BK, of course, but when students lack it for a specific topic, providing it in another form will be useful. I'm with you on that.
But the best (and most efficient) way to improve vocabulary is turn kids into avid readers and provide them with books to read. If schools spent a fraction of the $$/effort they devote to the SoR wish list on that goal, much of our so-called reading crisis would be solved.
Excellent review. I would like to clarify one important point that is often misunderstood regarding adolescent and young adult multilingual learners and leveled reading. There is abundant research supporting the practice of extensive reading using graded readers with this population. Graded readers are texts that are engineered for language learning. They are leveled in the sense that readers are matched to books where they recognize 98% of the words. It's a different ball game working with students who can read in L1, and are leveraging their existing reading to acquire a new language. District leaders need to be cautious not to over generalize Shanahan's ideas.
As always, the devil is in the details. You say: "A basic limitation of his guidance, in my view, is that Shanahan—like many reading experts—sees reading comprehension as something that can be taught and assessed largely independent of a reader’s prior knowledge."
Do we have a chicken and egg problem here? At some point, we learn something NEW for the first time. What do teachers do during this introductory phase? From: Pathways to Information: Accessing Knowledge by Leveraging Language (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/pathways-to-information-accessing-15e?r=5spuf):
"Foreground, Background—Middle Ground: If, as Daniel Willingham asserts, reading comprehension requires relating the sentences to one another and then relating these sentences to things we already know, what is the role for learning new information through reading? How many of those sentences whose relationships we’ve analyzed need to be related to things we already know in order to understand new information and lay the foundation for tackling the next text that contains information that we don’t already know?
In an Education Week interview, Kelly Cartwright, co-developer of The Active View of Reading, summarizes the tension between knowledge-building and strategy instruction like this:
'We think about education or life in false dichotomies, because it’s easy to simplify thinking in that way. But it’s not a knowledge-or-strategies situation. Children cannot comprehend text if they don’t have the background knowledge from which to make meaning … but knowing what to do with your knowledge, and with a text to recruit that knowledge to help you comprehend, is also essential.'"
I completely agree with Ms. Cartwright's statement and have said so before: knowledge vs. strategies is a false dichotomy. But the evidence indicates that we need to put CONTENT in the foreground, not strategies, and bring in whatever strategies are appropriate to help kids understand and analyze that particular content.
As for the "chicken-and-egg problem": I don't think anyone is saying that readers need to know EVERYTHING in a text before they can understand it. That would be absurd. And I don't think we can specify any particular formula that tells us how much relevant prior knowledge we need to have before we can learn something new. Even if we could, that wouldn't be workable in practice.
Here's what I would say (and have said many times before): Once people are proficient readers (i.e., they have a good amount of general academic knowledge and vocabulary and familiarity with complex syntax), reading is probably the most efficient way of acquiring knowledge about a new topic. (Fewer adults seem to be doing this, but that's another matter.)
BEFORE people are proficient readers, the most efficient way of acquiring information about a new topic is through oral language -- listening and discussion. There's a working memory explanation for that, but in any event, we've had evidence for this since Sticht and James (1988) found that listening comprehension exceeds reading comprehension, on average, through about age 13. (https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/speaking-and-listening-content-area-learning)
So, what's the best way to introduce a new topic to kids who aren't yet proficient readers? Reading aloud books or texts on the topic, along with class discussion where students get to use the new vocabulary and talk about the concepts. Once they've got some information relating to the topic stored in long-term memory, they should read and write about that topic. Evidence indicates they'll be able to do that at a higher level than they would if they lacked background knowledge on the topic. And they'll be adding to and deepening their knowledge of the topic through reading and writing.
So no, I don't think we have a chicken and egg problem here!
Here's what confuses me: thinking that we can't synchronize the activities you describe--that they are sequential rather than integrated.
You say: "Reading aloud books or texts on the topic, along with class discussion where students get to use the new vocabulary and talk about the concepts. Once they've got some information relating to the topic stored in long-term memory, they should read and write about that topic."
I know there's solid evidence about the importance of listening comprehension, but is there evidence for the sequencing you describe? This week I will be modeling a lesson for a first grade teacher that introduces their unit on how plants and animals grow and change. The first passage is about the life cycle of the frog. I will begin with a video about this cycle and introduce the terminology, but the next activity will be diving into the passage: dictating and highlighting new vocabulary, labeling pictures and diagrams, reading together, then with partners, and finally independently--all interspersed with discussion about the information.
I do understand what you're saying--and you have certainly raised the red flag about inefficient comprehension strategy instruction--but I'm thinking that perhaps Tim Shanahan left out the sequencing you describe because he isn't sold on it.
I think it's important to intersperse -- I don't mean that kids only listen and discuss for 2 or 3 weeks, and then only read and write for 2 weeks.
Last year I actually observed a second grade class learning about the life cycle of the frog in Monroe, LA, as part of a unit on cycles in nature. The district was using CKLA but had adapted Writing Revolution activities to the content. The students had listened to a read-aloud on the frog life cycle, after which their teacher engaged them in some quick retrieval practice.
The curriculum would have then had them write a paragraph explaining the stages of the frog's life cycle. That would have been a heavy cognitive load. Instead, they were given a topic sentence and a scrambled list of detail sentences about the life cycle, which they had to read and number in the correct order. Then one student volunteered to come to the front of the class and recount the frog's life cycle orally.
This approach seemed to be working quite well, and these were kids from low-SES families. (I wrote about this in my book and also talked about it in the most recent Knowledge Matters podcast series.)
I love this activity! I think what I would add is an opportunity for each student to recount the frog's life cycle orally to a partner and use this as 'oral rehearsal' for writing a paragraph where they put in writing what they said orally--not copying from the scrambled sentences but based on their understanding. I realize you may not have had time to explain all the steps, but I wanted to mention that I wouldn't shy away from attaching the oral expression to written expression. Thanks for sharing!
I love this conversation! As someone who tutors students regularly and partners with educators/school districts to help them leverage resources to design district curriculum (that connects knowledge and strategies), I'm confident that both are necessary and powerful.
To given an example: Some of the students I’m working with currently are reading Esperanza Rising, and as I prepared to work with them, I realized that to fully understand the story myself, I needed to bolster my knowledge of the Mexican Revolution and the Great Depression.
From what I could tell, the students were reading that book because it’s a rich, beautifully written book with complex characters and a compelling story (all great reasons—but it wasn’t explicitly connected to the history featured in the book).
That background knowledge made the story far richer for me and kept me engaged—and it reminded me that the students would benefit from the same context. I found a great article that we’ll read together before diving into reading and writing about the book. My work with students always makes reflect upon my work with school districts.
There is more than one path to pairing knowledge-building and strategy instruction. Esperanza Rising could be part of a unit that was studying the historical context for deeper knowledge OR the teacher could pair that book with a short article or video beforehand. The students might not understand the historical context in the same way as they would if it were embedded in a unit, but they certainly can read carefully using strategies and the sentences within it to learn the knowledge on their own which is vital as well. If we want literacy solutions with a lasting impact, both are vital and should be used in different ways across the year.
At times the fight you’re engaged in seems like an endless war of attrition. Since I’m retired and no longer in the fray I repair to the rear and divert myself with my usual round of aimless light distraction, something Substack provides in abundance. But this piece renews hope for me that you’ll ultimately prevail. Three points persuaded me. First, you seem to have clearly outflanked the subject on the issue of content as a priority. In my experience students gain much more crucial motivation from content they connect with than any explicit goal of improving de-contextualized comprehension skills. The biggest issue is almost always the reliance on texts that present too much information (often artificially compressed for having been selected from much longer original sources) that is drastically alien to their own experience. They’re being forced to eat a too-large large meal of exotic food. The analogy is direct: how many American kids ever choose foie gras over hamburger? Secondly, from my old classroom ground-level POV the biggest impediment to advanced comprehension, a transition that should begin late-mid/early HS at the latest, is clearly the difficulty presented by complex sentence structure. Vocabulary is also a factor, but less important. ELLs are particularly effected by this. In my experience, tackling this problem required a substantial clarification of punctuation - something many ELA teachers avoid. And an overview of basic sentence structure is a necessary first-step, since none of it makes sense if knowledge of it is lacking. The exercises that at least expose students to the range of syntactical expression are as old as the hills but remain effective enough; the problem seems to be that it’s been ignored, sidelined or diminished so much for so long that we’ve ceded the job to autocorrect. Ugh. Third point: the emphasis on skills essentially obviates the point of it all. Do we read for the sake of skill building, burnishing our GPA? A lot of bright, impatient kids are going to check-out over that, bored and anxious for something better to do. Certainly the impetus for literacy that gained steam during the Reformation was based on higher stakes. But I’ve never heard anyone frame it that way.
I am very glad I read this. Levelled reading practices get pushed on me a lot and this gives me the tools and vocab to push back.
Three things concern me about this fine review:
(1) The average American school day provides 6.5 hours of instructional time. I'm uncertain why two hours of reading and writing instruction prevents teachers from teaching social studies and science content during the other 4.5. The notion that the purpose of reading instruction should be to teach kids about science and social studies because there is no other time makes no sense to me.
(2) I provide more than two paragraphs on knowledge building and use -- there are 5 full pages specifically dedicated to that in terms of recommendations for teaching (and its importance and value are emphasized throughout the book). Anyone who wants kids to build more knowledge are going to have to enable them to read complex text.
(3) The notion that comprehension cannot be taught sounds a little like the old claim that hummingbirds can't fly. Teaching vocabulary, morphology, syntax, cohesion, and text structure have all been found to improve comprehension (and anyone who has ever learned a second language knows that is true). In the arguments about the value of strategies in reading versus the value of knowledge, the role of language seems to be ignored. Reading instruction should play an important role in language development, and it has a special role to play in the knowledge development of literature. Kids should also be reading science and social studies there, but the heavy lifting of those subjects needs to be accomplished in those other classes.
Thanks again for the provocative and supportive review.
tim
Thanks, Tim, for this response. I'll try to briefly provide my own responses, which I hope will clarify our points of disagreement for anyone following this exchange!
(1) It does seem like there SHOULD be time in the school day for science and social studies in addition to a two-hour reading block, but my experience visiting schools and speaking to groups of educators leaves me in little doubt that most elementary schools are giving scant time to any subjects other than reading and math. In my presentations, I often show a graph based on the ECLS-K: 2011 (see https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/resources/social-studies-instruction-and-reading-comprehension) showing that the average amount of time US elementary schools spend on social studies and science is about 30 minutes each, every day. When I say I suspect that's a significant overestimate, I get a lot of nods in agreement. There may be half an hour in the schedule for one of those things two or three times a week, but often even that time gets spent on one of the "tested subjects," reading or math.
That's particularly likely to happen in schools where test scores are low. Plus, struggling readers often get pulled from science and social studies for reading intervention. The theory is that spending more time on reading will raise reading scores. But if you look at the Fordham study cited above, you'll see that more time on SOCIAL STUDIES is correlated with higher reading scores by 5th grade, especially for low-SES students. More time on reading is not. Of course that's just a correlation, but it's worth thinking about.
In any event, I would argue that students don't need two hours a day on "reading" to become better readers. The evidence indicates that it would be more effective to weave reading comprehension activities--and writing--into instruction across the curriculum.
(2) Your book does make other references to knowledge, but I don't recall anything else about knowledge-building as a means of boosting reading comprehension. You say in your comment above that "Anyone who wants kids to build more knowledge [is] going to have to enable them to read complex text." What I would argue, and what I don't really see addressed in your book, is the converse: Anyone who wants kids to read complex text is going to have to build their knowledge.
(3) As for whether comprehension can be taught: What I and others are saying is that it can't be taught IN THE ABSTRACT, separately from developing knowledge of specific topics. Comprehension is a process that includes acquiring knowledge of all the things you mention (vocabulary, morphology, syntax, etc.), and that process can and should be fostered through instruction. But it's most effective to put content in the foreground and attach those other things to the content (which could be a work of literature--ideally a whole piece of literature rather than a brief excerpt--or a topic in history, science, etc.).
I completely agree that the role of language is crucial -- as I said in another comment on this post, knowledge isn't everything. That's why I keep harping on the need to teach writing explicitly. It's not the only way of familiarizing students with complex language structures and vocabulary, but I believe it's the most powerful. Again, though, kids should be getting explicit writing instruction embedded in the content of the curriculum, across subject areas. Beyond foundational literacy skills, trying to teach writing skills in the abstract is no more effective than trying to teach reading comprehension skills.
I should add that according to the Fordham report, 2 hours was the average amount of time elementary schools reported spending on reading.
The notion that the 6.5 hour school day isn't being used well so let's reduce the amount of reading instruction is a logical mess. I have no doubt that in an hour day, teachers could accomplish 1960s reading levels -- and no writing achievement (remember writing instruction was non-existent then). We need higher reading levels however, not lower ones. Again, I see no reason why there should be no science and social studies instruction in the remaining 4.5 hours and am not willing to condone the misuse of instructional time (especially on the basis of a single correlational study with the flaws that one has).
We'll have to disagree about what is in my book. I guess readers will have to decide that themselves. But you are correct if what you mean is that I don't condone severe cutbacks to reading, writing, handwriting, spelling, literature, oral language instruction so that kids can gain information on other subjects.
We are in agreement that reading instruction should be taught with texts that are worth reading -- that is, that will increase kids knowledge, but I'll continue to argue that literary knowledge counts, too.
I’m from Poland and I failed to learn english it school, I learned it on myself studying grammar book and then reading, listening, playing video games, because English is everywhere. I vividly remember how odd english lessons were: we usually got simple text and teachers instructed us over and over again to underscore important information, reread, check new words, someone was asked to summarise the text. Like, every time we were reading something. I don’t remember how polish was taught (for sure since 4th grade onward it was grammar, orthography, creative writing, culture, reading books required by curriculum, because everyone knows how to read), but I successfully learned german over 3 years of high school. We didn’t have silly reading instruction, but solid portion of vocabulary and grammar, writing, often we were watching movies or tv, we also were tasked with buying german newspaper and summarising artictles.
I taught both my kids how to read using the 100 easy lessons workbook.
My daughter was always super interested in books, started reading around 4ish, was reading Harry Potter by herself by 3rd grade. Probably reading at a high school level by 5th grade.
My son was definitely more of a struggle, the rights we had. BUT... this last year he's made tremendous progress, he's actually requesting to read now before bed. And while the books do have pictures, they are have plenty of adults words in there.
I'm just super happy, and had to share. I firmly believe that reading a good book is one of the great joys in life. And that also being a good reader is really essential for learning.
Oh, and we also do read the Core Knowledge books together. Very much agreed that we can work on our reading abilities while learning about history or science.
I make him read, and sound out any problem words. And I quiz him if I think he might not know the word.
"Instead, he found, Kilgallon simply watched for signs of tension while kids were reading. Were they squinting, for instance, or grimacing? Kilgallon found these behaviors started to appear when their word-reading accuracy fell to a certain percentage, and he basically used that percentage for the accuracy part of the instructional level formula." Whoa.
As a special education teacher I teach children reading well below grade level and it seems to me working at their instructional level is the best way to make progress. When the text is too difficult they struggle so much to decode the words they have little capacity for comprehension. I usually have a high level of agreement with what Natalie writes, but I am skeptical on this post.
I agree: If students haven't yet mastered the basics of decoding, they won't have the cognitive capacity for comprehension of complex text. Their decoding problems need to be addressed separately.
But I would still advocate for them to be exposed to complex text through read-alouds and discussion. Kids who struggle with decoding don't necessarily also struggle with listening comprehension (and if they do, that too needs to be addressed). Read-alouds of complex text can build the knowledge and vocabulary they'll need to understand complex text independently once they've mastered decoding skills.
I completely agree on the benefit of read-alouds, but I would add that even when students have mastered the basics of decoding, they often still struggle with reading unfamiliar words, particularly multisyllabic words. Students who struggle to decode these words in text often do not need a separate advanced phonics intervention; They need scaffolded opportunities to decode in the context of reading the text itself and teacher guidance to read these words accurately. This helps to develop both their advanced decoding skills and vocabulary. The practice of students reading complex text aloud with corrective feedback is too often neglected. If a student stumbles over words, teachers need to have the tools to help them, not just tell them the word or assume it's too hard and they need to have it read aloud to them.
Thank you for this excellent analysis and review, Natalie! I have shared similar points (though not as clearly and comprehensively as you have) in other discussions about Shanahan's new book and his previous writing about this issue.
E.D Hirsch, Jr. includes his own 1979 debunking of 'reading levels' in an appendix to his most recent book, The Ratchet Effect. You can also read it here: https://innovationtest1.colostate.edu/jbw/v3n1/hirsch.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExcXBNa09rSXZicGxyT2U4TAEenSCqLu5KZIBG_obx-_0FZut2NGl7xWjckDjOXtJQ_FkT9aD5LfUXATgj4d8_aem_b-7urZ0MPNBOjtSVlnHAuw
44 years later, in The Ratchet Effect, he writes:
"Readability, word-novelty, or the length and construction of a sentence are significant psychologically only when the background knowledge needed for comprehension is already present. Readability makes a difference only to people who already possess the background knowledge required to understand the passage. Only then do complex syntax and word “levels” play a role in the actual readability of a text for an actual reader. In that case, the passage will take a bit longer to process, but it will still be understood. But when the needed background knowledge is absent, there’s NO difference in readability “levels” for an actual text, no matter the characteristics of the text. So, without somehow controlling for the actual relevant knowledge of the specific reader, readability is a pointless measure for deciding a text’s suitability for a child. Technical measures of word frequency and sentence length and sentence form are not descriptive of the psychological realities of the classroom nor sufficient for creating a useful and coherent curriculum.
The whole elaborate paraphernalia based on “readability” and “grade level” should be discarded by any forward-looking state and replaced with a specific grade-by grade topic sequence as a core that still leaves room for school choice among diverse materials that offer diverse treatments of the same topic sequence."
It's a shame Shanahan is not as clear and helpful in diagnosing the problem and prescribing/describing the solution.
Yes, I heard this argument about readability measures from E.D. Hirsch years ago, when I interviewed him for The Knowledge Gap. In fact, one of his complaints about the Common Core standards was their reliance on readability measures to determine "grade level" text. As with so many things, I owe Hirsch a debt of gratitude for being there first and helping me understand things that would otherwise have been obscure.
At the same time, I think there ARE aspects of written language that can interfere with a reader's comprehension even if that reader possesses relevant background knowledge. In the baseball study, for example, even the kids who were both "poor readers" and baseball experts might have been stumped by, say, a PhD thesis on baseball because of the complex syntax or vocabulary of the text.
So I don't think this is a completely black-and-white issue. Background knowledge is crucial, but it's not everything. "Readability" does play a part.
There certainly are "aspects of written language that can interfere with a reader's comprehension even if that reader possesses relevant background knowledge". This is exactly what Hirsch explains in the passage I quoted. He writes that these aspects, such as word novelty, complex syntax, etc, "make a difference only to people who already possess the background knowledge required to understand the passage. His claim is not that background knowledge is sufficient, but that it is necessary(entirely consistent with the findings of the oft-quoted 'baseball study'). Your phrase "at the same time" suggests that he was missing something. I understand him to be saying precisely the same thing as you are.
Yes, you're right. I was reacting less to Hirsch's statement and more to criticisms I've heard out there from people (critics) who say that advocates of knowledge building believe that knowledge is the ONLY thing necessary for proficient reading (along with decoding ability).
Miriam-- That is an interesting conclusion. Have you read my book? I think you may be demonstrating how "knowledge" often overrides comprehension. It appears that you're evaluating ,on the basis of a brief review, how clear or how well a 200-page book has diagnosed a problem and proposed a solution. I've heard something very different from folks like E.D. Hirsch and Don Willingham, but then they've read the book.
Thank you for another thoughtful post. I don’t always agree with your views, but I enjoy reading them.
I haven’t read Shanahan’s book. You report that he finds leveled reading wanting in part because there isn’t evidence that it improves standardized RC scores (assuming that's his proxy for "reading ability").
I read his 9/6/25 post (which you link to) on what middle schools should be doing to improve reading. His suggestions include:
1. Vocabulary instruction.
2. Reading strategy instruction.
3. “Fluency” instruction.
(1) There is little evidence that vocabulary instruction of any type improves reading comprehension scores on standardized tests. See for example:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249057993_The_Impact_of_Vocabulary_Instruction_on_Passage-Level_Comprehension_of_School-Age_Children_A_Meta-Analysis
It isn’t even all that great for improving vocabulary in most cases. Worse, it is spectacularly inefficient:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332212773_The_Inefficiency_of_Vocabulary_Instruction
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332972073_Where_Do_We_Get_Our_Academic_Vocabulary_Comparing_the_Efficiency_of_Direct_Instruction_and_Free_Voluntary_Reading
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346497229_Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoners_of_Vocabulary_Instruction_Acquiring_Academic_Language_at_Hogwarts
(2) At least one meta-analysis found reading strategy instruction mostly ineffective in improving standardized RC test scores (I assume strategy instruction would be part of "teaching reading comprehension"):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326600614_Effectiveness_of_Reading-Strategy_Interventions_in_Whole_Classrooms_a_Meta-Analysis
(3) I’d be curious if he cites studies or meta-analyses that have found fluency instruction improves standardized RC scores. None are provided in his blog post.
Shanahan’s alternatives don’t look very promising by his own standards.
"Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Vocabulary Instruction: Acquiring Academic Language at Hogwarts"
This has my vote for best title!
[Not sure if there is a word limit. Rest of my comment if it didn't go through:]
(2) At least one meta-analysis found reading strategy instruction mostly ineffective in improving standardized RC test scores (assuming this is part of "teaching reading comprehension" that he advocates):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326600614_Effectiveness_of_Reading-Strategy_Interventions_in_Whole_Classrooms_a_Meta-Analysis
(3) I’d be curious if he cites studies or meta-analyses that have found fluency instruction improves standardized RC scores. None are provided in his blog post.
Shanahan’s alternatives don’t look very promising by his own standards.
Shanahan doesn't seem to address fluency research in his book (there's no entry for fluency in the index), but I'm pretty sure there are studies showing fluency instruction can boost comprehension. I can't give you cites off the top of my head, but one of the leading researchers in fluency is another Tim, Tim Rasinski. I imagine if you Google his name you'll find something.
As for vocabulary: I think it's pretty clear that isolated vocabulary instruction doesn't have much effect, but I do think it makes sense to explicitly teach vocabulary as part of a knowledge-building curriculum. From what I've seen, it's best to highlight a few words that will appear in whatever the read-aloud or text of the day is (preferably "Tier 2 words"), but that's not going to be enough.
In his book Language at the Speed of Sight, Mark Seidenberg describes a "statistical" theory of vocabulary acquisition. Briefly, the idea is that kids need to acquire far more vocabulary that can be explicitly taught if they're going to become proficient readers. They acquire most of the words they need by making inferences about their meanings while they're reading. But to do that, you need a certain amount of prior knowledge. If you know what "tiger" and "lion" mean, and you're reading about large felines, you'll probably be able to infer what "lynx" means.
What that suggests to me (and there's research to back this up) is that the best way to increase vocabulary is to expand kids' knowledge and have them read sets of related texts.
Appreciate your response, Natalie!
-Yes, there's research showing some effect of "fluency" training on RC (I'm familiar w/ Rasinski's work). The issue I raised (based on your comment) is the effect on *standardized scores*, Shanahan's presumed metric of success for "reading ability." Suggate's (2016) meta-analysis found only small effects (d = .18). If Sh. is critiquing "leveled reading" based on RC scores, what replaces it should work better, no?
-Yes, sometimes you need to teach words to cover today's lesson. But when you spend 15% of your time trying to teach a few dozen words a year, as e.g. Catherine Snow's Word Generation program does, you've lost the instructional plot.
-Yes, you need to get most of your vocabulary from reading. Frank Smith, Bill Nagy, Richard Anderson, Steve Krashen, and others pointed that out decades before Seid., but good to know he got there in the end :).
-I'm all for "content knowledge"! Of course it helps. I'm glad you're emphasizing it. We've known about the effects of background knowledge (BK) on RC since at least the '60s, but people need reminding. Reading itself provides lots of BK, of course, but when students lack it for a specific topic, providing it in another form will be useful. I'm with you on that.
But the best (and most efficient) way to improve vocabulary is turn kids into avid readers and provide them with books to read. If schools spent a fraction of the $$/effort they devote to the SoR wish list on that goal, much of our so-called reading crisis would be solved.
Excellent review. I would like to clarify one important point that is often misunderstood regarding adolescent and young adult multilingual learners and leveled reading. There is abundant research supporting the practice of extensive reading using graded readers with this population. Graded readers are texts that are engineered for language learning. They are leveled in the sense that readers are matched to books where they recognize 98% of the words. It's a different ball game working with students who can read in L1, and are leveraging their existing reading to acquire a new language. District leaders need to be cautious not to over generalize Shanahan's ideas.