A Conversation with Timothy Shanahan

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Timothy Shanahan to dig into the research and real classroom consequences behind “just right” books, instructional reading levels, and the guided reading routines that have become default in so many schools.

We connect the dots between text complexity and what grade-level work actually means, including how the Common Core raised the “weight on the bar” by expecting students to successfully read more challenging texts. Tim explains why common leveling formulas (high word accuracy plus decent comprehension) can cap growth, why levels don’t tell us what’s truly hard about a text, and how keeping students out of demanding science and social studies reading can create long-term trouble. We also talk about the hidden identity effects of grouping and labeling, and why protecting kids from struggle can end up protecting them from opportunity.

Then we get practical: what scaffolding looks like when everyone is working with challenging text, why reading strategies should be taught as solutions to real problems (not as make-believe practice), what Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development actually says, and when small group instruction is a high-leverage tool versus a daily time drain. 

Tim's new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives: How Students' Reading Achievement has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It, is published by Harvard Education Press, and is available from your preferred bookseller.

If this conversation challenges your current literacy instruction, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a rating or review so more teachers can find it.

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Why Research Misses Classroom Reality

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. And the questions and real challenges that emerge from teachers' practice don't always become the focus of education research. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. I'm Dr. Rachel Hatton, host of Classroom Caffeine. In each episode, I talk with a leading education researcher or expert educator about what they've learned through their research and experiences and what they want other teachers to know about their work. Classroom Caffeine is supported by the David C. Ancient Center for the Advancement of Teaching in the University of South Florida College of Education. The Ancient Center connects research and practice by providing meaningful, research-informed professional learning for educators and educational leaders. For more information about today's guest and the resources mentioned in our conversation, be sure to stay tuned until the end of the episode and visit ClassroomCaffeine.com.

Meet Timothy Shanahan And The Book

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Dr. Shanahan is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, former director of reading for the Chicago Public Schools, a past president of the International Literacy Association, and a member of the National Reading Panel. For decades, he has helped shape both literacy research and classroom practice through his scholarship, policy work, and widely read Shanahan on Literacy blog. Today we're discussing his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, How Students' Reading Achievement Has Been Held Back and What We Can Do About It. In it, Dr. Shanahan examines one of the most common instructional practices in American classrooms, matching students with just right books, and asks whether the evidence supports the assumptions behind that approach. Drawing on decades of research and the history of reading instruction, the book challenges educators to rethink how we support students as readers while keeping equity and opportunity at the center of our decisions. I think this book is really about how good intentions become entrenched practice, what the research actually says, and where in the world we go from here, including practical suggestions at the end of the book for teachers. Tim, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Thank you for having me, Rachel. This is fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I think I did a good job of not fangirling too much through the introduction. And that will be my goal throughout the show. But I do want to say at the outset how important your work has been to my own practice, my own work with teachers. And I'm just so delighted to have you here.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

So I want to talk a lot about your book today. You've spent your career studying, reading, instruction. This book is really both a historical account, like where we've been, what we've been up to, but also really a call to action, a call to shift practices to better serve kids. So was there a particular classroom district or moment where you felt yourself turning in this direction? Or is this kind of the culmination of your scholarly work that led you to this book at this time in this moment?

How Common Core Sparked The Rethink

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I've had a very long career, a longer career than most of the folks that you get a chance to talk to because I started so early. And so, you know, you think there's so many things, but I when it comes to the book, honestly, I you gotta tell you, as a classroom teacher, I tested every one of my boys and girls with an informal reading inventory. Took hours and always taught with three, four, five different reading groups. And this was before all the little books were available. So I'd have to convince my school district to buy two or three different basal programs so that I could mix and match the books the way that I thought I needed to. And as a college professor, I taught those kinds of things to teachers. And uh, so I was a true believer in all of this. And and then I worked on the common core state standards. That was where you know so many states got together and agreed that they would share uh their reading and math standards. And uh a part of it that I don't think I knew anything about, I didn't comment on, I didn't work on, was they set standards for what text levels the kids needed to be reading at particular grade levels. Now I'd worked in other state standards over the years, and we had always avoided that.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

Uh because the belief was, shared by me, so I'm not blaming anybody, uh the notion was that a teacher needed to teach kids at their level or the kids wouldn't make progress. And so if a state were to say fourth graders should be reading fourth grade text, we thought that would hurt the kids. And here, Common Core was saying you had to teach kids at particular levels. And I thought, boy, is that gonna be a problem. And so I decided the thing I needed to do at the time was find every bit of research on this and and see how in the heck they could have done this. I parts I'd worked on, I was very proud of and thought were wonderful, and I was scared to death of this piece that I hadn't hadn't seen or hadn't commented on. And then I was stunned because the studies that I was finding weren't saying this was a terrific idea. They were saying it was a bad idea, that it was actually not promoting kids' reading. It was, if anything, holding them back. And so I wrote some blogs about that and you know, admitted my error and uh, you know, took responsibility, and people kind of embraced it real quickly. Oh, yeah, that's really good. You know, we should, you know, you kids have to struggle, you know, productive struggle is really good. And then I looked at the surveys and what had really gone on over that next five or six years wasn't, oh yeah, everybody bought into that, and it was such an easy idea. Teachers were shifting even more towards you how to teach kids with the right book. Yeah. Because what was happening is they were being given texts that were harder than they had before. There was no support for them in terms of how do you do this? And what if a kid is below that level, and so on and so forth. Teachers actually, instead of moving towards the standards, moved away from them. Practice was driving the instruction. The standards were driving the instruction, but not in the ways that the standards writers had anticipated. So I thought, you know, this needs a different kind of book. This needs something that really goes through how did we get here? We're not blaming anybody. Why are we doing it this way? So that you mentioned the history. Take folks through the history. I also take there are lots of excuses that have been made over the years why we need to do this or explanations, usually based on the common one now is Vygotsky's work. Oh, you know, Vygotsky, you know, the zone of proximal development. I tell the story in the book about a principal who I says to you in one of my workshops and then raises his hand and says, Well, I guess this means we don't listen to Vygotsky anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Yeah, and he's out. We're done with him.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Like he's just so annoyed with me, you know, for just saying this stuff. And so I explain in the book why those kinds of theories that they've been misunderstood or misused in this. And then uh finally, the real key is let's really look at the research and what the research says about how this works with kids. And it really shows that this isn't the best idea in the world, trying to teach kids at their level, that we really need to do that a bit differently. And then the rest of the book is about, and how would you do that?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

I know I I still have complaints a teacher, oh, you know, there's all this research and history. Well, you know, I think it's important that it be there. But there's also practice. There's also, well, what do you do in terms of the word reading? And what do you do in terms of the comprehension? And what about motivation? Aren't kids going to be put off by, you know, and so taking teachers by the hand through that uh uh labyrinth of research. And and so yeah, I I think the the shock that I had when I found out this practice I had so believed in and so embraced uh turned out it worked. It just didn't work as well as it needs to for our boys and girls. And that's uh, you know, man, do I wish I could go back and do some of those things differently. But we don't get that. But we can go forward differently. We can do a better job in the future.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, I I think that's actually why the history part of the book is so important because no teacher was trying to do this out of bad intentions or, you know, no teacher aims for um malpractice and doesn't want their kids to move. Um it's all well-intentioned, right? So I actually found the the walkthrough the the history of how we got here and how these ideas became so entrenched really important. And then I think the repositioning and the re-explaining of Vygotsky's own approximal development in light of thinking about the importance of text and and text difficulty for kids was really important too. Like it actually re-centers the teacher. It makes the scaffolding that teachers need to do to get all kids in the same level of difficult text even more important. So I thought that was a terrific story. I can only imagine how that felt with the principal being like, and what about the guy Tim?

SPEAKER_03 9:47

So true, I was an idiot.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Right. Such a beautiful moment with audience interaction sometimes. So, no, I think that's great. I I have uh played a video of yours so many times for teachers in professional learning where you talk about the common core standards and text difficulty and you use the analogy of the amount of weight on the bar that, you know, the common core standards was the first time that we really said, hey, fourth graders have to lift this much weight, and sixth graders need to lift this much weight. And I think of all the the work and professional learning we did around those standards, helping teachers land on that point was the most difficult part. The the primacy of tech, the difficulty of text being so important and being the determiner of grade level work. That was tough. It was it's so hard to orient ourselves that way.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

I think younger teachers would be very surprised if they went back and looked at standard and earlier uh standards for their states, whatever state they're in. Most states, well, all states started putting in standards in the 1980s. And by the mid-1990s, all states have educational standards.

Why Text Difficulty Defines Grade Work

SPEAKER_03 10:59

That didn't exist before. When I became a teacher, we didn't have anything like that. You know, each school, each teacher really was making this stuff up as they went along. But once they had standards, what you what I'd ask teachers to look at if they go back and do this. Look at the difference between a kindergarten reading standard and uh 11th grade reading standard, and they're gonna be shocked to find that they're almost identical. Wait, how can that be? Well, kids have to know how to do uh answer literal recall questions, kids have to know how to answer inferential questions, kids have to know how to draw conclusions. And so it was all the same skills, it was all the same descriptions of what the actions were to be, but no, and you have to be able to do this with a text that has these kinds of challenges for kids. And you could do that the way we've done it now with readabilities and text levels and so on. But you know, we could do it with, you know, and the text has multiple themes, or the text has uh two main characters who are in conflict, or you know, that kind of thing. Uh, or it's uh, you know, it's got to be at least 1,500 words long. You know, there are lots of ways that we could uh describe the text that you had to be able to comprehend. But instead we just we kept that out of that weight on the bar. And so 11th grader could read uh a Dick and Jane reader or a uh you know Dr. Seuss and could tell you what the main idea was or who the main character was, then they were they were passing the read-in standards. You know, well, that's ridiculous. That that isn't high enough read-in for them to go to college or to get a job or to do the things that they're gonna want to do in their lives. And so that the notion of saying, yeah, you have to be able to do all those kinds of things, but you have to be able to do with it with a text that's at least this hard. And boy, does that change the world. Right. Uh and should.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah. You know, I I think that we actually understand this inherently in sports and in athletics in a way that we resist so much in academics. I'm a mother to a baseball player, and so I would I would play your weightlifting analogy, and then I would say, this is like baseball, right? Whether you're playing ball or varsity baseball, the rules of the game are going to look recognizable to us. You know, there's three outs and there's uh batting and there's defense. But what changes is the size of the field and the speed of the ball. And and nobody looks at a varsity baseball team doing soft toss, thinking, well, look at those varsity baseball players. Like the definition of the game they're playing is defined by the size of the field and the speed of the ball. So we the other thing that I'd like you to talk about that I think is important and that I think we understand in athletics that we resist in academics is this notion that we will improve by continuing to do things that we can already do. Right. And I don't I don't think any coach or athlete thinks that the way to get better is to play alongside athletes that are exactly your level, or maybe worse. But thinking there is, of course, to play the most challenging competition that there is and that you will get better by surrounding yourself with that kind of competition.

The Problem With “Just Right” Levels

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So can you talk a little bit about that? Like in reading, how challenging text is showing that it's actually advancing kids more than this idea of just write text.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Yeah, I mean, the the notion of just write text, uh, you know, and and there are different definitions of it. They're all based on the same definition, though. You know, the original definition of it was that a student had to be able to, what you'd do is you'd take a passage from that text, and the kids would have to be able to read it aloud with 95 to 98% accuracy, meaning that if it was a hundred-word passage, they could make two to five oral reading errors and they'd be fine. But if they made more than that or fewer than that, then you'd have to think of a different level. And they'd be able to answer 75 to 89% of the questions about the text. And that would be the instructional level. And people have played with that over the year. Oh, it's not 95%, it's 94%. Or, you know, uh Mari Clay uh did 90% uh word accuracy with uh uh reading recovery children that she was working with. But remember, these were first graders working one-on-one with a teacher.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

And so all these different schemes for it. But if you think about it, wow, you mean this kid could recognize almost all the words and could answer almost all the questions, and that's the book we're gonna teach him to read with. Uh you know, uh declare victory and go home. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

You don't need us after all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Exactly. And so you you you look at that and you say, well, there's a little bit to learn there, but there's not very much. And of course, just knowing how many words the youngster gets right or wrong, or knowing how many comprehension questions doesn't really tell you what they could do with the text or why they had trouble with one text and not another. It's almost like we managed to teach kids well with that because there are things that are hard for them that we don't even know about, and maybe the kids can figure it out. And so, yeah, we placed them at their instructional level, but what made this text complicated for the kids was the plot had this complication to it. Or uh, you know, some of the lower uh information lower in the the uh structure uh was hard to hang on to, but was really essential. And so that's what made it hard for the kids. Well, the problem is the teacher has no idea. She's not trying to teach those things. She's essentially think about what the reading group is doing. The kids read the text, the teacher asks some questions about the text. Most of those questions are meant to be practice for the tests, right? And so, oh, if the test is gonna have inferential questions, we need inferential questions. If they're gonna ask about uh the mood, we better have mood questions. And and so they're not really trying to teach the youngster to read. They're just hoping the kid gets enough practice that they'll improve. And then when you test them again, they'll be at a higher level. And of course, quite often the kids aren't at a higher level. Right. Uh, you know, the probably the biggest proponents these days for this idea of just the right books are are uh Irene Faunus and Gay Sou Panel. And not to pick on them, you know, they they wrote a book about that back in the early 90s, and and it was hugely successful uh in terms of uh influencing practice. And then they they came back later, many years later, and did a kind of a second version. You could argue it was a you know second edition, but it probably improved more than that or changed more than that. But one of the things they did in that second book is they said, well, you know, if the youngster is stuck at level for a long time, just move them up. And you go, then why couldn't you move them up earlier?

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Why do we hold it back? Right. But but the notion of, well, gee, they do get stuck and they do just stay at that level because they're not they're not learning new vocabulary necessarily. They're not learning more sentence, complex sentence structure, they're not learning more subtle cohesion, and how do you deal with that? They're not dealing with more extensive text, more demanding text and just in terms of their length and and uh you know thoroughness of of coverage of a particular idea. And you can go on and on with the whole list of things that can make text difficult. Well, since the kids aren't getting any of those experiences, they're not learning to deal with any of those things.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Now you get lucky. There are kids who figure it out on their own.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Thank goodness. Right. And uh, you know, I'm all for that.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

But you know, the teacher is kind of uh in autopilot. All I have to do is make sure the kids are in the right levels of book, have them read it and ask them questions, and we just move on. Yeah. And hope and we will retest them sometime and hope they move up. And if they don't, we just keep doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

It's really not very powerful. I always use that word.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Well, and you know, when you zoom back enough, and then you you think about those practices and and the the beliefs that you know undergird them, and then you think, and at the end of the year, we're gonna test all of these kids in the same rigorous text that only some of them got practice deploying these strategies that we've really put all of our chips on, right? And then we scratch our heads and wonder why not all kids are successful deploying strategies in that level text when they have had 180 days, some of them of never being in that level of text. Like it it shouldn't miss bias, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:07

We should you imagine being a nine-year-old and the first time you see fourth grade text is on the test.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

In fact, your teachers had you in a second grade text all year.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

I mean, it's gotta no wonder kids cry. I mean, it's it's not because the testing, it's because, well, that's ridiculous. You it'd be like, you know, we're gonna give kids a math test in in fourth grade, but we're gonna give them an algebra test or a geometry test. Well, they don't study algebra or g well, that's okay. You know, it's ninth grade stuff, but uh, you know, we don't care if they've never seen it before. Well, but they do. And that is what we're doing in reading.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yes. And similarly, I think in in reading, when we are met with students with difficulties, there is this impulse, like, well, I will read it to you then, you know. Yes. And in math class, I can't imagine that we would ever say, you can't do the math. So just watch me do the math. And you what if you watch every day me do the math, then I'll test you doing the math at the end of the year. No math teacher would ever do that. Like, of course, the kids have to be the one doing the activity, but in reading, it just feels like we are so quick to these, you know, these uh loopholes around like talking about readiness or you know, motivation or frustration and keeping kids in the game. And then it's like this excuse around, like, well, I'll do it for you then, you know, to keep you somehow engaged. When of course that's not engaging at all. I don't want to, I can't learn to swim by watching someone else swim. And that's also very boring for me.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah, absolutely. And we do that with reading. I mean, if you think about it, you used the word malpractice earlier. And and, you know, it over the last 70 years, it's been treated as malpractice to put kids in text that they can't already read well.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

That's that's been the the belief. Think of every book you've ever read about the teaching of reading. Where is the chapter that says, well, now when you're doing social studies and science and you have a grade level text and the kids are struggling, this is what you do. It's absolutely silent on that. Nobody ever wrote about that because we don't want to enable malpractice.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Um, and so we have avoided this, which means you're in a say you're in a fifth grade science book. What are teachers doing? And what you're seeing teachers doing, one is is what you just said, the teacher's gonna read it to the class. Yeah. Or she calls on a handful of kids that she knows are good readers and they read it to the class.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Uh, that's one approach. Another approach is the teacher just does away with the textbook altogether. We're not gonna, I, you know, I know how to teach this stuff so the kids will understand it. I know what the science or the social study standards are, so I can make sure the kids can pass the test. And if they want to read the textbook, they can read it, but we just don't use it. And and so the kids go an entire year not reading science. And sometimes they go two or three or four or five years in a row without reading science. And that's even for kids who are interested in science. Uh, you know, and they get out of high school and they're in huge trouble because they can't read that kind of text. They've never seen it. Yeah. What we're doing is we're protecting kids. So, oh, they won't be embarrassed this way. But we're also not teaching them, you know, oh, you know, you can't swim. I'm not gonna put you in the pool because I don't want to embarrass you and try to teach you to swim. Uh, you know, why don't you go sit on the bench and you'll you can watch the other kids swim?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

And, you know, it's too bad that you're not gonna know how to swim.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Uh of course, with reading, swimming, you can kind of get around. Reading, you really can't in our society. Right. Uh so it it really is a disaster for the kids. Uh, and we have been holding kids back. It it's it's like a quiet or a hidden retention policy. You know, uh schools go through all kinds of hoops if they want to retain kids.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Uh, you know, gee, I think this first grader really shouldn't be promoted. You know, he's not doing well, he's far behind his classmates. Well, we have to make sure this isn't discriminatory. We have to make sure that there's a real plan for the kid, that it isn't just he's just gonna get flunked every year until he gets so big he goes away. You know, we we we're careful about that. But this is a way we can promote kids and then still keep them in the second grade.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Right, right. Well, and you know, I I appreciate teachers' concern around, you know, I don't want to hurt a kid's feelings and I don't want them to feel frustration or develop a hatred of reading. I of course we appreciate I appreciate those points, but we seem less concerned about the kinds of long-term impacts of labeling a kid a certain reading level.

When Leveled Groups Shape Identity

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

And then the language that we ourselves use in conversation in PLCs and in in teacher meetings where we're discussing kids by their reading levels, you know, and the the long I I always said about my high school students, I never met a high school student that was coming to my AP lit class saying, like, I'm just going to English. Like they made darn sure to say to their friends and whoever's listening, off to AP lit. You know, they wrote it on their folder, they wrote it on their notebook. They it was not English class. And I didn't write English on my board either. I wrote AP lit, baby. Um, and so of course, like that stuff matters to a kid's sense of identity and agency and worth. And of course, that's the same thing happens. Kids know what group they're in. I think you said in the book, you know, once a bluebird, always a bluebird, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Like kids, oh yeah. That was true when I became a teacher very long ago. And it's still true to oh no, we don't call them bloombirds anymore.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Now they're eight. Yeah. And they have never figured that out. You know, these kids are not that sharp. Well, they are that sharp, but they do figure it out. One of the things I think teachers ignore, and I think my profession ignores if you look at surveys of children, the their least popular class in elementary grades these days is ELA. It's reading. They they're not happy with their reading lessons, and they don't ask enough questions in those surveys for me to say, and the reason for that is I think one of the reasons for it, you know, this is my surmise, this isn't a research finding. Reading is the one class you can't tell you're learning anything the way we teach it. And then that's not just true for the kids, that's true for the teachers. Because we're gonna put you in a text that you can already read very well and you're gonna read it. Okay, now so what did I learn?

unknown 26:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Well, you read the you read that text. Yeah, but uh, you know, am I supposed to keep that information? Well, we don't teach it that way. We don't care whether they remember the information in a week or two, right? Uh which is crazy. Yeah, and and the texts are easy enough that by the end of the week, nothing has it changed, or if it has changed, it's changed so subtly I can't feel it or see it. And that goes on week after week after week. The only time the youngster knows that he's made any progress is the teacher tests him and says, You can be in a different group now.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

And it's like, oh, okay. But of course, more often than not, you test the kids and they don't get to move on. And so progress is glacial, it's hidden.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

And what I would argue for is on Monday, the teacher puts me in this text that looks like it could be good, but it's really hard. I struggled with, and by Friday, I could read that son of a gun. Right. I was really learning. Right. Um, and I want kids to feel like they're learning and want teachers to, I can see they're making progress. They can do things they couldn't do before.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

A lot more fun to come to work.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Well, right. And and I think it, yeah, more fun for the teachers too. I agree. Like I completely I always felt like I was earning my paycheck when I was teaching Shakespeare because I felt like, oh, the kids really need me. You know, I I could feel their progress. They could feel their progress. And I think that's what you're talking about. Like it is so much more tangible when we are working on decoding together, when we are working on what is this language structure, what is the structure of this sentence?

Strategies Should Solve Real Reading Problems

SPEAKER_01 28:27

The the other mistake I think we're making, I think you're absolutely right about the being able to track progress, but I think the the fronting of strategy or skill ahead of text is the other mistake we're making, right? Like kids and and who have to look at a learning goal that is totally text agnostic and then have a principal say, what's your learning target? And they aren't even supposed to say anything about the specific text, but just, oh, I'm I'm making inferences today. It's like, and for what purpose is that? You know, that's not authentic reading. I don't sit down at night to practice finding the main idea. And we are actively telling kids that's what we're up to in ELA classes.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm very pro-strategy, big fan of teaching strategies for the very simple reason that there's a lot of research support in the idea of teaching kids to be active readers to solve problems. But I resent these days the way we've taught strategies. If you think about it, the purpose of a strategy is to uh solve a reading problem. I'm struggling with this. I can't, you know, I'm having trouble reading this. How could I do it? So I'm gonna read a Russian novel or a Russian short story. Well, what's one of the things that trips up, say, a high school or a college student in trying to read that kind of text? The characters are so hard to keep straight because everybody has a title and uh, you know, they have a for uh name name, they have uh a familiar name, and and I I can't keep them straight. Yep. Oh, okay. Well, you know, one of the things that good readers do when they're reading those kinds of text is they get like an index card and they every time they get a new name for a character, they do an equal as and they keep that with them so that when they come to a name that they go, Well, is that Sergei or is that right? Oh, okay. You know, they have it. Now, you could teach that ahead of time, but it's kind of a stupid thing to learn if you've never read anything like that. Yeah, right. Right. So you you're a lot better off. Gee, the teacher is, you know, put me in this piece of Tolstoy or whatever, and and I'm trying to read it. And it was really hard, but then she showed me how I could keep track of the characters. It isn't much harder than that stuff I've been reading.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Ah, you solved a problem.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Uh, you've got a strategy. What we do is in the past 50 years is we come up with a strategy, like, oh, you know, it's really a good idea to stop at the end of each section and ask yourself questions to make sure you remember it. And if you don't, go back and look. Okay, that's terrific. It's a good strategy. It'll help you learn and remember the information. So, what kind of text are we going to do that with? Well, we've made we've selected a text that's gonna be really easy for you to remember. Again, it's at your reading level, so you won't have any challenge with it. And what the kids are asked to do is pretend like it's hard and apply this strategy. And then when you see that it really works, well, of course you can't see that because you're it's all pretend, it's all make-believe. And the kids, the little kids don't complain about it, they just do it. By middle school, I always remember this eighth grader. It was a writing strategy, it wasn't a reading strategy, and he was just offended as all get out because the writing assignment was such that he was ready to go. And the teacher wanted to go through this strategy for how do you get an idea, how do you, you know, come up with your plan for writing. And the kid was so I have to pretend that I'm doing this so that I can write about this thing that I've already decided what I can write about, you know, and I don't want to do that, right? Yeah, he's offended because of course if you're 12 or 13, when adults ask you to do something stupid, it isn't just I don't want to comply. Right. You don't want to comply, and so you resist it. And and then the teacher's stuck on, well, why are these kids so uncooperative? Well, they're not being uncooperative. The kid wants to write, he's ready to write.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Which isn't for Marvel, too. We too should want him to just write.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

Exactly. So come up, you know, if you've got a writing assignment you think is gonna challenge the kids and they're gonna struggle with, great time to teach that strategy. But you get a kid here who doesn't need that strategy, at least right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Let him move on. And and so that's really what we're doing with reading. We we ask kids to pretend to do it because you use a strategy when you're having trouble with the text, not when you can already read it. Right. And that's uh so when you do teach it as a pretend thing, it doesn't stick. Kids just don't believe in it, they don't care.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Yeah, I think that's such an important point because the the kids will see the value of that strategy only when it has served them. And it will only serve them, you know, when they need it, then they will buy into it. And you know, not to go back to our swimming analogy from earlier, but the the strategies and the scaffolding, the teachers are there so we don't just drop kids into the deep end and say, That's right, well, you better kick, son, keep get going. But instead, here's how useful these strategies are when you find yourself in the deep end. And I will be in the deep end with you and we'll do it together. I mean, that's exactly right. That's really what the zone of proximal development is, right? Like I'm in there with exactly.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Yeah, yeah. You know, that's one of the things that you know, that Vygotsky one is so interested because you do you see it in journal articles, you see it in textbooks, you certainly see it in classes at universities and so on, that this idea that the zone of proximal development means you have to put kids in tasks that they can largely already do, and then you just sort of, you know, get them there the rest of the way. And that isn't at all what Vygotsky was talking about. Vygotsky was saying that the activities you should engage kids in should be socially valuable activities, things you that you want them to really be able to do. So it isn't just, oh, we have this arbitrary set of skills that we teach. No, I really want kids to be able to read this text or this kind of text. And you, you know, the zone of proximal development is from the point where the parent or the teacher, the adult, the the one who's guiding them, the mediator, yeah, uh, does almost everything that essentially the kid is observing.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

And all the way up to, gee, he's almost there. I just have to kind of ask him a few questions to get him through the labyrinth that he's working through. And that whole thing is the zone of proximal development, and you adjust the support you give. And so I think the example, if I remember correctly, in the book, the example I use is the mother teaching a youngster to tie his shoes. And initially, it's not well, you know, he can almost tie them. It's initially is, you know, we're gonna learn to tie our shoes today. Well, mom already knows, so why this wee stuff is a little silly, but we're gonna learn to tie our shoes. And look what I do first. I cross the laces and then I tuck this one underneath. You want to try that? And then mom ties the shoes. It always ends up with the shoes tied, even though the youngster can only do the first. Oh, I can go. And then, you know, after a few times of that, mom says, What do I when I'm tying her shoes? What do I do first? And the kids cross the laces for, oh, that's wonderful. Look, the shoes are tied, and it goes on and on like that. That whole thing is the zone of proximal development. It isn't, oh, once you get to the last little thing, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's you have to go through the whole thing. And so the notion of we have to match kids to text so there'll just be a little bit for them to learn, and then we can guide them through it. They've got just a totally wrong idea of what the ZPD is, the zone of proximal development is. And it experts on that just think people in education are dummies. They don't seem to understand what you know Vukowski was writing about.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah, well, and then it was a whole lot more uh language and social mediation than uh just ZPD. I think sometimes people think that's all he wrote about.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Um, that's another issue. But he was very much against American uh uh he didn't know about instructional level theory. That comes a little later after his death, but he did know about our readiness theories that you know the kids had to be ready before you could start. And he thought those were cuckoo.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Uh, you know, he just he just thought that was completely crazy. Why would you wait for somebody to get ready? You can start teaching them now.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

And really, instructional levels of readiness theory, it's it's it's based on readiness theory, but again, it it kind of cheats on that one too. But the notion these kids won't be ready to learn if you put them in a third grade book, they can't possibly learn from it. That just that's not true.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

The other anecdote, Tim, from the book that really stuck with me was when you were observing a teacher doing small group instruction. So the majority of the class is in seat work, and this teacher is at her kidney table with three students and kind of observe the small group lesson. They read a short text, she asks a couple of questions, those kids go. The next group comes up, they read the same text, she asks the same questions, they respond the same way, those kids go. I wonder if you might just talk a little bit about whole group instruction, small group instruction, when small group instruction can be really high leverage, how we're sort of misusing it. Because I think that there's another piece in the book where you talk about a principal, I think it was a principal at a PD saying, like, well, we'll know this was a success if the teachers start doing small groups, right? And there's this so much value in, oh, I wish my teachers did small groups, and why aren't we doing small groups? But if if those groups aren't high leverage, you know, you make the good point in the book, we're losing so much instructional time. So I'd like you to just talk a little bit about whole group, small group, and and how to make them both more effective.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

Yeah.

Small Groups Versus Strong Whole-Class Teaching

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Districts are doing crazy things there. And sometimes it's the curriculum director, the assistant superintendent for instruction, or the reading uh guru in the district. Uh, that they so believe in in small group that in fact they even do things like mandate it. You know, you're going to in your you know 90-minute ELA block, 30 minutes have to be spent on small group instruction. Yep. Uh and and so it in fact that that case I told where the teacher was just repeatedly teaching the same thing to three kids at a time, so that she was using her small group instruction time.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Um, and just you know, Looney Tune stuff. Uh I'll remember that terrible lesson the rest of my life. Oh, great. And it was, it was just a terrible lesson. It was so sad. And it was, you know, uh it just uh and these were high poverty schools that you know, so these kids really do need the instruction. There is no question, if you take, uh let's say you and I, or well, no, we won't even do it like that. I'm gonna assign you to two situations. I'm gonna have you in one, you're gonna get a classroom of 30 fourth graders. And uh, you know, here's the lesson that you're supposed to teach, and you've got to go do it. And we'll test the kids to see if they learned it. Well, you get a half an hour, you get you know, some amount of time. I'm gonna we're also gonna have you do exactly the same lesson this, you know, but and same amount of time. But now we've got three children for you to work with simultaneously. And uh, you know, we've uh we've we've picked them by level, so don't worry, they're not, they're somewhat homogeneous. They might not be perfectly matched, but it's not a ninth grader, a second grader, you know, it's not that kind of thing. And so now we want you to teach. And there is absolutely no question, no doubt in my mind that you'll get a higher proficiency rate in the kids learning with the small group than the the whole class. There's just no question, uh, which would argue for well, therefore, no one should be expected to work with more than three kids. We just need to build a lot more schools, we're gonna need millions more teachers, and everyone's gonna be able to do that. What a dream.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

What a dream, Tim.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

Wouldn't that be a dream? But that actually isn't the deal that we give teachers. Right. And so small group is better like that, but we're misunderstanding why it's better. We're misunderstanding what's going on there. And and so the fact is uh when we do that in a regular classroom, it isn't like the little study I just had with you, this little uh, you know, imaginary study where we're putting three kids up against 30 kids, and clearly the teacher is much more effective with the three. She knows what's going on and all she can see all their faces. She can direct uh her her attention to each kid. She can have every kid respond three or four times each instead of, you know, once and and you know, that type of thing. That actually isn't what the comparison is you get in the classroom. In the classroom, it's I've got 25 kids in my class, I've got 90 minutes to teach reading.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

If I decide that I've got three groups or four groups of kids, now I've got eight kids in this group and 12 kids in that group, and all that kind of stuff. What I have to start doing is I have to start reducing the amount of instruction that I can give any of you. So I'm gonna take your group first, I'm gonna work with you guys for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or a half an hour. But what that means, the other kids are all doing seat work and wandering around the class and looking out the window and, you know, doing whatever they're doing. Uh, and and then I'm gonna call one of those groups and work with them for a short amount of time. And now you look and you say, oh, so that, you know, small group instruction like that is better than whole class instruction. Well, no, no, the studies don't find that. Uh, in fact, in some cases, they find even the whole class is better under those circumstances because you can lose an awful lot of time. Uh, you lose a lot of attention. Most seatwork activities are not terribly effective at inducing learning. I won't I don't want to say it's zero, but it's certainly less than what a good teacher can get in interacting with kids. There's just there's no question about that. One of the things to make the instructional level, the just right book thing work is boy, the small group, these kids have to be so well matched to the text that they're gonna get supercharged in their learning, they're gonna make faster progress than everybody else. You know what? The studies say that just doesn't happen. Uh, it doesn't work that way. Small group instruction should be a tool. It should be, we've had a bunch of kids out this week. And I, you know, in some ways, easier to do with a math example than a reading example. Uh, you know, I'm I was introducing long division to my kids this week, and we had like eight kids out every day. And, you know, ever since COVID, this has just been a disaster. Well, you know, it really might be smart for you to do some small group instruction this week, you know, or next week, uh, with the kids who've come back. Why? To catch them up, to you know, give them the same chance that everybody else had. Or another example, you've just done a reading or a writing lesson, and you could tell some of the kids got it, and some of them didn't. I think I know which one maybe even have seat work responses. You you know what the kids did. With it, you can look and go, wow, these eight kids didn't get it. The rest of the kids did pretty well. Why not come back and reteach that lesson to those eight kids this time? Now it's a tool. Now it's got power. Now I'm actually using it to try to move kids forward. See, I've got that one kid or those two kids who I'm teaching third grade and they still don't know their letter names. They don't have any decoding. I can't they transferred in from another school. They're getting some pullout time, but you know, that since they came in in October, uh, Mrs. Jones already had her tier two schedule set. And so she's only taking them two days a week. They're really not getting it. So I'm going to use some small group time to try to teach those kids some skills that aren't really part of our third grade curriculum, but I just can't let these kids languish. I have no problem with small group instruction for those kinds of purposes. But the notion of, oh, you need a half an hour a day of small group time no matter what is stupid. The notion that uh small group lessons are necessarily better than whole class lessons. There are teachers who find all kinds of wonderful ways to get kids doing multiple responses. And so even though it's a whole class, everybody's responding to my questions. It isn't just I call on four kids and you know we move on. Oh no, everybody has to hold up their card or everybody has to type into their device, you know, a response. Lots of ways of doing it. Choral uh, you know, reading in certain situations. The trick is to make whole class instruction as powerful as you can, and then to use small groups when you're losing kids or when you need to catch somebody up, or somebody just needs a second dose. You know, I mean, yeah, it doesn't have to be grand.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yeah. You know, I think that time is the question I hear most from teachers in any talk or workshop. Like, this is all terrific, and what about time? And I think what you're talking about is so important because it does better leverage our whole class instruction. It does put value in how time effective that is. But when I think about the amount of time that teachers have to spend trying to identify the level of a student, identify the level of a book, match them, believing that those are our scientific sound practices, like that we're really good at identifying a reading level or really good at identifying a text level, which you know, you point out very clearly the book. Even that we're not good at. So even if we believe that we ought to be doing that, we don't have good ways of doing it. The amount of time we spend assessing, grouping, regrouping that we could actually be spending on identifying what makes this text challenging, where are kids gonna trip up on the path through this text and then charting a safe course for them through it, like that would be some instructional time worth spending, you know, and you know, to our you can add to that list of all those losses of time.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

The now my kids are gonna, they're in these groups, and gee, I just finished with my H group and I want to call my J group. Gee, I lose four or five minutes there, and the kids are, you know, moving around finding their books, and oh, you know, Jimmy didn't hear I called J. It's all that kind of silly stuff. What if the teacher instead of, yeah, I get to work with each of these groups for 20 minutes, and then you know, I lose five to ten minutes a day and just moving the kids around. And so, you know, the kids don't really they get about 15 minutes of instruction and reading. What if that was an hour-long lesson with everybody? You know, wow. Wow. That's a lot of instruction. And it it, you know, for whatever benefits you think the small group is given, tripling the amount of instruction or quadrupling the amount of instruction that you're giving kids has such a big impact on learning that uh, you know, we're really missing out. And so, yeah, we're spending too much time testing kids to try to find out where they are.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Uh, we'd be much better off asking different kinds of comprehension questions within our lessons than testing kids as frequently as people are doing to try to move them to just the right level.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

We've talked for almost an hour, Tim. I think I've asked you one official question. So I apologize that I maybe just have to. It's been fun. Okay, it has been, it has been, it's been great for me. Uh, but I'm thinking about, you know, with our limited time remaining here, I'm imagining a teacher who's, okay, Tim, all right, Rachel, like this all makes sense. I like it, but I can only really bite off one thing. When I go back to school in August, what is the one actionable thing that you would encourage teachers to do that would start to write the ship or that would, you know, you think really make a difference for the students in their classrooms this year?

One Move That Matters Most: Time

SPEAKER_03 49:02

Yeah, one thing. Uh, you know, when I work with uh schools, when I, you know, I've done, I was director of reading for the Chicago public schools. I've done consulting projects with literally hundreds of schools and been quite successful at raising achievement. Always the first thing I look at is time use. Is and it's not just, oh yeah, you know, our school says we should have 90 minutes. Well, okay, that's really or two hours and we count writing and that, you know, that's that's all good. That's that's nice. But there are just so many things to think about with just that time use. Are you really using the time? You know, when you're sending some kids away and you're working with others, change how you count the time then. And instead of it being, oh yeah, I do my my reading goes from 9 to 10 30. Yeah, but most of the kids only got 20 minutes of reading time. And so what if we say it takes you two hours to do 90 minutes of instruction? Think of it that way. Right. That's one issue. Another issue is teachers are in such different schools. So, you know, here in Chicago, I was responsible for 600 schools, some of the best schools in the country, but also some of the worst schools in the country in terms of kids' achievement. I mean, kids in the bottom 10 percentile. And I don't mean some of the kids, I mean the entire student body of uh an 800 kid school are in the bottom 10% nationally. And so the notion of do you really want to spend the same amount of time on reading instruction in those two schools? Uh, does that really make sense? Oh, yeah, everyone's gonna spend 90 minutes. Well, if you all spend 90 minutes, that means the kids at the bottom just stay there. Right. Is that really what the plan is? So we need to think that through a little bit. And then, you know, we use time, but oh, you know, I like to read to the kids. Well, I do too. That's wonderful. But they don't learn very much. They learn something from it, but they don't learn very much when it comes to reading. Oh, I like the kids to go read on their own. Well, that's nice, but they don't they again, I'm not saying it's zero learning, but gee, the difference between kids going off and picking a book to read on their own and teachers using a text that's been selected for its instructional value and working with the kids, there's a big difference in the amount of payoff. Right. And so not all time is equal. Right. And so what I see a lot of teachers doing is they see that 90 minutes and they carve it up into these activities that they're going to do that really minimizes the power of the time. And so I'd really say take those minutes with the kids as a and the the time that the kids are actually reading in an accountable way. When they go read on their own, they may or may not be accountable. When they read with the teacher and she's gonna question them or have them write about it, that's pretty accountable. We're gonna know whether they got it. Uh and a book that the teacher knows and all, you know, that all matters. And so I would really say maximize that instructional time, protect it with at all costs. If if for some reason you lose, oh, you know, we had to go out on the playground because we had a fire drill, and then you know, the the alarm system uh wouldn't turn off, and so we had to stay on the playground for 20 minutes. So today we didn't do the 90 minutes. We well, how are you gonna get those 20 minutes back? You know, this week or next week, what can you do? Teachers need to think about those minutes they have with the kids in as just the most precious thing your community provides for children and use it accordingly. This is like your mother's jewelry. This is this is something precious. We want to protect it, we want to use it, and we want it to be the most powerful, not hurried, but the most powerful thing that we can we can do with kids. And I I'm afraid that a lot of especially younger teachers think, oh, it doesn't matter that much if we lose those minutes. It's you're stealing money out of the kids' pockets. Please don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Yeah. Yeah. The stakes are high, you know. Yes. I think that is the the through current of the book. The title alone from Tatum's line of leveled reading makes leveled lives. That is not hyperbole. Um, we are we are really talking about the economic opportunity, the ability to participate in democratic society. It is very real how critical it is that our kids are ready to participate in the world that we are trying to build. So yeah, it's not it's not a no-big deal thing.

SPEAKER_03 53:26

It's a it's no, that's exactly right. And I I just don't think teachers, you know, teachers have decent egos, but I don't think they really understand how valuable what they provide kids are. I don't think they fully appreciate it. And their minutes with the kids are just precious, and we need those to be taken advantage of to the ump degree for all these boys and girls. Uh and teachers who teach uh like it's an emergency, like it's the most important thing in the world, are gonna be the most successful. They they really have to see it that way.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

Yeah. I think that's a terrific place to leave it, Tim. I'm right at my hour with you. I I so appreciate the conversation. And we'll be sure to share information about where people can get the book in the show notes. Um, I know people can contact you through your blog.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

Is that still the best place for people to it is the best way to get a hold of me? All the emails come to me. A lot of people will write saying, Could you show this to Dr. Shanahan? I I'm a one-man shop. That's me. That's me. So you can just write to me. And uh I, you know, I I try to answer the questions, and and as folks know, a lot of those questions turn out to be blog entries at some point, and I never reveal who. So if whether I thought yours was a good question or or a bad one, yeah, uh, I never, oh, and it was you know Rachel who said exactly that dumb question.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

I really am um excited about this book, Tim. I know it's gonna impact teachers and kids that are with them throughout the school year. So I thank you for your work. I thank you for the book, and certainly the conversation today. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

This was wonderful, Rachel. You asked really good questions. Uh clearly you care an awful lot about the teachers who are listening to this.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Thank you. Well, we are in it together. And you know, I always say, like, I thought I was a good teacher, and then I had my own kid. And then I thought, uh oh, this really I really care about this. So yeah, I appreciate your work and it's it's had such a huge impact on my own practice, as I said earlier. So job well done. I hope you actually get to lean into the emeritus part of your title and like actually do retire here um at some point if people like me leave you alone long enough. Uh I appreciate you so much.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

Thank you. Good luck to you.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Thanks.

Where To Find Shanahan And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 55:46

Dr. Timothy Shanahan is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he was the founding director of the UIC Center for Literacy. A former first grade teacher and director of reading for Chicago Public Schools, he has authored or edited more than 300 publications on literacy education. His research is focused on improving reading achievement, teaching with challenging texts, reading-writing relationships, and disciplinary literacy. In addition to serving on the National Reading Panel, Dr. Shanahan chaired the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth and the National Early Literacy Panel. He also helped write the Common Core State Standards and was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007. You can learn more about Tim's work, read his latest commentary on literacy research and instruction, and contact him through his blog, Shanahan on Literacy. We've also included information about his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, How Students' Reading Achievement has been held back, and what we can do about it in the show notes. For the good of all students, Classroom Caffeine aims to energize education, research, and practice. If today's conversation gave you something to think about, help us spread the word. Share the episode with your colleagues and teacher friends, and support the show by following, subscribing, rating, or reviewing Classroom Caffeine through your preferred podcast provider. You can visit ClassroomCaffeine.com to learn more about our guests, find episode transcripts, explore topics from previous conversations, suggest a guest or episode topic, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and learn more about the research connected to the podcast. Classroom Caffeine is supported by the David C. Ancient Center for the Advancement of Teaching in the University of South Florida College of Education. To learn more about the Ancheon Center and its professional learning opportunities for teachers and teacher leaders, visit USF.edu backslash Anchin. You can also follow the Ancient Center on social media at USF Anchin. That's USFANCHIN on all platforms. Connect with Classroom Caffeine through our website and on social media. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raise my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me.