The Reading Instruction Show

I am writing a book about teaching writing. This book is based on the premise that human beings have an innate desire to communicate with other human beings. They naturally want the ideas to leak out of their head. Humans have an inherent inclination to express themselves and to share their ideas and experiences with other humans. Good writing instruction is built upon this natural inclination. In...

So why should educators be concerned about educational research? What relevance does it have to our everyday practice? Educational research is used to create the theories upon which we design educational policies and practices. Theories help to organize relevant empirical facts (empirical means they can be observed or measured) in order to create a context for understanding phenomena. Sometimes pe...

Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) is considered to be one of the pioneers of modern psychology. His theory of personality states that (a) the human psyche (personality) has more than one aspect (see below) and (b) the unconscious mind can be highly influential in directing human behavior. His contribution to the field of psychology was in describing how impulses and ideas contained in the unconscious w...

Like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist who also described humans as naturally good and evolving entities. He pioneered a client-centered approach to psychotherapy that translated directly into a student-centered approach to teaching. This chapter describes some of his seminal ideas as they relate to human growth, teaching, and being a human being. As you listen to this podc...

Self-actualization is the term used to describe the natural unfolding and realization of one’s full potential. Put another way, within every acorn there is a mighty oak tree. To actualize is to enable the taproot to sprout from the acorn and the seedling to come forth and begin to grow to be the oak tree. Self-actualization is when the acorn recognizes the oak tree within, embraces oak-tree-ness,...

At one time it was thought that smaller class sizes and additional adult resources found in a segregated special education classroom would enable teachers here to provide individualized instruction that would meet the special needs of each student. It was thought as well that this would lead to improved learning outcomes for these students. This is not the case. It turns out that educational outco...

This podcast further explores problems in Special Ed World. Addressed here: (a) the medical model used to understand "disabilities", (b) standardized instruction, (c) segregated instructional settings, and (d) systemic racism.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was among the earliest pioneers in humanistic psychology (sometimes referred to as growth psychology or third wave psychology). This movement begin to emerge in the 1950’s in response to the idea that humans were merely creatures driven by their subconscious (Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytic model), or were organisms conditioned to respond to internal and external st...

I used to describe special education as a field – as in “the field of special education.” And indeed, it used to be a field. You can see this field when reading articles from the major special education academic journals in the 1990s and early 2000s. It was a field. Not a farmer’s field but a field in the wild. This kind of field is a beautiful place. It is an ecosystem, with birds, other animals,...

: n our current educational system, standardized tests are used to assess the quality of the student-products as they move along the 13-year conveyor belt within the education factories commonly referred to as schools. Students whose test scores fall below a certain percentile ranking are thought to have a disability. Additional standardized tests are then given by standardized testing experts to...

Fast-Reading Freddy was a second-grade student. His father contacted me because, according to him, his son had reading problems. The scores on reading achievement tests were below grade level. His father indicated that he was going to get him tested for dyslexia. Knowing the devasting impact that such tests and labels can have, and the great amount of nothingness that such tests produce, I told hi...

The podcast examines the big, big picture related to reading instruction. Four big ideas are presented here: 1. A reading teacher’s number one job should be to help children fall in love with books. 2. Students need reading practice 3. Have good books available . 4. Stop the search for magical elixirs .

One cause of ineffective reading instruction is an un-understanding of how the brain creates meaning with print. The other is testing madness. The number monkeys have taken over education! If we can’t put a number to a thing, it is thought not to exist. I have yet to come across a standardized test that taught a child to read. Despite all the colorful graphs and charts, I have yet to encounter a t...

Eye movement research tells us much about reading and the reading process. This type of research looks at eye movement as people are engaged in authentic reading activities (reading passages vs. individual words). Eye movement research shows that our eyeballs do not move in a nice, straight, orderly line from left to right. Also, our eyeballs skip over 40% of the words while reading.

When students make a mistake or miscue during oral reading, our first impulse is to jump in and correct the mistake. We need to stop doing this. This podcast explains why. The first thing we do when students stop because they don't recognize a word is to tell them to "sound it out". We also need to stop doing this. This podcast explains why.

One cause of ineffective reading instruction is the lack of understanding related to the reading process. More specifically, inaccurate information about how the brain creates meaning with print. Old ideas get in the way of new understandings. Un-understandings also get in the way of new understandings.

The traditional view of the scientific process. The traditional view of the scientific process goes something like this. You get two groups. You measure them before the study begins. You do something to one group and you don’t do something to the other. You control everything else so that the two groups are as similar as possible. Then after a bit, you measure them to see if there are differences...

This is the first in a two-part series looking at grammar instruction. Learning about grammar doesn’t have to be boring and meaningless. This podcast starts by dispelling some myths, otherwise known as silly grammar ideas. It ends by describing the four elements of effective skills instruction: (a) input and modeling, (b) guided practice, (c) independent practice, and (d) review

So why should educators be concerned about educational research? What relevance does it have to our everyday practice? We have all heard the common litany: “It’s just a bunch of theory. You can make research say anything you want. Ivory tower researchers don’t know what it’s like in the trenches. It doesn’t work that way in the real world.” This podcast explains what a theory is, how research-base...

This is an excerpt from my book: Johnson, A. (2016). 10 essential instructional elements for students with reading difficulties: A brain-friendly approach . Phonemes are the smallest units of sound within spoken words. English has 41-44 phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is one part of the whol...

This is an excerpt from my book: Johnson, A. (2016). 10 essential instructional elements for students with reading difficulties: A brain-friendly approach . Corwin The first podcast provides a sense of what effective literacy instruction might look like at the preschool and kindergarten (emergent) levels. The following podcast describes strategies for developing phonemic awareness.

A teacher’s prime directive is to help students learn or more accurately, to create the conditions whereby students are able to learn. So, what is learning? Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills. But simply having new knowledge and skills are of little value if they cannot be used. Thus, learning also involves the ability to use new knowledge and skills to solve problems or...

It has been my experience that education is most effective when the prime directive is to do what Maria Montessori proposed in 1946, and that is to help each child discover and then release his or her full potential. The Indian philosopher, Krishnamurti proposed that education’s goal should be to free individuals from the illusion of one’s cultural conditioning so that they can think and value for...

When we talk about critical race theory, our goal is not to win the argument. We’ve already done that. Our goal is change. And if change is not occurring, we must consider the causal factors. Now those who would use force to leverage change, simply think about where, how, and how much force to use. But that’s not really change. That’s compliance. We want change. Real change. Ideas cause change. Id...

This podcast explores this question: Do you want to win the argument or do you want change? We've already won the argument, so let's focus on change. In doing so, we need to consider our idea-delivery system.