Day 3
The Importance of Teaching Reading with Grade-Level Texts
with Dr. Timothy Shanahan: Part 1
What you will learn in this episode:
Dr. Shanahan will talk about what it was like writing his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, and why it is important that children get practice reading more complex levels of text, especially books we might think are "too hard" for them. This includes kids with dyslexia! After watching, scroll down for Part 2 of the interview.
Dr. Timothy Shanahan is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Previously, he was director of reading for the Chicago Public Schools and Visiting Research Professor at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He is the author/editor of more than 300 publications, including the book Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives (Harvard Education Press, 2025). His research emphasizes the connections between learning to read and learning to write, literacy in the disciplines, and improvement of reading achievement.
He served on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy under Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama. Shanahan took a leadership role on the National Reading Panel (NRP).
He was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007 and is a former first-grade teacher.
Tim Shanahan: Part 2
What you will learn in this episode:
Dr. Shanahan shares techniques for becoming a skilled listener during guided reading aloud by children and talks about teaching to the text instead of asking "categorical" questions for comprehension. He also recounts a fascinating study that found that adults have inaccurate decoding responses linked to not having been exposed to texts at varied levels when they were young children.
Streamline Your Structured Literacy Lessons with Word List Builder by Emily Gibbons
What you will learn in this episode:
Word lists for practice are an important part of a structured literacy lesson. Emily shares her cool tool for generating word lists at the click of a button. Super time saver!
Emily Gibbons has been an educator for over 25 years and is CEO of The Literacy Nest.
She is a Certified Orton-Gillingham (OGA) and a Certified Structured Dyslexia Specialist.
She currently works in private intervention with her students and creates resources and professional development for The Literacy Nest and Building Readers For Life, her annual major event for supporting teachers with literacy instruction.
Emily's desktop app, Word List Builder, helps hundreds of teachers every day create time-saving activities to support their structured literacy lessons. She is a mom of four children and lives in MA.
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