E11 - Equity Through Access: Teaching Grade Level Texts With Scaffolds

Dr. Timothy Shanahan is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former first grade teacher who previously served as director of reading for the Chicago Public Schools. He is the author or editor of more than 300 publications, including Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives published by Harvard Education Press in 2025. His research emphasizes connections between learning to read and learning to write, literacy in the disciplines, and improving reading achievement, and he chaired the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth.

In this episode, Dr. Shanahan challenges the widespread practice of using leveled texts for reading instruction, arguing that it often reduces students’ opportunity to learn rather than helping them catch up. He explains why multilingual learners benefit from the same core components of reading instruction as native English speakers, with language instruction carrying extra weight as students acquire English. Across the conversation, Shanahan makes a clear case for keeping students in grade-level curriculum while adjusting instruction through purposeful scaffolds, including rereading for fluency, smarter vocabulary choices, and explicit attention to sentence complexity and discourse structure so all students can access rigorous texts.

Key Takeaways:

• Teaching students using below grade level texts can limit their opportunity to learn over time. Effective differentiation targets instruction rather than changing the curriculum.
• Multilingual learners benefit from the same essential reading components as native English speakers. Language instruction provides particularly strong benefits for multilingual learners.
• Sentence complexity can block comprehension even when students read individual words accurately. Teaching students how to unpack complex sentences builds transferable tools for future reading.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Welcome to Literacy Across Languages!

(01:50) Meet Dr. Timothy Shanahan

(05:51) Insights from the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth

(12:09) The Problem with Leveled Readers

(20:08) The Importance of a Varied Reading Diet

(24:46) Making Grade-Level Text Accessible for Multilingual Learners

(35:36) What the Literacy Research Suggests for K-2 Learners

(41:11) Raising the Scaffolding for Student Success

(45:27) Takeaways for Teaching

Episode Resources:

1. Check out Dr. Shanahan's newest book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives (Harvard Education Press, 2025).
2. Follow Dr. Shanahan's blog, Shanahan on Literacy to stay up to date on the reading research.
3. Revisit the findings from The National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth.

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Keywords: grade-level text, leveled readers, differentiated instruction, curriculum equity, multilingual learners, home language, decoding, phonics, fluency, rereading, vocabulary, context clues, syntax, sentence-level comprehension, scaffolding, discourse structure, cohesion, productive struggle, National Literacy Panel, Timothy Shanahan