Webinar: Balancing Literacy Skills and Sustained Reading

Dr. Brandon Abdon and Jennifer Abramson name the core tension secondary ELA teachers feel: the pressure to “cover” standards and test-prep skills while also protecting time for real reading of longer texts. Drawing on classroom, coaching, and district-level experience, they unpack how secondary teachers are often expected to remediate fluency, vocabulary, and decoding gaps without formal literacy training, all while moving students toward sophisticated analysis and high-stakes assessments.

Through participant chat, live discussion, and short writing tasks, the session surfaces the realities teachers face: over-testing, data-driven demands, constrained attention spans, and students who self-identify as “not readers.” The presenters dig into issues like reading anxiety as a symptom (not the cause), the emotional “psyche” of striving readers, and how schools sometimes unintentionally “kill” the love of reading, even when everyone believes they are supporting literacy.

Rather than framing structured literacy and balanced literacy as competing camps, Brandon and Jennifer argue they are “two sides of the same coin” that both matter in secondary classrooms. They highlight how a well-intentioned shift toward short, skills-focused texts has sometimes gone too far, pulling teachers away from full novels and sustained reading in ways that recreate older problems from the opposite direction.

The heart of the webinar is practical: teachers see how to model authentic reading moves, protect sustained reading time, and still address discrete skills and test demands. Brandon and Jennifer share ideas like brief, low-stakes quizzes on longer texts, double-entry journals, and “wonder/worry/want/wish” responses, intentional cold-reading practice, and framing units so students can tolerate confusion and build stamina over time. 

Throughout, the presenters return to the importance of protecting older striving readers’ identities, honoring bilingual and emergent bilingual students, and inviting genuine choice and voice in what and how students read. Participants leave with language they can use with students (“This is a tough book, and you’re ready for it”), with colleagues, and with administrators to advocate for sustained reading as both real literacy work and authentic test preparation.

Watch the webinar recording now.