Minda Marshall from South Africa Considers the Best Ways to Improve Reading Comprehension
An Interview by Dr. Sam Bommarito ©2025
As my regular readers already know, I am a retired reading teacher. I hold a doctorate in reading. In my 40-plus years as an educator, I’ve taught every grade from K through Graduate School. For the past six years, I’ve been writing a blog promoting a centrist point of view. I try to follow P.D. Pearson’s advice that folks should not take sides in the reading wars. Instead, they should take positions (see 24:31 in my earlier interview with Dr. Pearson). Accordingly, I’ve tried to talk to people from many perspectives within the literacy world. My goal has been to help them clarify their ideas and share them with others. I hope that doing so can result in civil discourse among folks in the reading world. Such discourse includes avoiding the use of strawmen, that is, presenting incomplete or inaccurate explanations of what the “other side” is saying. I hope that by listening to and understanding what the “other side” is saying, common ground can emerge. This could give teachers the ability to select research-based materials and practices that will help their children. Those selections would be carried out within the confines of their district’s literacy curriculum.
The bottom line- Teachers should be empowered to use evidence-based practices regardless of which side promotes them.
From time to time, readers ask me for advice on certain issues. That happened recently when I was contacted by one of my followers. Her name is Minda Marshall. Minda provides professional development coaching for teachers in South Africa. She was especially concerned that her 3rd– and 4th-grade teachers were not seeing satisfactory progress in their students’ reading, especially in developing reading comprehension. What follows is Minda’s biography and an interview I conducted with her, sharing the interventions I think she could adopt to use with her teachers. After sharing those with you, I will discuss some interesting developments that have arisen from the interview. Some of my colleagues and I will conduct the teachers’ in-service on techniques developed by Dr. Tim Rasinki. It will also include the use of Mary Jo Fresch’s The Phonics Handbook as a resource to equip teachers with the phonics knowledge they need to deliver instruction. There will be more about that in the conclusions section of this blog.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION- Taken from her LinkedIn page.
Link to the interview. Use these talking points and questions to identify sections of the video that are most interesting to you.
Conclusions and looking to the future.
I’m very excited about the prospect of teaching teachers from South Africa to implement the ideas of folks like Rasinski, Harrison and Fresch. Stay tuned. There will be a lot to talk about in the upcoming year. Maybe there is still hope that we can use common sense to find some common ground among researchers. Dare to dream!
Dr. Sam (the guy in the middle, taking flak from both sides)
Copyright 2025 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization. Copyrighted materials from Minda Marshall were used with permission.