To promote independent reading in middle school, teachers must understand why adolescents choose to read or not read a specific book. Yet, there is limited research on the factors that students consider when evaluating books that teachers have introduced them to in class. This study aimed to describe factors that 43 Grade 7 and 8 students noted as…

This study explores virtual, student-author interviews eighth-grade students led with Chris Crowe in response to his young adult novel "Mississippi Trial, 1955." The opportunity to interview the author motivated students to read the novel. Through their text-world development, students connected with the fictional and nonfictional…

This study is situated within a male-dominated Palestinian-Israeli reality rife with issues of gender privilege. With a purpose to disrupt the status quo in my language classroom and positively affect students' beliefs towards gender injustices, I, as a teacher researcher, designed a unit on gender issues including a book set that would challenge…

This interpretive study examined how eighth-grade students responded to a multimodal short story introduced to them by their English Language Arts teacher as part of a multimodal literacies curriculum unit. By analyzing fieldnotes constructed from observations, the classroom teacher's voice-recorded reflections, and the students' work, the author…

Perhaps no factor has a greater influence on children's literacy learning than exposure to engaging, authentic, culturally relevant texts. This concise practitioner resource and course text helps K--8 teachers make informed choices about using children's literature in their classrooms, from selecting high-quality texts to planning instruction and…

I examine the ways in which reading in the classroom is a social practice and how that social practice can produce nuanced student texts that reflect a rich understanding of what has been read. In doing so, I also consider how the reading environment allows us to manipulate and embody texts in ways that allow for a more detailed understanding than…

LGBTQ+ identities complicate the ways in which #OwnVoices can be deployed in literary analysis and author studies. Recognizing LGBTQ+ identities in literature is about more than just the text; it is about the visibility and success of LGBTQ+ authors as well. Through a discussion of reader response theory and politics of recognition, the author…

The aim of this study is to examine how critically and creatively the students express their feelings and thoughts by using emoticons. In the first part, how the students expressed what they read by using emoticons was examined. In order to assess their skills for reading comprehension and the skills for expressing what they understood through…

Self-management is a strategy with emerging evidence of effectiveness that has been utilized to address impairment associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); however, few studies have been conducted with students with ADHD. The results of the minimal research available suggests that self-management with youth with ADHD is…

History education rests at the junction between historical content, disciplinary literacy, and educational psychology. To understand the sources and strategies that facilitate historical thinking, more inquiries are needed. How do students respond to different historical topics, texts, and tasks? Which sources and strategies best facilitate…

Introduction: Students usually answer comprehension questions from texts as part of their academic activities. Elaborated Feedback (EF) has been found to be relatively effective to improve comprehension and learning from texts. However, there is little research on how computer-based feedback influences the question-answering process. This study…

How do students read tales about the past? What kinds of stories might they tell in response to these histories? Within broader considerations about the teaching of history through literature, a more comprehensive consideration of students' understanding of children's and young adult historical literature is warranted. African American historical…

The authors share findings from a recent study of teens who freely select to read texts typically marginalized by schools (dystopia, vampire, romance, horror, fantasy), revealing the distinct functional and psychological benefits of pleasure reading. The students who participated in the study that the authors report on were eighth graders who…