The authors examined the dimensions of reading engagement for rural ninth-grade students who participated in a supplemental literacy intervention for students who struggled with school-based reading. Using a comparative case study approach, researchers investigated the ways in which engagement was characterized and undermined within the context of…

Ironically, adults control most of the world of children's literature: adults write the books; adults choose which books to publish; adults review the books, adults bestow the awards on books and adults purchase the books for bookstores, libraries, and their children. In this paradigm of adult control, children's opinions are often overlooked. The…

This study addresses concerns about boys' underperformance on literacy tasks compared to girls, by investigating male and females students' responses to narrative texts. Participants were 142 Grade 9 and 10 students. Achievement orientations, including goals, self-efficacy, and self-handicapping, were measured and approach and avoidance factors…

Suggests that learning more about what draws adolescents to particular texts and practices can help teachers to facilitate literacy events that are meaningful to students. Concludes that, by allowing youth's ways of constructing meaning and identity to inform academic practices, play becomes a fruitful endeavor both in and outside of classrooms.…

Spanish was the first language of the majority of the author's 9th and 10th grade students who came from the Caribbean and Central and South America. Parents often worked late hours, and many students were employed, or had family responsibilities after school. Based on the realities of their lives, her students' engagement in reading was…

A study of the leisure reading patterns of rural ninth graders gathered data on what percentage of respondents claimed that they read in their spare time; non-reader's reasons for not reading; and such factors as types of books purchased, and where and when they were read. (EM)

Presents lists of exercises to be done in conjunction with students' independent reading that emphasize the affective domain. Includes activities that were developed for high school literature and college poetry classes. (MM)