Following a Herculean effort by staff members at the author's school, students were reading more than ever and the reading culture was well on the way to changing for the better. While the author was excited beyond belief by this development, she was frustrated by the fact that students consistently reverted to summarizing when they were asked to…

Studies have shown that voracious reading improves students' academic performance in a variety of realms. In this article, 6th grade teacher Donalyn Miller explains how she has helped her students become committed readers. Her students are required to read at least 40 books each year in a variety of genres and styles. She gives them time to read…

Teachers, parents, and librarians are constantly looking for methods and materials that engage students as readers and motivate them to increase the time they spend reading. In this article we describe findings from a study of middle schoolers' magazine reading habits that gave us a close look at the power of magazines as supplemental supports for…

This article describes a theoretically informed methodology for eliciting the voices of adolescent boys identified by their teachers and parents as reluctant leisure time readers. Similar methods have also been used to draw out the voices of the boys' parents to understand their efforts to guide and maintain their sons' literacy practices, within…