This study examined the effects of reading and discussing of poetry in a fifth grade setting in a suburban school district in the Northeast. A protocol designed by Nancie Atwell (2006) was used as the treatment in the study utilizing a pretest posttest quasi-experimental design. The sample of convenience (n = 141) was drawn from the fifth grade in…

Research on early adolescence reveals significant declines in intrinsic motivation for reading and points out the need for metacognitive strategy use among middle school students. Research indicates that explicit instruction involving motivation and metacognitive support for reading strategy use in the context of a discipline is an efficient and…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there are changes in student motivation to read and reading comprehension when the instructional strategy of shared reading is used with sixth grade students. The quasi-experimental design for the study was based on the pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design. The sample for the study…

Our methods for educating Deaf adolescent Latino struggling readers need to change in order to maximize their learning. As with all students, this begins with identifying student strengths and building on these strengths to help students gain new and productive skills. We need to find out what motivates these Latino Deaf readers and what will…

This dissertation reports findings from a reading motivation study conducted in an elementary school serving students, all of whom were American Indian, in the southwestern United States. The school claimed to have more than fifty percent of its students scoring proficient or advanced on the state's high-stakes reading assessment and to value the…

This study examined the effects of the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) curriculum on reading achievement of students with various motivational levels. A 2X2 factorial design was used. The sample population consisted of 104 fourth grade students from an upper middle class school system in Connecticut. All students were administered a…

This eight-week descriptive study examined the impact of the incorporation of a Life-Application Learning Methods Program on struggling middle school readers. Two questions were explored: 1) How did incorporating life-application learning into the middle school curriculum impact reading motivation?, and 2) How did incorporating life-application…