Four case studies informed by phenomenology were conducted using classroom observations and interviews with children, parents, and teachers to explore how children experienced the phenomenon of learning to read in one first-grade classroom defined by RTI policy. Charmaz's (2006) grounded coding model involving initial, focused, and theoretical…

The author, a veteran second-grade teacher, has spent the past three years developing a system to help her students find appropriate books to read during independent reading time. The article describes how the CLICKS system evolved and how to introduce it to a classroom of young readers. (Contains 7 figures.)

Can students read difficult but self-selected texts--and if so, how? In this article we describe what we learned about middle school students' use of background knowledge and specific vocabulary from interviews and surveys in our longitudinal study of magazine reading habits. Then we discuss the implications of these findings for structuring…

Audiobooks are excellent tools to help students build literacy skills as well as improve listening, writing, and vocabulary competencies. In many shared or independent reading situations, audiobooks offer support to reluctant and struggling readers, special-needs students, and English-language learners. They are also embraced by voracious readers.…

This study assessed the effectiveness of two motivational techniques for promoting interest in reading by using two criteria: the number of books withdrawn from the classroom library and the scores obtained on the Primary Pupil Reading Attitude Inventory (PPRAI). Thirty second-grade classes were randomly assigned to one of three experimental…

The New England Consortium criteria of excellence are 26 statements of conditions which describe a quality reading program and which must exist if all children are to learn to read. These statements are grouped under five goal areas, the fifth of which, fostering reading interests, is treated in this position paper. The paper supports attainment…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between televiewing and the reading interests of seventh grade pupils using 300 television (TV) tie-ins comprised of 18 different titles. The subjects were 253 pupils representing four seventh grade classes from low, middle, and high socioeconomic backgrounds in a suburban setting. The…

A study of the current expressed reading interests of children in the first two years of school conducted in ten countries--Austria, Canada, England, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Panama, Sweden, and the United States--is reported in this paper. Over 2,000 children drew pictures about what they would best like to read or have read to…

The problem of this study was to determine types of books selected for recreational reading by children in grades four, five, and six in fifteen schools, how the children ranked the books according to preference after reading them, their stated reasons for selections, and their reasons for indicated strong preferences. A total of 2,765 children…

Microfiche copies of 112 children's trade books and two Xerox Classmate Readers were put into three fourth-grade classrooms to assess their effect on children's reading achievement, attitudes toward reading, the the use of library books. The microfiche copies of the trade books were matched title-for-title with hardbound books shelved with the…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the status of nonfiction in the reading interests of second, third, and fourth graders and to determine the effectiveness of a personal reading record as a measure of reading interests. All students in the second, third, and fourth grades of a middle-class rural area in central New Jersey served as…

A survey of selected neighborhoods in eight cities was conducted to determine the relevance, availability and utilization of leisure-time reading materials in both English and Spanish for Hispanic-American children. Spanish-speaking children, parents, teachers, librarians, educators and community workers were interviewed in each of the eight…

Reading for pleasure and enlightenment is a critical, and endangered, element in a well-informed citizenry. As a basis for intellectual growth, reading is threatened by media misuse and lack of encouragement of recreational reading. Solutions include emphasis on integrated skills, improved time allocation, and cooperation among parents, teachers,…

Individualized reading is important to students in both elementary and secondary grades because it provides opportunities for them to find pleasure in reading, to internalize reading skills, to develop the reading habit, and to mature in book choices. Such programs are not intended to teach reading skills, but, if initiated at the elementary…

Over 350 books chosen to meet the needs of the reluctant reader in junior and senior high school are grouped under 10 topical headings: Adventure, Animals, Biography, Family Life, Folk Tales, Informational, People, People with Foreign Setting, Vocational, and Poetry. Brief annotations and approximate reading and interest levels by grade are given…