This study examines how students' situational interest changes across different segments of peer reading activities and identifies the relationship with personal traits like the students reading skills and motivation. The authors measured their levels of situational interest, reading skills, and reading motivation, based on their participation in…

This article is based on a qualitative study that explored the impact reading had on the lives of two female students who attained exemplary results in their final year of high school. The reading practices of these two high achieving students provided data rich information. Both students were academically successful in completing their Victorian…

Practice is important in learning, maintaining, or improving any skills. Studies by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students perform better when they do independent reading. In order to be a good reader, a person must practice reading, but reading practice declines markedly after fifth grade. Educators and parents…

To motivate students to read, it is important for teachers to teach the reader, not the reading. This article presents three strategies for accomplishing this: studying the child, not the book; focusing on students' reading lives and knowing them as readers; and thinking of students as readers. (SM)

This paper examines how students' independent reading of good books--one example is "The Phantom Tollbooth"--leads to improved reading performance. The paper also touches on the important factors that are impacting independent reading: priority and time. A literature review in the paper found, among other things, that the best predictor…

This report describes a program for improving student independent reading skills through direct phonics instruction. Students were exhibiting inadequate reading skills, which interfered with academic achievement. The targeted population consisted of second and third grade students from a northwestern Illinois city of about twelve thousand.…

Describes New York City teachers' emphasis on independent reading, with the rest of their reading curriculum growing out of needs identified during that time. They begin with mini-lessons, then create social supports for reading, make independent reading central and collaborative, reinforce what works, make time for solitary reading, and learn…

Since the significant report "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson 1985), more attention has been given to the need to motivate and encourage reading in addition to teaching reading skills. That report concluded that the best predictor of reading comprehension, vocabulary…