Scholars in college learning and writing studies have argued that reading has an image problem: we have trouble "seeing" it. This study contributes to making reading visible by collecting a series of images used by faculty and students enrolled in first-year experience courses. Qualitative analysis of interviews with five faculty and 34…

This study investigates the reading engagement of four middle school English Language Learners (ELLs) in their English or English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. Engaged readers are those who address the four components of reading engagement--motivation, strategic knowledge, constructing meaning from texts, and social interactions. In this…

Publishing graded readers is big business, but there is evidence that the texts themselves are not being read in sufficient quantity to improve language proficiency. This article reports on a study of graded readers, focusing on interviews with some major publishers of graded readers, to investigate their production rationales. The findings…

This report describes an individualized literacy intervention program that was developed for a fifth grade boy who struggled with reading. Based upon informal assessment and evaluation procedures, the following literacy strategies were taught within a one-to-one instructional setting: Repeated Readings, Personal Vocabulary Journal, Phonemic…

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…

When readers don't know their purpose for reading, they lack the fundamental information needed in order to make decisions about how to approach the text and how to interpret information. This makes the already challenging task of navigating content-area texts more difficult, particularly for middle school readers who are relatively new to…

Although scholars have long advocated the use of informational texts in the primary grades, gaps and inconsistencies in research have produced conflicting reports on how teachers used these texts in the primary curriculum, and how primary students dealt with them during instruction and on their own (e.g., Saul & Dieckman, 2005). Thus, to add…

In this article, the author explores how a group of ten fourth-grade students who were avid readers became a community of inquiry. The primary goal of this study was to document the children's reading engagement: how they created, entered, and sustained the world of the story. This article also reflects the impact of three elements--data…

Investigates how multiple stances in reading can reveal new insights into texts. Demonstrates three ways that a single text can be read from the perspectives of a pleasurable reading, a postcolonial reading, and a critical multicultural reading. Argues that readers will confirm existing meanings determined by others' ideologies unless they are…

Drawing on his "crisis of confidence" in reading academic texts as a graduate student, Vacca explains that self-efficacy--a belief in one's ability to succeed--provides the key to struggling readers' ability to comprehend texts outside their comfort zone. Self-efficacy and comprehension are interrelated. If students believe they have a good chance…

Describes ways in which a small group of preschool children in an urban Head Start Program responded to typical information books during read-aloud sessions. Notes results of a group pretend reading of books children had just heard. Concludes even young children are attuned to characteristics of texts. (PM)

In this investigation, we examine the availability of text elements over the course of reading a text. We describe the Landscape model (van den Broek, Young, Tzeng, & Linderholm, 1999) that captures, in one theoretical framework, multiple cognitive processes during reading and the resulting fluctuating activations of text elements. To demonstrate…

It's not that boys can not read, they just do not read. Study after study reveals that boys read less than girls. And according to the U.S. Department of Education, school-age boys tend to read a grade and a half lower than girls. How can librarians get guys to turn the page? For starters, they need to move beyond their traditional "here is a book…

Describes an extraordinary experience teaching comprehension strategies to fourth-grade reluctant readers through literature study. Notes how the experience was a fusion of three critical elements: an extraordinary group experience, a text that taught itself, and an instructional model that met the students' needs. (SR)

Research indicates that engagement with text is critical to becoming a good reader and can be fostered in primary grades by using informal assessments of individual student's reading ability to guide instruction. Describes running record, miscue analysis, and cloze-procedure assessment tools and the assessment task of oral retelling. Sidebars list…