The aim of this study is to examine how critically and creatively the students express their feelings and thoughts by using emoticons. In the first part, how the students expressed what they read by using emoticons was examined. In order to assess their skills for reading comprehension and the skills for expressing what they understood through…

This qualitative study utilized video games and virtual reality in an eighth-grade public middle school media literacy elective classroom in which the head researcher was also the official teacher for the students in the study. The nineteen students and their teacher used video games in small groups for five consecutive weeks. The teacher and…

The authors share findings from a recent study of teens who freely select to read texts typically marginalized by schools (dystopia, vampire, romance, horror, fantasy), revealing the distinct functional and psychological benefits of pleasure reading. The students who participated in the study that the authors report on were eighth graders who…

This article combines interview data from a group of boys of color at an urban single-sex school and content analysis of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to demonstrate the complexities of readers' responses to literature. Textual relevance, or the ability to construct personal…

Examines interview responses of Mexican eighth graders about an adolescent novel that related the adventures of a female conquistador, including: their conceptions about gender, dynamics between the reader and the text, and the expression of response. Results revealed students' anxieties about gender issues, noting that how they understood these…

A study described the experience, or thoughts, feelings, and motivation of young adolescents reading a novel, with special attention focused on how and when students experience reading positively. Subjects, 24 eighth-grade students of above average reading ability, completed 13 log entries while reading "Good-Night, Mr. Tom," a novel…

A Puerto Rican teacher of an eighth grade consisting of 33 students (19 girls and 14 boys) at a racially-mixed public middle school found that teaching students about race and gender is a risky venture. The median age of the students was 13.8. The racial demographics were as follows: 45% African-American, 31% Euro-American, 18% Latino, 3%…