Although strong claims have been made regarding the educational utility of eye tracking, such statements seem somewhat unfounded in the absence of clear evidence regarding the technical adequacy of eye movement (EM) data. Past studies have yielded direct and indirect evidence concerning the utility of EMs as measures of reading, but recent…

The purpose of the present study was to explore the beliefs and practices of teachers who implement independent reading in their classrooms. Results showed that teachers who implemented independent reading believed in the importance of both the quantity and quality of student reading. The teachers' practices of independent reading showed students…

Reading difficulties in school are very challenging for teachers due to many different reader subtypes in one and the same class. Moreover, there are few easy-to-use tools enabling teachers to assess reading ability. According to the Simple View of Reading (Hoover and Gough in "Reading and Writing", 2(2), 127-160, 1990), efficient…

Poor literacy rates contribute to low school performance for children across America. In particular, low-income schools continue to struggle with declining literacy rates. Issues with literacy are often attributed to lack of reading comprehension. This study tested the effects of choice on reading comprehension in second- and third-grade students…

A 7-month study of 178 students in grades 1-4 at two Blue Ribbon schools compared two daily 20-minute treatments. Eighty-eight students used the 2000-2001 version of Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor (www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen) in 10-computer labs, averaging 19 hours over the course of the year. The Reading Tutor served as a computerized implementation…

This article approaches reading as an ideologically grounded and institutionally organized activity. It examines children's clandestine practice of interactional reading in an educational context where individual silent involvement with text is the teachers' prescribed way of reading. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in second- and…

Describes the author's voluntary reading program in her second-grade classroom. Describes how her basic Drop Everything and Read program needed to be added to and tinkered with to keep students interested and motivated: paired reading and discussion, visual reading records, and praise and occasional rewards. (SR)

A reading program was developed to motivate 20 second grade children identified as capable, confident readers but who would not read on their own. An interest inventory, a free response interview, and direct observation revealed that the students were in literate school and home environments, but few chose to read independently. A 10-week…

An action research project described a program for improving elementary children's recreational reading habits through a combination of modeling by the teacher plus incentives to enhance students' intrinsic motivation to read for enjoyment. The targeted population consisted of three suburban public schools, grades 2 and 4. Analysis of probable…

A practicum addressed the problem of 8 second and third grade nonindependent readers (students at a small private school) who were not choosing to read library books. The literature review disclosed using sustained silent reading, sharing responses to reading and planning for more available time to read in the classroom and at home as viable ways…

Children from non-English-speaking homes are doubly disadvantaged when learning English in school. They enter school with less prior knowledge of English sounds, word meanings, and sentence structure, and they get little or no reinforcement of their learning outside of the classroom. This article compares the classroom standard practice of…