How can teachers motivate students to read extensively in a second language? One strategy is for teachers to read aloud to students to promote the joys of reading generally, to build students' language skills and to introduce students to specific authors, book series, genres, websites, etc. This article begins by discussing why teachers might want…

This paper explores a pedagocial approach to teaching oral English---Conversation Analysis. First, features of spoken language is described in comparison to written language. Second, Conversation Analysis theory is elaborated in terms of adjacency pairs, turn-taking, repairs, sequences, openings and closings, and feedback. Third, under the…

Graphic novels are an excellent medium to motivate today's youth to become independent learners and thinkers. This practical guide shows secondary school teachers how to incorporate graphic novels into content area instruction as a tool for meeting the needs of diverse learners and achieving the goals of the Common Core State Standards. The…

This article presents an overview of how to relate reading to a content area, specifically technology education. The author notes that, with the new focus on Common Core English Language Arts State Standards and state-developed standards, technology and engineering teachers should include disciplinary literacy in their curriculum. Academic…

In light of increasing mandates to incorporate close reading of primary source historical documents at the elementary level, this study explored the reading difficulty level of the US Constitution with preservice elementary teachers using a traditional cloze assessment procedure. While best practice pedagogy of social studies has long included…

Numerous research studies prove that wide reading improves children's comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, fluency, and writing. The author, a sixth-grade language arts teacher, describes the classroom conditions and instructional practices that encourage wide reading and increase her students' reading motivation such as choice in…

Research literature concerning gifted male readers relies primarily on more extensive bodies of work regarding gifted males and male readers. Studied as a whole, the two halves portray a worrisome state of affairs for gifted male readers, who lag behind their female counterparts in the same patterns found across the ability spectrum. This literacy…

A great deal of attention is being paid to the lack of reading and academic success for adolescent males. In this article, we discuss three structures in a school where boys read (and perform) as well as girls. When instruction is guided by inquiry, when teachers model their thinking while reading, and when book choices are honored, all students…

This study is a comparative analysis of literary curricula in six European countries and is part of the project LiFT-2, funded by Comenius' Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission. The result of this project, that involved almost 4,500 teachers, is a European literary framework for secondary education which can be described as a…

This research is an ethnographic case study of a book group focusing on the reading and teaching of multicultural literature in a rural, predominately white, middle school setting. We examine how participants co-constructed teacher identities through the parallel narratives they created about themselves and their students. We discovered that the…

Students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may exhibit behaviors that can negatively affect peer relationships. A process for raising awareness about this exceptionality to their peers can build a foundation for authentic inclusion in the classroom environment. This article suggests that deliberately planned interventions using picture books to…

This article details the design and implementation of a reading program in a university EFL setting as a strategy to encourage creativity, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and reading for enjoyment (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Richards & Renandya, 2002). This student-centered project challenged ELLs to address issues such as…

Explicit instruction on the skill of creating mental imagery from text supports reading comprehension and recall. This article shares a strategy for teaching students how to process what they read by comparing mental imagery to "brain movies." It emphasizes choosing appropriate fiction and nonfiction texts to encourage readers to build the skill…

This study explores the process of implementing literature circles using ethnographies as the texts to better prepare teachers for multicultural/ multilingual teaching contexts. Data collected by the course instructor and two of the participants, using a Critical Teacher Action Research (CTAR) methodology, indicate that participants think…

Whole-class choral reading (WCCR) is an oral reading fluency strategy that can help older elementary students in need of fluency development. Implementation is simple and requires only a few minutes per day. WCCR can be easily adapted for use with narrative and expository texts and allows all students the opportunity to practice within an…