The authors explored adolescents' reasons for reading or not reading books. In individual interviews with 39 adolescents (ages 15 and 16) in the United Kingdom, they reported that reading books offered an opportunity to relax, learn, escape the real world, and become immersed; was exciting, developed their empathy skills, and provided a form of…

Grounded in the work of critical literacy, the authors describe one preservice teacher's journey as she develops her own critical lens while selecting children's literature and designing instruction to engage second graders in critical conversations. She helps students unpack their biases and reflects on her own assumptions while becoming more…

In delivering instruction aligned with the Common Core State Standards, many teachers are utilizing the accompanying book exemplars. While prior studies have revealed the importance of selecting texts that represent diverse characters, few studies have examined the extent to which the book exemplars reflect this trend. In this paper, an…

Teaching a civil rights unit in the upper elementary grades can be difficult. Educators must sort through multiple resources, determine the quality and developmental appropriateness of the materials, synthesize and organize the resources into meaningful lessons, and teach the unit in the midst of pressures to minimize or eliminate social studies…

This article summarizes the findings of a 2017 qualitative, multiple case study that explored the factors that impact gifted students' recreational reading selections. It offers an overview of the steps school librarians and other educators can take to foster independent reading habits in gifted students.

Do you think that taking their own vocabulary tests helps students learn the words? This Reflective Question and many others await your discussion and analysis in this revised edition of TESOL Press's best-selling "Teaching Reading," which explores different approaches to teaching reading in second language classrooms. This volume…

This article seeks to complicate the understanding of Bishop's (1990) metaphor of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, with particular emphasis on sliding glass doors and the emotional connections needed for readers to move through them. The authors begin by examining the importance of the reader and the characters he or she meets. Next, the…

The author reflects on the development of her own reading life and how that rich reading life failed to influence how she taught reading early in her career. During graduate studies, while researching in classrooms where reading workshop was the instructional model and through talking to those exemplary teachers, the author came to understand both…

The intent of this essay is to provoke thought on how to increase the impact of course readings on individual and group learning. A set of strategies for tapping the generative potential of texts that build on the interpretive insights of Gadamer and Ricoeur is provided. "Generative potential" refers to the ability of a text to generate…

Diverse classroom libraries offer opportunities for students to not only see themselves represented in books but also encounter lived experiences and perspectives that are different from their own. As classrooms increasingly include learners with cognitively and physically diverse abilities, teachers are faced with the challenge of selecting…

This paper tells a story of one student teacher's experiences as she considers the choice of fiction texts studied by young secondary learners of English, and how those texts are taught. Based on a series of interviews carried out in the South-West of England and Wales, the narrative provides a perspective on the limitations of current curricula…

Teachers in the US are increasingly required to use scripted curricula. Such instructional materials often reflect the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing industry through a lack of representation of authors and protagonists outside of white, middle-class normative characters. Implementation of such curricula stands in direct contrast to…

Students with disabilities represent an increasing percentage of students in general education classrooms. Yet, in early elementary grades, they may not see themselves represented in picture books. Teachers face many challenges in this issue, including choosing and evaluating books. In this article, we provide six questions to guide teachers'…

The problem addressed through this study was the low levels of reading comprehension of literary and informational texts among fourth-grade students statewide. The reading workshop model and the guided reading approach are two different instructional methods used to teach reading to fourth-grade students at two school districts in Texas. The…

In this qualitative research we employed the case study method to identify the factors that affect Turkish fifth to eight graders' selection of books to read and the reasons that cause them to stop reading the books they have selected. To identify those factors and reasons, data were collected from a total of 32 participating students who were…