Reengaging Readers: How Choice Reading Promotes Lifelong Literacy

For instructional purposes, teachers often use an informal reading inventory, among other assessments, to sort students into like-ability groups. While undoubtedly beneficial in terms of planning and small group work, it appears in some classrooms that informal reading inventory (IRI) data sometimes becomes the driving force in literacy-related curricular decisions – including using IRI data to limit the books students have access to. With this observation as a starting point, this research attempts to answer the questions – What is the correlation, if any, between the text difficulty of books students self-select and the amount of reading growth they experience? The research conducted over the last year examines how children’s literacy growth is effected in a classroom context where readers are making their own decisions about what books to read during daily independent reading time. This research was conducted in a second grade classroom in an urban school in the Midwest. Informal reading inventory data was collected at the beginning and end of this study providing a measure of students’ reading ability, and book logs kept by students in their book totes were collected each week to track book choices of individual readers for the duration of the study. A wide range of professional texts both in favor of and against students having the opportunity to self-select books regardless of reading level were also consulted

Students’ Response in Terms of Motivation and Engagement with the Use of Informational and Nonfiction Texts

Student motivation and engagement for reading is a vital part of reading instruction, reading progress, and reading success. This thesis project examines the use of informational and nonfiction texts and trade books in Academic Intervention Services (AIS) instruction. It specifically focuses on two questions - How do third-grade students enrolled in AIS services for literacy respond to the use of informational and nonfiction texts and trade books in AIS instruction and how do they self-report on their motivation and engagement for reading and reading instruction when informational or nonfiction texts and trade books are used in AIS instruction? The literature review explores topics related to motivation from both a cognitive and socio-cognitive aspect as well as informational and nonfiction trade books. The research was conducted in a rural school district with fifteen, third-grade children participating in AIS instruction. Data was collected by student surveys and anecdotal field notes. Conclusions based on the data collected during the study reveal that student participants were interested, engaged and, motivated during AIS instruction for literacy with the use of informational or nonfiction texts

Student Choices: Book Selection Strategies of Fourth Graders

In many literature-based reading programs, students are encouraged to self-select their own reading materials. However, self-selection causes apprehensions for many teachers. They are concerned not only about their students\u27 ability to select books that are appropriate for their reading level but they are also concerned about the types of books the students may choose. Consequently many teachers may decide to use anthologies or whole class texts where they maintain some control over the students\u27 reading material. However, student interest and student choice should be an integral part of an elementary reading program if students are going to beturned onto reading (Rasinski, 1988) and become lifelong readers

THE INFLUENCE INCLUSIVE LITERATURE CIRCLES WITH MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE HAS ON THE SELF-EFFICACIES OF 4TH GRADE STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

This study seeks to determine what happens to fourth grade students with disabilities reading self-efficacies when they participate in inclusive literature circles with multicultural literature. The purpose of this teacher research was to investigate strategies to improve reading self-efficacies of students with disabilities, investigating what would happen if students with disabilities were placed heterogeneously with their peers while reading books with characters with disabilities and how that influenced their reading self-efficacies. Four students with a disability were integrated with their general education peers in their inclusive classroom to participate in literature circles for four weeks. The multicultural books were books that contained characters with disabilities. Baseline data from the Reader Self-Perception Scale (RSPS) was used to assess students\u27 self-perceptions in reading. When analyzing the data, the three major themes within the study are: (1) Students\u27 perceptions of disabilities and how they changed throughout the literature meetings; (2) Students made connections to the text through representation of their experiences; and (3) Students had an increased engagement and belief in their ability. The results suggest that over time, inclusive literature circles with multicultural texts can slightly improve the reading self-efficacies of students with disabilities

Personalized Texts and Second Language Reading: A Study in Self-Efficacy

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if 1) reading personalized texts influenced novice language learners’ self-efficacy in reading in the target language, and 2) if feelings of efficaciousness promote communicative competence. The study utilized a quasi-experimental research design with a pretest and posttest (Edmonds & Kennedy, 2017) and a correlational analysis. The participants were 38 diverse, novice, Spanish students from a large, suburban, high school in the southeastern United States. During the study, the researcher collected self-efficacy data via a Google form as participants completed the pre- and post-Spanish reading self-efficacy questionnaire. The National Spanish Exam (NSE) provided the linguistic competency data. The NSE is an annual, online, standardized examination offered by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. An analysis of variance showed that no statistically significant difference existed in the reported levels of self-efficacy in reading in the target language between the experimental, personalized-text, group and the control, publisher-provided text, group. However, while the differences were not statistically significant, the participants from the experimental group reported greater growth in pleasure reading than did the control group. In both the control and the experimental groups, 84.2% of the participants reported reading at least one book within the past 30 days. However, this quantity represented only a 10.5 % increase for the control group, but a 26.3% increase for the experimental group. Furthermore, all the experimental group participants had read at least one book within the past 30 days. Moreover, this group’s avid readers maintained their previously reported reading quantities, while the percentage of those reading two to three books, rather than zero or one, grew by 67%. The control group’s more dedicated readers increased slightly the number of books they reported reading, but the number of nonreaders within the group also increased. While publisher-provided and personalized texts produced nearly identical growth in self-efficacy in reading in the target language, the personalized texts produced a high degree of engagement among the participants. Future research might explore the sources of this engagement as texts only influence self-efficacy and language acquisition when they are read

Using multicultural read aloud books to support student understanding of character education themes

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using multicultural read aloud books during character education lessons in a second grade classroom. Six character education themes were paired with six multicultural picture books. Prior to reading these texts, students were asked to explain what they already knew about the targeted character traits in a writing activity. After reading, students discussed with a partner and then shared their thoughts with the whole group. Students completed a post-reading activity, by writing to explain what they learned about that character trait from the story. It was found that utilizing multicultural literature during character education lessons yielded positive results. Students demonstrated a deeper understanding of the themes after reading. Additionally, students made meaningful text-to-text and text-to-self connections with the selected mentor texts. Finally, students applied the learning of these traits into other classroom situations. Implications for today\u27s classroom and suggestions for future research are discussed

A Case Study of a Student’s Reading Habits on Academic Texts

This research was aimed to investigate reading habits on academic texts. The investigation was covered reading habits and strategies on academic texts. The participant of this research was an eight-semester student of the English Language Education Study Program who is a good academic achiever, especially in reading subjects. The data were derived from a qualitative case study as the research methodology. Then, the researcher used data triangulation through a semi-structured interview, diaries, and direct observations. All of the data were analyzed by thematic analysis and the investigation answered two research questions such as the research participant’s academic reading habits and academic reading strategies. The first result revealed that; (i) the research participant usually read e-books, journal articles, and educational websites at Untan library, Home, and cafes with approximately 30 mins to 3 hours reading time; several academic reading purposes such as reading for assignments, reading for writing a research proposal, curiosity, self-development, creating ideas, getting knowledge, thinking specifically towards problematic things, recalling memory, spare-time fulfillment, and reading to get motivation; the academic reading factors including self-factor, academic environment factor, peer factor, and the availability of reading sources and access; the second result revealed that; (ii) the student employed four reading strategies namely cognitive strategies that involved self-questioning, note-taking, citing and quoting, outlining, and summarizing; metacognitive strategies, such as evaluating the reading process and realizing; compensation strategies that involved comparing the reading texts, finding the context clues, and reading other sources to improve vocabularies; and mind mapping as the memory strategy in academic reading activity

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself

Reading, Writing, and the Common Core State Standards

During the 2014-15 school year, more high school seniors read the young adult-oriented books The Fault in Our Stars andDivergent than Shakespeare's Macbeth or Hamlet, according to a report that tracks what K-12 students at more than 30,000 schools are reading during the school year. These books are generally self-selected, making it not all that surprising that students would prefer to read a contemporaryNew York Times bestseller than a 17th-century play written in early modern English. And while some of the books that students select are thematically targeted to a mature audience, they are not particularly challenging to read for the average high schooler. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, for example, have the readability of a fourth- or fifth-grade text in terms of sentence structure and word difficulty.There is substantial evidence that much of what students are currently reading is not particularly challenging. This lack of complexity in students' reading and writing is likely undermining their preparedness for college and the workplace. In addition, despite the predominant role that reading and writing serve in other subjects and disciplines, literacy development has long been relegated to the English or reading classroom.Take the issue of reading complexity. Three of the top five most commonly assigned titles in grades 9 through 12 are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men. All three books, while classics, are not particularly challenging in terms of sentence structure and complexity. Does that mean that Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which broaches issues of racial inequality should instead be introduced to elementary school-aged children? Most people—including English teachers—probably would not agree. Readability is only one factor when considering the intended audience of a work of literature.But the difficulty of the reading material to which students are exposed is not inconsequential. An ACT report finds that "performance on complex texts is the clearest differentiator in reading between students who are likely to be ready for college and those who are not." This holds true across gender, race and ethnicity, and family income levels

Reading Comprehension Problems on English Texts Faced By High School Students in Medan

In the English teaching and learning process, there are four skills that are identified as very important; listening, speaking, reading and writing. The Indonesian government places English as a compulsory subject for junior and senior high school. But in practice, teaching English is not too maximal. Reading skills in this case reading English texts is very important because by reading it is open the opportunity to absorb other existing knowledge. Reading comprehension is an advanced level of reading skills. Senior high school students are expected to have mastered the comprehension skills of reading English texts at an advanced level. This is because most likely at the level of lectures these students are required to read English reference books. Therefore, research that reveals the problems that exist in the teaching and learning process of Reading Comprehension English texts needs to be done. Data sources were the articles about teaching English, focusing in the problem of reading comprehension. Data were words and sentences from the articles. The analysis technique used was thematic analysis. Based on the research, problem face by student in reading comprehension of English text was majoring in three theme; 1. Problems from the student self, 2. Problems from the teacher, and 3.External problems. Problems from the student self consist of three part; student basic English ability, less attraction on the subject and not motivated. Problems from the teacher were not using any method while teaching and used inappropriate method. External problems were material and environment.     Keywords: Reading Comprehension, Thematic Analysis, English Teaching and Learnin