The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. The limitations of college common reading selections derive from their institutional frameworks. Non-academic mission statements steer selection committees away from intellectually challenging books toward those promoting progressive beliefs or activism;…

The Xreading website provides students with access to an extensive virtual library of graded readers. Teachers can then use it to keep track of which titles the students access, the total number of words they read, their reading speed, and also whether they have completed post-reading quizzes. However, an overreliance on monitoring student…

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. Common reading selections partly reflect the constraints on their selection committees. Each year colleges admit large number of students who have not yet read a college-level book and some of whom have never read a full-length adult book at all. Faculty…

"Beach Books 2016-17," which covers 348 colleges and universities, continues the National Association of Scholars' long-running record of providing the most comprehensive information about colleges and universities that assign common readings to incoming freshmen. Although there are several databases of common reading assignments, Beach…

Hundreds of American colleges and universities continue to assign a summer reading to entering freshmen--typically one book, which the students are asked to read outside their courses. Many institutions embed the common reading in a larger program of campus activities: typically, they invite the common reading author to help open the academic year…

In tandem with the rise of popular, though problematic conceptions of the "achievement gap," some have similarly surmised that this gap, which points to the disparate academic outcomes between students from minoritized communities and their normative peers, is really a "literacy gap." This ethnographic study, which followed…

Assigning a summer reading to entering freshmen is a growing trend at hundreds of American colleges and universities. Colleges typically pick one book and ask students to read it outside their courses. Many invite the author to help kick off the year by speaking on campus at convocation. Most colleges see the key purpose of a common reading…

Achieve 3000 is an online differentiated reading program for students with disabilities and English Language Learners in grades 6-8. The software delivers differentiated assignments at 12 different reading levels. The software features internal assessments that continuously gauge students' reading levels, provides feedback to teachers, and…

To improve students' reading abilities, an elementary school staff decided to supplement the regular curriculum with a free Internet reading program. To promote student participation in the supplemental program, the media specialist designed the Gumball Reading Program, which included student requirements and rewards. The requirements…

The authors realized that participating in a book club with friends has often provided the incentive to read books they normally wouldn't choose on their own. Book clubs have offered them relaxed and informal places to share and compare opinions, to explore texts and authors they wouldn't as readily appreciate or fully understand without friends…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what happened when grade 11 high school honors students blogged about their summer reading under the monitoring of a teacher during vacation. I proposed that an educational blog might serve as an effective tool during summer vacation to help students retain skills or learning while at a physical…

Students in an eighth-grade, urban, low-achieving reading class were introduced to critical literacy through engagement in Image Theatre. Developed by liberatory dramatist Augusto Boal, Image Theatre gives participants the opportunity to examine texts in the triple role of interpreter, artist, and sculptor (i.e., image creator). The researchers…

Students need proper guidelines in their summer programs of reading and writing. In this secondary school summer reading program, at the Holderness School for Boys in Plymouth, New Hampshire, teachers decided to assign 16 books--four books to be read by students in each of the 4 years of English. Two criteria were established for book selection:…

Article details eight reading learning stations to be developed over a two-week period and geared to the intermediate grades. (Editor/GB)

Maintains that traditional summer reading assignments discourage students' pleasurable responses to reading; based on a paper presented at annual convention of National Council of Teachers of English (59th, Washington, D.C., November 29, 1969). (RD)