This report presents baseline information about the degree to which children and young people in Middlesbrough enjoy reading and writing, how often then engage in reading and writing, what types of materials they read and write and how they feel about reading and writing. It also outlines baseline information about their confidence in their own…

Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is a period of time given to students to read self-selected materials during their school day. This study examines the effect of participation in a SSR program on reading attitudes and reading achievement of students as measured by the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile (AMRP) and the Northwest Evaluation…

Curious about the connections between the author's students' reading tastes and those of 19th-century readers, the author read Nina Baym's excellent text "Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America" to gain a sense of how readers in the 1800s might have thought about the texts that they read. Nineteenth-century…

There are many readability tools that instructors can use to help adult learners select reading materials. We describe and compare different types of readability tools: formulas calculated by hand, tools found on the Web, tools embedded in a word processing program, and readability tools found in a commercial software program. Practitioners do not…

This study examined the effects of instructional intensity on the acquisition of storybook vocabulary in first graders who were at risk of early reading failure. It also measured whether the intervention was effective for closing the vocabulary knowledge gap between students who were at risk and their average-achieving peers. A total of 66…

The Clique, a contemporary popular series for girls, has been criticized in the popular and professional media but includes thematic content similar to some of the more lauded mid-nineteenth-century domestic fiction for girls. By making a formal comparison of this popular series with domestic fiction for girls (much of which is now considered…

Israeli 1st-grade children in two different schools in the same neighborhood who were using either a gender-stereotyped or a gender-fair basal reader were asked to judge for a series of female-stereotyped, male-stereotyped, and gender-neutral activities whether they were characteristic of females, of males, or of both. Children using the…

The aim of this study was to examine reading media (braille, cassettes, screen-reader, screen-magnifier, large print, low vision aids, CCTV) used by visually impaired adults. This article reports the results of a research project involving 100 people with visual impairment. The participants were interviewed and asked to fill in a questionnaire to…

Compares the characteristics of children's books that received critical acclaim from adults and were "Children's Choices" to books that received critical acclaim only. Finds that the stylistic and structural differences between the two groups of books are more apparent than variations in themes. (RS)

Selections from the last three basal reading series produced by the Houghton Mifflin Company were examined to determine what improvements were made. One of the fundamental changes occurring in the 1971 revision ("Readers") was the replacement of grade designations with numerical levels that provided a better match between student and…

Summarizes results of analysis of 209 reviews of fiction books for children and adolescents appearing in six major selection aids in 1979, and discusses classification of statements in reviews--descriptive (objective statements); analytical (literary elements); and sociological (nonliterary considerations). The Classification of Book Reviews form…

Analyzes two commonly used reading programs and indicates their implications for the mainstreamed learning disabled child. (FL)

The two reading programs discussed in this paper, "Reading Unlimited" (RU) published by Scott Foresman and "New Primary Grades Reading Systems" (RS) by the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center, provide maximal contrasts in materials and teaching strategies. The instructional strategies in RU are…

A study was conducted to discover if the stated reading attitudes and interests of sixth grade students were relevant to their self-selected reading materials. Fifty students completed questionnaires concerning their reading attitudes and interests and used log sheets to record information about their self-selected reading materials. The results…

The revised Spache Readability Formula and the Fry Readability Formula were applied to 20 selected reading materials designed for adolescents reading at second grade level. Three samples from each text were examined. The results using the Spache formula corresponded to the publisher's stated readability levels, with no significant variability…