Motivating Struggling Readers in Middle School through an Engagement Model of Classroom Practice

Many struggling readers in middle school are disengaged from reading. In addition to low achievement, these students can have low motivation for reading. Many factors contribute to disengagement in middle school. Reading instruction is often disconnected from content, making reading tedious. Textbooks are formidable, and students are expected to respond to text with formal criticism or outlining rather than personal reactions. Middle school often shows an increase teacher control and a curtailment of student freedom, as compared to elementary school. Finally, students are too often removed from the social support of teachers and are expected to compete rather than cooperate with each other in reading. To provide support for engaged reading, middle school teachers can use six classroom practices: they can (1) construct rich knowledge goals as the basis of reading instruction, (2) use real-world interactions to connect reading to student experiences, (3) afford students an abundance of interesting books and materials, (4) provide some choice among material to read, (5) give direct instruction for important reading strategies, and (6) encourage collaboration in many aspects of learning. Using these practices creates a context for engagement in literacy learning.