Effects of social interaction on students' reading motivation and engagement after sustained silent reading

Thesis (M.A., Education (Language and Literacy))-- California State University, Sacramento, 2010.Statement of Problem\ud Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) has been widely used in the classroom for almost 40 years. However, teacher implementation varies to a large degree and research has been mixed regarding its effectiveness. A number of researchers and practitioners have advocated using social interaction to enhance the reading experience. This study examined the effects of three different SSR post-reading activities on students??? reading attitudes and engagement. The activities included sharing about their book with a partner, sharing with the whole class, and sharing through interactive journal. The following research questions were analyzed. \ud 1. What are the overall effects of social interaction on students??? reading motivation and engagement? \ud 2. Do different forms of social interaction affect motivation and engagement in unique ways? \ud 3. Does social sharing after SSR affect students??? book choice and genre selection? \ud Sources of Data\ud The population included 23 fifth and sixth graders in a self-contained classroom. The participants attended a small private school in rural Northern California and were mostly white middle class. The students participated in SSR four times a week followed by the three different social sharing activities described above, each lasting about five minutes. The students completed a survey prior to beginning the first activity and the same survey was completed again at the conclusion of the six weeks. These surveys looked at students??? attitudes toward SSR, time spent reading, purpose for reading, and difficultly level in choosing a book. Each condition lasted two weeks and was followed up with a sharing survey related to the particular sharing activity. Each sharing survey looked at students??? attitudes toward the activity, what types of books they read, and how they chose books to read. Engagement during each week was determined by time on-task. Anecdotal notes by the teacher were used to enhance survey data. \ud Conclusions Reached\ud The social interaction did have an overall positive effect on students??? reading motivation and engagement regardless of the form of social activity. This change in the percentage of students valuing SSR went up from 56% to 77%. A Chi-Squared test of independence showed a significant increase in students??? attitudes toward SSR between the pre-survey and the post survey, ??2(3, N = 23) = 10.62, p <.05. According to the post survey and the sharing surveys, students enjoyed telling about their books and hearing about classmates??? books. On both the post survey and the sharing surveys, students reported more positive attitudes toward sharing with a partner, than sharing with the whole class and journaling. The reasons for this were they were nervous about talking in front of the whole class and they did not like writing. There was variation in their genre selection across weeks, however there was no overall increase in types of book chosen.Education (Language and Literacy