Artifact 1A: Literature Review The Reluctant Male Reader NBPTS Standards - Proposition 1 Standard: Teachers are Committed

to Students and Their Learning. Rationale: To demonstrate my commitment to student learning, I have chosen to showcase a research assignment surrounding the issue of reluctant male readers in the elementary classroom. Research has shown that there is a large population of youth that disengage from reading in the elementary school level and this trend continues and follows them through the rest of their educational journeys. The majority of the population in this category of unenthusiastic readers are young boys. By researching this topic of concern, I was able to further explore the underlying reasons of why disengagement occurs in this particular group of students and uncover skills, strategies and interventions that will allow me to recognize the signs and intervene with a variety of tools in order to improve my teaching and fully reach this group of student and their needs. Reection: This research topic and the time that I spent exploring it was very enlightening and inspiring. As a teacher of many different early elementary grade levels (K, 1, 2 & 4) I felt as though I have been able to follow many students through their stages of reading development. It is always disheartening and confusing whenever I encountered disengagement in the older grades occur after seeing and observing how enthusiastic that same child was at the beginning of their reading adventures in kindergarten. I wanted to further research this topic so that I could more readily recognize the preceding signs of the disengagement and create a solid tool belt of interventions in order to deter this from occurring. By stepping back and studying the behaviors that lead to this issue of concern, I was able to assess my own teaching approach and commit myself to understanding the reasons behind this behavior. If I am able to recognize and intervene with at least just one student and stop the reading reluctancy from ever happening, I will feel like I have succeeded.