Category: Culture of Reading
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Can an AI Reading Tutor Actually Teach My Kid to Love Reading, or Just to Decode It?
AI reading tutors are having a real moment, and for good reason. A 2026 comparison of the leading tools found the most advanced ones can now identify a struggling reader’s specific vowel-team error at the phoneme level, not just flag that a word was mispronounced. That’s genuinely useful. The use of AI in the classroom…
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How Can I Build Reading Engagement in the Age of AI?
AI use among teens actually dipped in 2025. A National Literacy Trust survey of tens of thousands of students and nearly 3,000 teachers found 65.5% of young people had tried generative AI, down from 77.1% the year before, though the students still using it were using it more often. Meanwhile, a Microsoft global survey covered…
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My Students Say Reading Is Boring, What Do I Do?
Reading enjoyment among kids and teens just hit its lowest point in 20 years, according to a National Literacy Trust 2025 survey of nearly 115,000 students. A 2025 HarperCollins UK study found part of the reason: 29% of kids ages 5 to 13 now say reading feels more like schoolwork than something fun, up from…
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How to Implement a Culture of Reading in Your School: A Step-by-Step Guide
You’ve decided this is the year to implement a Culture of Reading because you know why reading for pleasure matters. You’ve seen the research, you’ve felt the urgency, and you’ve probably had the conversation about declining reading scores more times than you can count. But knowing why your school needs to implement a Culture of…
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How Do I Know If a Student Really Read the Book, or Just Asked AI About It?
A 2026 NPR/Ipsos poll of 545 K-12 teachers found 59% believe AI is eroding trust between students and teachers, and 57% say it’s making it harder to assess what students actually know. When that finding hit a Reddit discussion among educators, reading comprehension came up specifically: a written summary or reading response used to be…
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How Do I Keep Read Alouds Part of My Classroom Now That AI Can Just Summarize Everything?
If AI can summarize a chapter in seconds, it’s fair to wonder whether reading a book out loud to a class still earns its place in a crowded class period. Research on the effects of shared reading suggests the answer has nothing to do with efficiency: in one study, 59% of young adults said reading…
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How Can I Keep the Joy of Reading Alive When AI Can Summarize Any Book?
AI can now summarize an entire novel in seconds, hit every major plot point, and help a student answer a comprehension quiz without turning a single page. That convenience carries a cost. A recent analysis of AI’s effect on reading points to NAEP data showing the share of fourth graders who read for fun almost…
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K-12 Virtual Author Talk Line Up for Fall 2026
Welcome back to another exciting school year! BookBreak’s virtual author talk program is back this fall with an exciting lineup of authors who will empower and engage your students. And that is not all! We are also launching our Culture of Reading platform. It has everything you’ll need to make the shift needed to become…
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How Do You Choose a Reading Program That Actually Boosts Engagement?
Most schools evaluate reading programs by what they track, not what they build. But research published in The Reading Teacher (2024) identifies four distinct dimensions of reading engagement: behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social. Programs that only measure behavioral output, minutes logged, quizzes passed, challenges completed, are missing three of the four. A separate review in…
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How Do I Build a Culture of Reading in a High School Where Students Find Books Boring?
High school is the hardest place to build a Culture of Reading, and the data makes clear why. NAEP’s 2023 long-term trend data found that only 14% of 13-year-olds read for fun almost every day, down from 27% in 2012 (the lowest figure ever recorded!) A 2024 study in Literacy found that mid-adolescence (ages 14-16)…