Eighty-one fifth grade students from a suburban parochial school were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups in a study designed to determine the effect of daily sustained silent reading (SSR) on student reading habits and attitudes toward reading. One teacher supervised 40 students in daily fifteen-minute periods of SSR, using classroom, library, and student materials. Two teachers instructed 41 students for equal periods of reading skills practice, using commercially prepared kits. In addition, students kept a record of their self-selected reading. After ten weeks, all the students took the Estes Reading Attitude Scale (Elementary Form) and reported the total numbers of books and pages read. Results of t-tests performed on these data indicated no significant differences in attitude and amount of independent reading between experimental and control groups, between boys across treatment groups, and between girls across treatment groups. Boys in the control group did complete significantly more books than boys in the experimental group, but this finding probably occurred because the most popular SSR reading materials seemed to be current magazine articles rather than books. (Author/RL)