This case study examined student teacher interaction that took place in one ESL middle school classroom with 29 Latino/a students learning to read in English. Observations in classrooms and interviews with teachers were conducted over a ten month period, one complete school year. Students were also tested in their reading comprehension in Spanish at the beginning of the school year. These results were compared with results on English entrance exams and with the results on English reading tests at the end of the school year. The important and main themes were those of the ESL teachers' preparation of the students in reading and writing throughout the school year for the spring term project and a juried poster presentation, and the students' self-reflection contained in responses to teacher initiated prompts. The principal artifact mediating learning was the interactive computer software programs provided by the school. The qualitative results suggest that students' strong identification with family and the immigrant circumstances may provide discourse dissonances that interfere with motivation and the development of self-directed learning. The results of testing showed that a student's year-end results in English reading were predicted by the beginning level of English reading skills. A lesser, but still significant finding, was that L1 Spanish reading performance was a predictor of L2 English reading performance.