How Students Explain Their Word-Solving Strategies When They Come to a Word They Don’t Know While Reading and How Does That Explanation Change When Students Are Explicitly Taught a Variety of Reading Strategies

Abstract

The researcher wanted to see what strategies fourth grade students say they use when they come to a word they don't know while they are reading. The researcher asked them what they do and then had them read out loud from a text. Notes were taken on the strategies they used to see if what they said matched what they actually did. Three mini-lessons were then given on word-solving strategies that they could use to figure out unknown words. Last, the students read out loud again and were asked what they do to problem-solve a word. The results were that the students did not use the strategies of sounding out and chunking that they said they used, but used the strategies of rereading and self-correction while they read.