Before and Beyond Reading Comprehension Strategies: Sixth Graders' Diverse Modi Operandi for Reading

• In Event: Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: Research on Literacy Development for Preadolescents

Abstract

This mixed-methods study investigated the hypothesis that, above and beyond what they may have learned in school about garden-variety reading comprehension strategies (e.g., predicting, visualizing, summarizing), by the time they reach 6th grade most adolescent readers possess declarative and procedural knowledge of diverse and sometimes idiosyncratic modi operandi (MOs) for reading. Structured written interviews (N=30) and follow-up case studies (N=6) indicated that 100% of 6th graders in one rural school district possess two or more such MOs for reading. These MOs were not explicitly taught in school. And yet, participants uniformly reported regulating their school and home reading efforts in terms of these MOs rather than in terms of instructed reading comprehension strategies.

Author

• Paul Morsink, Michigan State University