Elvin-Thomas

Metacognition: The Key to Unlocking Reading

Wendy Elvin-Thomas, Moravian College, PA, USA

Abstract

This post qualitative research study documents the observed behaviors and reported experiences of fourth grade struggling reading students and their teacher when developing metacognition to bridge phonics and comprehension while increasing their motivation to read after a second year of intervention. Originally, twenty-seven fourth grade students participated in the study in a rural intermediate school containing approximately 1,200 students in the northeastern United States. Ten of the original twenty-seven students continued with the intervention for a second year. In the second year of this intervention, the teacher once again examined the process of employing metacognitive phonetic and comprehension strategies within authentic literature by meeting student at their independent reading level, providing book choice, using multisensory activities, modeling think alouds, practicing reading strategies and providing opportunities for self-reflection of the strategies students used. During the study, the teacher took anecdotal notes, adjusting and applying reading strategies as needed by the students. The students wrote in a reflective journal about their experiences. Methods of gathering data included teacher observation, artifacts, surveys, informal interviews, and student reflective journals. Methods of analysis included field log analysis, student interview analysis, reading attitude survey analysis, running record analysis, CORE Phonics Survey analysis, Reading Inventory analysis, and a comparative review of the codes and bins analysis. Students were taught specific strategies for monitoring their reading at a deeper level including: decoding, fluency and comprehension. In the second year of the intervention, the teacher discovered that by continuing to meet students where they are on the reading continuum, providing students with book choices, and providing students with fix-it strategies to use when they are reading, positively influenced their growth in reading.

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