Kindergartners’ Strategic Talk During Partner Reading

This descriptive, qualitative study seeks to contribute to the corpus of early literacy research by examining the role of comprehension strategies and teacher scaffolding on kindergartners' talk during partner reading. Although comprehension is a robust line of inquiry, previous research has focused on comprehension strategy use by students in the intermediate grades and above. The purpose of this study is to describe kindergartners' abilities to enact comprehension strategies and their use of those strategies with a partner and in small group discussions during various reading experiences. Findings suggest that kindergarten students can read strategically by encouraging both comprehension and decoding strategies while reading. Implications for teachers and future research are discussed at length, including the importance of strategically scaffolding young students during reading instruction and providing a variety of authentic opportunities for students to practice their use of comprehension strategies.