A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a text, and how that influences what they recall from the text. Subjects, 46 sixth graders from 3 elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were tape recorded as they thought aloud while reading either a passage on "sugar" or a passage on…

Examines fourth- and sixth-grade children's strategies (using think-aloud protocols or silent reading) for processing informational text. Finds that silent readers engaged in more physical backtracking to previously-read sentences, while think-aloud protocol processing tended to focus on the local, sentence level. Illustrates complex relations…

A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading informational text. In particular, the study explored: what kinds of knowledge they draw on and how they use it to help them understand what they read; and how does what they do influence what they recall. Twenty-nine 6th graders from two elementary…