Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Question Development
Kragler, Sherry and Christine Nolley. Student Choices: Book Selection
Strategies of Fourth Graders. Reading Horizons: A Journal of
Literacy and Language Arts 36.4 (1996): 354-365. Print.
In this study, Kragler and Nolley explore the book selection
habits of fourth graders. They determine that self-selection is a
powerful motivator for young readers if they choose a just right book.
Nolley listens to students read the book of their choice, noting miscues,
and then asks careful questions about their book and the selection
process, comprehension, and enjoyment. Kragler and Nolley find that
students generally think about why they choose books (favourite
author, recommendation from friend), but not necessarily how they
choose books. Consequently, students did not fully consider the
difficulty of a book. Eventually, students were able to find books at
their instructional or independent reading level. Kragler and Nolley
suggest teaching a book selection algorithm or other strategy to help
students find this match more quickly. Ultimately, Kragler and Nolley
conclude that self-selection fosters students enthusiasm,
responsibility, and competency in regards to reading.
Kragler and Nolleys study in the fourth grade classroom will be
extremely important to our own research with grade nine students.
The students in Mrs. Quirings classroom do not read very much