pp. 1–29 | doi: 10.1002/rrq.98

In this study, we describe young students ’ actions at point of difficulty in reading and examine changes in their strategic use of sources of informa-tion. We examined errors from running records of first graders who entered Reading Recovery ( RR) in the fall and ended the year reading at the first-grade level compared with RR first graders who did not reach this level by the end of the year. We examined differences between the two groups in use of contextual and/or graphic information across text levels 5–12. Results dem-onstrated that all readers decreased their use of only contextual information and increased their use of graphic information and a combination of graphic and contextual information. More important was the finding of two new cate-gories of error episodes: single actions and action chains. Single- action errors occurred when students made an error and kept reading. In contrast, action chains occurred when students executed three or more actions at error. We identified four typical action chains found in many students ’ running records; all typical action chains included monitoring and self- correcting. We found other flexible action chains. Nearly 50 % of the flexible action chains included decoding, and all included making multiple attempts. Of the 1,362 error episodes examined in the study, 45 % were typical and flexible action chains. RR students who ended the year reading at the first- grade level increased their use of these action chains, whereas RR students who ended the year reading below this level did not. The purpose of the present study is to examine first- grade read-ers ’ errors to determine insights into the strategies and informa-tion sources they draw on to solve problems in reading and how these strategies and sources of information change over time as students become more proficient readers. Examining the errors that students make while reading has a long history in reading research and has provided implications for both theory and practice. Early studies of oral reading errors conducted in the 1970s pointed out the need to draw young students ’ attention to print and graphic detail while main-taining a focus on meaning. Similarly, the report of the Nationa