Strategies: Who needs them and can we really teach them?

Marie Clay's warning about not overdosing on "requiring children to tell us how they went about self-correcting and error or how they solved a particular problem" (Johnson, Kier 135) really got me thinking. She goes on to say that "asking the child to talk about he is thinking or acting slows up the in-the-head solving. it interferes with the fast responding that is essential for fluent reading. (Johnson, Kier 135). This made me wonder. If proficient readers do not need us to help them use metacognition to understand their comprehensive thinking, then who does? After reading farther in the chapter it became clear that it is those readers who do not think at all when they read. It is the readers who are simply saying words on a page that really need these strategies. It is the readers who are not engaged with the text. The readers who cannot put themselves in the characters shoes. Whose emotions are not evoked by what they are reading. As teachers, it is our job to tackle these students, one at a time, in order to help them become the strategic readers that we all strive for them to be.
I was also very intrigued by the section that asked the question: Can we really teach strategies? I believe the answer is yes. I agree with the book that teachers need to focus on two things in order for the strategy to be effective: 1) Teachers need to keep focus on the meaning of the text, not on students performing a particular strategy and 2) The strategy needs to be proven useful and effective for students so that they can see it is working. This is the difference between spotlighting a strategy, which is good and heavy-handing a strategy, which can be very ineffective.
It really is all about how the teacher goes about teaching the strategy, and it is so important for the teacher to know her students. We must direct different questions at different students based on their varying needs, and we must focus our conferences on the specific needs of each student in order to maximize their literacy time in the classroom.