This action research study explores how strategic conversations and Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) influences beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions about reading, as well as reading proficiencies and strategies of my "readers in trouble." Creating a Reading Detective Club (Goodman, D. 1999) in my own classroom provided opportunities for readers to discover reading as a meaning construction process and revalue themselves as strategic readers. The Reading Detective Club interrupted and altered the students' strategies and perceptions of themselves from struggling readers in need of intervention to young meaning makers developing proficiency. The Reading Detective Club sessions engaged four third grade students in 30 small group sessions exploring the reading process in a series of cases designed to develop an awareness of the meaning, language, and graphic "clues" in a text, and effective "strategies" for meaning making. My intention was to determine how the Reading Detective Club experience might influence readers' beliefs, reading proficiency, and reading strategies. A modified Burke Reading Interview (Y. Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005) was used to gain insights into changes in readers' perceptive about reading and the reading process. The interviews were repeated in the middle and end of the academic year with the Reading Detectives. The Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) In-depth Procedure was used pre and post of the study, to evaluate growth within readers' proficiency and meaning making strategies. The RMI profiles indicate that the Reading Detectives increased their proficiency and use of effective strategies. Scores in meaning construction increased in readers' use of predicting and correcting strategies in three of four readers. Interviews indicated that readers viewed reading as a meaning construction process as they traded their initial "sounding it out" and word attack skills for a more meaning focused strategies. Through the responses from the post modified BRI, the students shared many effective strategies that focus on meaning construction. My findings indicate the Reading Detectives revalue themselves as effective readers, building agency, and confidence. As the Reading Detectives solved the various cases, they collaboratively explored the process of reading and in essence, they discovered the effective strategies they used intuitively to construct meaning from the text. The literacy engagements opened the avenue for the Reading Detectives to discuss explicitly the effective strategies and clues proficient readers use to construct meaning. Through strategy lessons within the Reading Detective Club, the Reading Detectives were able to describe reading as a meaning making process as they demonstrated the many strategies proficient readers used within their readers' profiles. The strategy lessons within the Reading Detective Club transformed these readers into linguists and shifted their view of reading from a word attack approach to a meaning construction process as the data collected pre and post study demonstrates growth in proficiency and use of effective strategies. As Amanda states, "I liked the Reading Detective Club because I learned a lot of stuff in it. I learned that reading is not just to get all the words right. Reading is for meaning, and reading is to get the meaning of the story.". [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]