The purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to explore the nature of elementary school children's metacognitive knowledge of strategies appropriate for before, during, and after reading; and (b) to determine whether children who had participated in Reading Recovery instruction in the first grade had similar understandings as their current third- and fourth-grade classmates. Groups that totaled 486 randomly selected former Reading Recovery children and their current third- and fourth-grade classmates were tested using the Metacomprehension Strategy Index (Schmitt, 1988, 1990) to determine their levels of strategy awareness. Comparison of means using analysis of variance was conducted to determine if there were differences in children's levels of declarative strategy knowledge, and an item analysis of the Metacomprehension Strategy Index was generated to illustrate the types of strategies children indicate they use, including the conditional knowledge of knowing when to use them. In addition to results, the efficacy of the Reading Recovery program in helping children reach and maintain cohort-level performance in strategy knowledge is discussed as a means of exploring the timely question of children's subsequent performance. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)