Students with writing difficulties may have difficulty when writing informational text with source material due to (a) inexperience with such text and (b) difficulties reading and understanding source material. Teaching students to take notes related to informational text using text structures (e.g., description, compare/contrast) may help them…

Movement, which draws on motor skills and executive functions for managing them, plays an important role in literacy learning (e.g., movement of mouth during oral reading and movement of hand and fingers during writing); but relatively little research has focused on movement skills in students with specific learning disabilities as the current…

Task interspersal is an academic material modification procedure implemented by adding a sequence of brief tasks prior to more difficult academic tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the interspersal procedure under both time-based (i.e., time allotted to complete task held constant) and task-based (i.e., number of…

Working memory, executive functions, and cognitive processes associated with specific academic areas, are empirically identified as being the core underlying cognitive deficits in students with specific learning disabilities. Using Hebb's theory of neuroplasticity and the principle of automaticity as theoretical bases, this experimental study…

This study compared oral personal and fictional narratives of diverse (African American and Caucasian) students with and without learning disabilities. Naturalistic conversation with embedded narrative prompts and supports provided the context for narrative elicitation. The participants were 82 fourth to seventh graders from urban and suburban…

The study explored the effects of a computer-assisted COnceptual Model-based Problem-Solving (COMPS) program on multiplicative word-problem-solving performance of students with learning disabilities or difficulties. The COMPS program emphasizes mathematical modeling with algebraic expressions of relations. Participants were eight fourth and fifth…

A debate exists in the research community about replacing the traditional IQ/achievement discrepancy method for learning disability identification with a "response-to-intervention model". This new assessment paradigm uses a student's level of improvement with small-group or individual programming to determine a possible need for…

The benefits of multisensory instruction for teaching mathematics to students in resource rooms were explored. Participants were third and fourth graders (n = 12) in 3 resource rooms for replacement mathematics in a middle-class school district in New Jersey. The students received weekly instruction for several months, using manipulatives and word…

This study examined the effects of providing explicit metacognitive instruction prior to cognitive strategy instruction on students' with learning disabilities ability to generalize a vocabulary strategy learned in a special education setting to a general education setting. The subjects were eight elementary school students with learning…