The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) was commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to research ways to improve outcomes for children and young people with the most complex educational needs and disabilities through the development of evidence-based teaching and learning strategies. The programme of research brought together a…

The U.S. Department of Education (2000) reported that approximately 80% of students identified with learning disabilities (LD) received half of their instruction within the general education classroom setting. Therefore, it is important that general education teachers implement teaching strategies and practices that meet the distinct educational…

Demands of mainstream secondary and postsecondary settings on learning disabled (LD) students are reviewed, including demands to work independently with minimal teacher help and feedback, complete assignments, and gain information from large volumes of materials written at relatively high readability levels. Attempts to teach learning strategies…

Learning-disabled students in mainstream settings can use guided notes to help them actively participate in notetaking, follow the sequence of lectures/discussions, and produce useful summaries of important information for future review. This article defines guided notes, describes how to develop guided notes, and offers tips to maximize their…

While most efforts in programing for learning disabled adolescents have been directed to the content of instructional offering, the authors identify procedures to promote acquisition and generalization of skills. Exemplified within a learning strategies model, the procedures outlined here stress acquisition of specific strategies through learning…

Three aspects of the learning strategies model are discussed: its philosophy (that intervention should be based on principles of cognitive psychology and learning); its major components (including identification, decision making, and cooperative planning); and its application to a 15-year-old LD student. (CL)

The article describes a two-year learning strategies program for ninth and tenth grade learning-disabled students which involves four tutorial periods and four learning strategy classes per week, and team teaching of strategy development in mainstream classes. The program has fostered independence and generalization of learned strategies to…

The study designed and validated an instructional sequence to promote the generalization of learning strategies to improve written expression acquired in remedial settings to mainstream settings. The article delineates elements necessary to promote generalization of skills with learning disabled populations. (Author/DB)

Students with learning disabilities may gain from use of "flip-flop" study guides to gain key vocabulary and concepts. Rather than providing definitions for terms, the student provides terms for definitions and concepts in the study guide. Such guides allow the teacher to focus on particular concepts and provide repetition of information for…

Two articles look at effective practices with the learning disabled. The first, "Facilitating Mainstreaming through a School-Wide Study Skills Program" (Gayle Smith), stresses one skill each month. "Semantic Feature Analysis: An Interactive Teaching Strategy for Facilitating Learning from Text" (Candace Bos and Patricia Anders) offers a method for…

In this research review of basic issues in learning disabilities, definitions, possible causes, prevalence, and identification of learning disabilities are discussed. Characteristics of learning disabled individuals are considered under five headings: perceptual and perceptual-motor disabilities, problems with attention and hyperactivity,…

This article introduces a series of papers that explain and illustrate how a higher order thinking curriculum can be designed for a full spectrum of students, including students with learning disabilities. The article discusses an approach in which concepts, rules, and strategies are taught by organizing content around the process of noting…

This article describes the inclusion model used at one elementary school in Virginia and the educational experiences of a third grader and a fifth grader, both with learning disabilities. The school uses a collaborative teaching model that emphasizes strategy training and provides full-time services in general education classes. (DB)

Fourth graders (n=69) were assigned to science learning conditions on a stratified random basis controlling for handicap, sex, and age. Results indicate that continued use of cooperative learning contingencies promote positive growth in interpersonal attraction, social acceptability, and self-esteem between handicapped and nonhandicapped students.

Guidelines are presented for assisting classroom teachers in using the strengths of learning-disabled students to help them learn content area material. Specific suggestions are offered for various disabilities, including attention deficits, organizational deficits, auditory processing deficits, visual and visual-motor deficits, language…