In spite of the prevailing assumption that formal reading instruction is no longer needed once adolescents reach high school, students at the secondary level still benefit from explicit reading instruction to continue developing advanced literacy skills enabling them to access complex narrative texts. This article argues for the importance of…

The present case study illustrates the use of explicit text structure intervention for expository reading comprehension with three adolescents with language learning disabilities (LLD). We investigated whether it was feasible to provide direct instruction on the identification of signal words that denote compare-contrast relations between…

Structured Literacy (SL) approaches are often recommended for students with dyslexia and other poor decoders (e.g., International Dyslexia Association, 2017). Examples of SL approaches include the Wilson Reading System (Wilson, 1988), Orton-Gillingham (Gillingham & Stillman, 2014), the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (Lindamood &…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Common Core State Standards require students, starting in elementary school, to read an increasing amount of informational text (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Students with learning disabilities, however, typically struggle with expository text and require even more direct instruction…

The effects of preteaching key words on accuracy and fluency in connected text were examined with three fifth-grade participants identified with learning disability and reading two grade levels below their same age peers. Researchers incorporated a multiple baseline design (i.e., Baseline and Wordlist Intervention) and found that preteaching…

In this study, we conducted 124 observations of 41 special education teachers teaching reading to their third- through fifth-grade students with learning disabilities to determine the extent to which and in what ways they promoted students' reading comprehension. In 42 lessons, we did not observe any comprehension instruction. In 30 lessons, the…

Research on text processing is reviewed including the role of text structure and summarization ability. Implications for the instruction of learning-disabled students include strategy instruction and instruction in such text processing skills as identifying main idea and identifying text structure. (DB)

This article discusses how to teach children with mild disabilities to identify the five different types of expository text structures: main idea, list, order, compare/contrast, and classification. It then explains a strategy for each text structure type that can be taught to children to improve comprehension in content area classes. (Contains…

Identifying the main points of a communication is fundamental to successful reading comprehension. Discussed are difficulties in defining main idea, text structure variables in determining important information, textual hierarchy and the theory of macrostructure, text features signalling important information, summary writing, learning-disabled…

Six instructional design principles are recommended to enable students with learning disabilities to comprehend and compose expository materials. The instructional principles are illustrated using the compare/contrast text structure. Charts provide examples and clarification of the strategies. (SW)

This research review focuses on the effects and implications of text organization, both physical presentation and text structure, and on reading comprehension, with special emphasis on the comprehension of diverse learners. The review includes students in kindergarten through college, who are high and low readers and comprehenders; low…

This review examines all data-based ecologically valid studies published in "Learning Disability Quarterly" or "Journal of Learning Disabilities" that addressed reading instruction and were published from 1980 to 1990. It first looks at studies focusing on comprehension, including such reader factors as prior knowledge, metacognition, and visual…