Strong oral reading fluency skills are an important indication of good reading. In addition, reading engagement is often correlated with reading success. Unfortunately, students with learning disabilities (LD) often struggle to read fluently and engage with text. Incorporating graphic novels as part of a comprehensive reading program may help…

In this article, we discuss research supporting the Strategic Instruction Model's™ (SIM) effort to address higher order reasoning and thinking skills in two lines of programmatic research. We review the extant body of evidence supporting the two lines of the SIM library, the Content Enhancement Routines and a comprehensive reading program, and the…

The ability to understand sentences contributes to students' reading comprehension. However, many reading programs tend to underemphasize explicit instruction aimed at enhancing students' knowledge of sentence structures. Children with language impairments, students with learning disabilities, and English language learners may particularly benefit…

Reading achievement scores for adolescents with disabilities are markedly lower than the scores of adolescents without disabilities. For example, 62% of students with disabilities read "below" the basic level on the NAEP Reading assessment, compared to 19% of their nondisabled peers. This achievement gap has been a continuing challenge…

Reread-Adapt and Answer-Comprehend (RAAC) is a reading intervention designed to target fluency and comprehension for students with disabilities. Previous researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of the intervention for students with learning disabilities. This study extended the research by using the RAAC intervention with three…

It takes a literacy leader to save some schools and districts from serious misconceptions about the nature of core reading programs as well as the nature of some reading disabilities. Well-prepared professionals can, by means of their extensive pedagogical repertoire, help districts to avoid compulsive repetition of the same fundamental types of…

Within a short time span, response to intervention (RTI) has altered how educators serve students with reading difficulties. Its impact is most evident at the primary level, where the focus is on limiting referrals to special education by preventing reading difficulties. Educators have paid less attention to exploring how to use RTI with older…

The Content-based Reading Approaches (COBRA) framework, constructed by Heerman (2002), was made up of the instructional goals designed for reading-learning integrations in subject matter classrooms. ELL and LD students often fail to have sufficient reading skills to succeed within their different academic subjects, consequently it is important for…

For students with or at risk for learning disabilities, developing fluency with reading connected texts remains a formidable challenge. In response, teachers often use repeated reading practices designed to provide students with multiple exposures to the same words. This study examined research focused on determining the efficacy of repeated…

It is difficult to deny that many U.S. middle and high school students are in need of special literacy supports. Several indicators of declining literacy achievement have shifted national attention toward struggling and striving adolescent readers. More than ever, secondary schools are under enormous pressure to find ways of improving performance…

Five undergraduate, dual preparation pre-service teachers who began their program in the fall of 2005 were followed through their second and third semesters of their two-year program of study. The study examined their (a) beliefs about how to teach reading to students with learning disabilities and to students without learning disabilities, and…

Finds significant differences in spelling practices and in goals of reading programs between French- and English-speaking teachers of learning-disabled students in Ontario, Canada. (SR)

The paper describes an instructional program that teaches basic decoding skills to learning disabled children, presents the rationale for its development, and offers results of field trials designed to evaluate its effectiveness. The program "ABD's (analysis, blending, decoding) of Reading," initially focuses on auditory tasks and the…

Looks at a case study of a severely learning-disabled student to show how using poetry in a remedial reading setting can provide teenagers with productive and enjoyable reading instruction. (MG)

The two terms reading problems and learning disabilities are not synonymous. Nevertheless, an increasing number of children who have reading problems are being labeled as learning disabled. Given the growing numbers of children failing to become competent readers, the fact that more and more of these children are being identified and treated as…