Improving Comprehension for Students with Learning Disabilities
Students with Learning Disabilities may need extra time to learn to read; phonemic awareness and phonics skills will need more directed instruction and these students require more strategies for these skills to become fluent or automatic. The same is true in the area of reading comprehension, for students who are impacted by learning disabilities, although this struggle may not show up until the later years of elementary school; as this is when the expectation for reading comprehension increases.
Students with learning disabilities may not be aware of basic strategies that good readers use, such as re-reading a passage for a clearer understanding. These difficulties are a result of a lack of strategic processing and metacognition. Strategic processing is the ability to control and manage one’s own cognitive activities in a reflective, purposeful fashion. Metacognition is the ability to evaluate whether one is performing successfully. (http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/
Attached is a link that provides reading comprehension interventions. It provides skills broken up by topic and skill and ways to assist a student that may struggle or need more reinforcment on this particular area. I have found it extremely helpful in my own classroom.
Narrative Text
Research shows that direct instruction and the use of meaningful strategies can improve comprehension abilities among students. Text is typically categorized as either narrative text (fiction) or expository text (factual). Narrative text is usually easier for students to comprehend because it is more familiar to readers. (http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/)
In my own first grade classroom a plethora of both types of text is offered in our classroom library for students to read. I notice that although they are very interested in the realistic pictures of the expository text pieces, they feel more comfortable reading narrative text, as many times this text and pictures are more predictable in terms of a story plot and word usage. In the research that I found it mentions that when reading narrative text students typically use story structure as a way to organize the important events or information in the text they are reading. Students with learning disabilities are slower to develop this ability and skills such as making inferences, identifying story themes and story information can be very difficult. (http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/) These students need strategies and techniques to improve these difficulties when working with narrative text. One strategy that can help is called TELLS which consists of four steps:
(T): study story titles
(E): examine and skim pages for clues
(L, L): look for important and difficult words
(S): think about the story settings
Research shows that using this strategy helped students raise their scores on standardized reading assessments and improve their accuracy on comprehension questions. When the strategy was taken away their performance declined. (http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/)
Expository Text
Teaching students with learning disabilities to understand expository text can be more challenging than narrative text because expository text involves more complex structures like the use of the cause and effect strategy and compare and contrast. (http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/) There needs to be a high level of direct teaching and interaction for all students when it comes to supporting students with this style of text, but special attention needs to be given to students with learning disabilities in this area, as they will require different strategies in multiple settings to meet their individualized needs.
Several years ago low scores across all grade-levels in the area of expository text was occurring in the school that I teach at. At that time I was teaching 2nd grade and worked very hard to develop strategies to help students when reading and trying to comprehend this type of text. I found a series of books that gave many nonfiction writing pieces geared to that specific grade-level, across many different science and social studies topics; that were also leveled. Each piece includes a below level, average, and advanced piece to support each topic, so we were able to differentiate for the needs of our students. I began teaching this strategy in a whole group atmosphere. I would blow up one of the pieces (usually a piece that would be easy for most students so that they could use it for the purpose of technique and learning to begin with). The students would be asked to give any background knowledge that they could share about the topic. The students would then read the comprehension questions at the end of the text so that they could get an idea of what we might learn through our reading. They would make predictions then I would read through the text with the students and we would use highlighting tape to highlight interesting words, and use a marker to circle words that they need more clarification on. After discussing those words, students would begin answering the comprehension questions. They were asked to use wiki sticks to underline the place where they found the information in the text. If the question asked them to draw conclusions, they needed to give information from the text that helped them arrive at their answer. We would have discussions about what information they found interesting and new things they had learned while reading. Although this strategy was time consuming it was EXTREMELY beneficial. My students began to really reflect and make meaning of expository text. I shared this strategy with my reading specialist and members of my team and in a book talk setting being conducted at my school. Students with learning disabilities who were struggling with comprehension difficulties really benefited from this direct instruction. After they learned the approach, we began using leveled text in small reading groups and then eventually many could become mostly independent with this task. My comprehension scores on benchmark assessments went up quite considerably in that time, even among struggling students.
Below is a picture of one of the books in the series of books that I used for strategy
Students who are struggling with comprehension strategies also really benefit from time spent in their small reading groups. This time offers practice with key skills at a level that meets each students current reading needs, and in a group that is small enough so each student is benefiting from this reading time. Below is a great video that shows how a reading group is conducted so that all students are utilizing their reading time in the most productive way. Instead of round-robin style reading the kids are working the whole time on reading and are trained to be using certain comprehension approaches while they work. In this video the teacher can really monitor every student and can provide extra support when necessary.
Teaching comprehension strategies is no easy task for students with any learning style at any age, but students with learning disabilities are more seriously impacted. Using the strategies and research outlined in this post, teachers should be able to quickly implement some of this knowledge into their own teaching practices to target students in need and boost comprehension skills.
Resources:
Williams, J. (2000). Improving comprehension for students with ld. Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/86/
Academic intervention-reading comprehension. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions
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