An action research study was conducted using the Rainbow Dots strategy to evaluate its effectiveness on reading comprehension skills in a third-grade class with students both with and without a specific learning disability. Results of the study indicated that students' overall performances in reading comprehension have increased. Students also…

Over a quarter of 8th-grade students and more than one-third of 4th graders do not read well enough to understand important concepts and acquire new knowledge from grade-level text. For students with learning disabilities, the numbers are more troubling. This article describes features of evidence-based instruction for students who continue to…

The relationship of reading comprehension accuracy and a contingently administered token reinforcement program used with an elementary level learning disabled student in the classroom was examined. The S earned points for each correct answer made after oral reading sessions. At the conclusion of the class he could exchange his points for rewards.…

Effects of having 32 learning disabled elementary grade students read passages orally one, three, or seven times with instructions to work for either fluency or comprehension were analyzed. Both fluency and comprehension improved with the number of readings with the greatest improvement being between one and three readings. Attentional cues…

Thirty learning disabled high school students were presented comprehension-monitoring tasks under two conditions--verbalization and listening. Among results was that multimodal presentation of information does not assist and may interfere with comprehension monitoring and processing. (Author/DB)

Examination of the effects of four content variables (phonemic elements, format, familiarity, and sequencing) on oral reading performance and comprehension of 15 learning disabled 9-12-year-olds revealed that three of the variables resulted in slower reading or reduced comprehension, while familiarity positively influenced performance. (Author/CL)

The method of repeated readings may be useful with disabled readers. Many disabled readers decode text in a word-by-word fashion and consequently have difficulty understanding what they read. This failure is often attributed to their inability to focus attention simultaneously on decoding and comprehending the message. (Author/SEW)

The paper reviews studies on decoding's role in reading comprehension problems among learning disabled students and suggests that a subgroup exists of students with good verbal intelligence but who overrely on prior knowledge in processing written language. Distinctions between oral and written language factors are made. (CL)

Many culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) struggle with the writing process. Particularly, they have difficulties developing and expanding ideas, organizing and elaborating sentences, and revising and editing their compositions (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001; Myles, 2002). Computer graphic…

This 2-year longitudinal study examined initial evidence of progress in reading for 1,512 children with and without identified speech-language and/or learning disabilities (LD-SLD) in the context of the explicit literacy instruction provided in Michigan's Reading First (RF)schools. The findings suggested that children with LD-SLD labels…

Students with learning disabilities face real reading challenges. Research into the reading performance of culturally diverse students indicates improved reading performance for culturally diverse students when text matches students' cultural perspective. This quasiexperimental research investigates whether Caucasian and African American students…

Two major pieces of legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2001) mandate that students with disabilities be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment and have access to the general education curriculum. To provide access to the general education curriculum, inclusion in general…

To identify children who use a perseverative text processing strategy and to examine the effects of this strategy on recall and comprehenson, 255 fifth and sixth graders were screened for large differences between regressed standard scores for inductively (main idea last) and deductively (main idea first) structured paragraphs. Sixteen Ss were…

The study involving 20 learning disabled (LD) and 20 normal Ss at the fourth, seventh, and tenth grade levels was conducted to determine if normal and LD students differ in reading flexibility. To measure reading flexibility, the dependent variables--elapsed time and comprehension--were assessed under two conditions. For Condition 1, Ss were asked…

Learning disabled, average, and above average readers (Total N=45) in grades 5-7 were assessed on their metacognitive knowledge about vocabulary difficulty and passage organization in relation to ease of studying a passage. Findings indicated a consistency between the children's expressed metacognition and subsequent study behaviors. (Author/JW)