Twenty-two classroom teachers (grades one through seven) of mainstreamed students with learning disabilities were interviewed concerning their use of social studies textbooks. Results indicated that teachers were concerned about content and comprehensibility of the texts. Teachers reported dealing with difficult texts by helping individuals with…

A review of 17 studies on computer assisted instruction (CAI) in reading interventions for students with learning disabilities found most CAI programs employed drill and practice procedures, followed by strategy instruction, then simulation. The focus was split between word recognition and reading comprehension, followed by language/vocabulary,…

This article presents the interactive, collaborative teaching and learning model developed to teach content area reading to students with learning disabilities or other learning problems. It identifies interactive and collaborative aspects of the model and explains its theoretical underpinnings, instructional decisions, the role of the teacher,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a peer-mediated instructional approach on the teaching of phonological skills and reading comprehension for middle school (sixth- to eighth-grade) students with reading disabilities. All students (n = 38) were identified as having learning disabilities and reading at the third-grade level or…

This study examined the effects of extra time on the reading comprehension performance of a heterogeneous group of adults with reading disabilities. Sixty-four adults participated. A clinic that assesses learning disabilities identified 22 as reading disabled, and 42 as normal readers. The 64 adults took a reading comprehension test under both…

The reading comprehension abilities of 21 intermediate grade children, previously diagnosed as having Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), were compared to 21 carefully matched age/grade peers who did not have this disorder. The study investigated ADHD and Comparison group differences in different levels of comprehension…

Many learning disabled secondary school students have difficulties with text organization in both subject area reading and expository writing. Problems may include difficulty in following the main ideas in text, recognizing the main text topics and their interrelationships, or recognizing the subordinate and superordinate ideas and examples.…

To aid in the early identification of potential learning disabled children a multiple regression equation using analysis of covariance was used to determine which composite predictor variables obtained in kindergarten correlate maximally with first-grade achievement. Eighty-seven kindergarten students in Lawrence, Kansas, who had been instructed…

Three instructional conditions which varied in the extent to which they emphasized direct instruction on word meanings were compared as to their effects on two aspects of reading comprehension: recalling word meanings and recalling facts from a story. The instructional conditions consisted of (1) meanings from context, which required students to…

Describes how a learning strategies approach can enable learning disabled students in secondary schools to study effectively, using as an example the acquisition of specific information from reading a chapter in a science text. (JC)

These four newsletters focus on issues related to adult basic education and the challenges faced when teaching adult learners. The first issue looks at the characteristics of learning disabilities, providing information to help teachers determine whether a learner has a learning disability and who might be appropriately referred for testing. The…

Reports on reading research studies conducted in Great Britain during 1979, noting that two areas have attracted much more attention recently--reading comprehension and the importance of motivation. (HOD)

In a study 12 normal children and 12 reading disabled (word recognition difficulties) children (mean age 9.2 years) were compared for reading and listening comprehension to test whether disabled readers, given an auditory presentation, would show comprehension of material comparable to that of normal readers given visual presentation. (PHR)

The progress of 138 elementary students with specific learning disabilities was followed as they were instructed using the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum. After 3 years, the curriculum produced significant progress in reading comprehension for average and above average students, though below average students did not advance substantially in…

A semantic mapping heuristic is presented which provides an instructional strategy for teaching notetaking, recognizing main ideas and pertinent details, and sorting and organizing them into a report. The strategy enables learning-disabled students to read independently about a topic and subsequently write a report, thus establishing a…