Although the popularity and use of graphic novels in literacy instruction has increased in the last decade, few sustained analyses have examined adolescents’ reading processes with informational texts in social studies classrooms. Recent research that has foregrounded visual, emotional, and embodied textual responses situates this qualitative study, in which three eighth‐grade students learned about the graphic novel format, responded in writing to interpretive prompts, and thought aloud during their reading of Gettysburg: A Graphic Novel by C.M. Butzer. Analyses of students’ responses to the multimodal text revealed how constructing inferences between visual and linguistic sign systems mediated their emotive empathy—a central, if limited, component of historical empathy.
Being able to identify the main ideas within a complex multi-paragraph content-area text is an essential reading comprehension skill. It is especially important for content-area and special education co-teachers to provide explicit instruction in this skill to meet the needs of their students with learning disabilities who frequently struggle with understanding text they read. To help students with main idea identification, co-teachers can provide students with explicit instruction on how to generate a main idea statement for individual paragraphs or sections of a text. Co-teachers can extend this instruction by incorporating peer-mediated practice to help students strengthen their main idea statements. Finally, co-teachers can instruct students to use their statements to summarize the text. This article provides guidance for supporting the main idea identification and text summarization skills of middle school students in a co-taught classroom.
The inclusion of individuals with intellectual disability (ID) in typical settings is increasing. To promote success in these settings, educators must support the reading comprehension of individuals with ID. Therefore, we conducted a synthesis of the extant research on reading comprehension interventions for individuals in the largest category of ID—mild ID—in Grades 4 through 12 and postsecondary programs. We review the methodological and intervention features of eight group-design studies and six single-case design studies published between January 2001 and December 2018. Findings from the 14 studies revealed inconsistent effects of single-component and multicomponent interventions on expository and narrative reading comprehension. However, medium to large positive effects were typically found from interventions using peer-mediated instruction and explicit strategy instruction. More rigorous research investigating the effects of reading comprehension interventions for individuals with mild ID using standardized measures is warranted. Practical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.
The adoption and sustainability of evidence-based Tier 1 literacy practices in secondary content-area classes is important to improve the reading success among students with learning disabilities. We conducted an exploratory multiple-case study investigating teachers’ adoption and sustained use of evidence-based Tier 1 literacy practices that benefit students with learning disabilities. The study was conducted within the context of an adolescent literacy model demonstration project funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (i.e., Promoting Adolescents’ Comprehension of Text [PACT] Plus). Interviews were conducted with two administrators and seven teachers who sustained implementation of the PACT practices beyond 1 year of researcher support. Analyses revealed practice and school-level factors that influenced teachers’ sustained use of the practices. We used findings from this study to propose a model of sustainability of Tier 1 evidence-based literacy practices used to improve outcomes for students with learning disabilities. Limitations and implications for future research are provided.
It is essential that middle school content-area and special education co-teachers adopt evidence-based literacy practices that they can integrate into their content-area instruction to address the needs of all of the students in their classes. This article provides co-teachers with four planning tips to improve implementation of the practices they adopt. The planning tips are organized using the acronym FIRST: (a) monitor Fidelity of implementation of the adopted practices, (b) Integrate the practices into daily content-area instruction and across the year, (c) determine the Roles of each co-teacher when planning for and implementing instruction in the adopted practices, and (d) consider specific guidelines to Select Texts for each literacy-focused lesson. The planning tips are illustrated using examples related to the content-area literacy instruction (CALI) instructional framework, which is a set of evidence-based literacy practices and procedures designed to improve the literacy instruction middle school coteachers implement in their content-area classes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.