Comprehending expository text: Promising strategies for struggling readers and students with reading disabilities?

Learning to teach literacy through collaborative discussions of student work

“…Moreover, researchers agree that comprehension strategy instruction could help students construct understandings of text in order to learn ways to self-monitor and incorporate learned strategies to help themselves. Given the plethora of researchbased strategies for supporting reading of content-area text and expository text in general (for instance, see Buehl, 2001;Hall, 2004;Pressley, 2002), a focus on integrating literacy into subject matter instruction to enhance students' comprehension seems appropriate. It could also become key to the collaborative work special and general educators must do.…”

Integrating Comprehension Strategies into Social Studies Instruction

“…However, teaching comprehension strategies can be seen as consuming large amounts of instructional time, especially if teachers are not familiar with how to integrate them into lessons, at the very same time when teachers feel great pressure to focus primarily on getting through the content (Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Graetz 2003;Scruggs and Mastropieri 2002). Research findings indicate, though, that students who receive increased attention in the use of comprehension strategies in content area classes perform better than students who do not (Hall 2004). Given the need to help students with LD and others as they learn to gather information from social studies texts, we propose that teachers learn ways to integrate comprehension strategies into social studies instruction to help students with LD construct understanding.…”

“…Therefore, it is critical that social studies teachers structure their lessons to take into account some of these characteristics to support the success of students with LD. We argue, then, that for students with LD to be successful in social studies classes, middle school teachers need to integrate comprehension strategies into their instruction because we know that students who receive increased emphasis in the use of comprehension strategies in content area classes perform better than students who do not (Hall 2004). Thus, social studies teachers need to attend to both content area knowledge as well as incorporation of comprehension strategies into their lessons to enable higher academic achievement for all students.…”

“…New vocabulary and/or words that have subject specific meanings add to the complexity and confusion students may experience (Alexander-Shea 2011;Hall 2004;Underwood and Pearson 2004). Along with new terms and conceptual content, the organization of the text is unfamiliar (e.g., headings, diagrams, and charts).…”

Maximizing PEDAGOGY for Secondary Co‐Teachers

“…For example, a standard from an 11 th grade curriculum is to comprehend the grade level history text proficiently. History textbooks are frequently written at higher grade levels than the students are in (Berkeley, King‐Sears, Hott, & Bradley‐Black, ), and so students with learning disabilities in reading have even more difficulty reading the text in order to comprehend questions or directions for an assignment (Hall, ). Therefore, one co‐teacher takes a small group of students who require verbatim reading and verbally reads an entire history test so that the students focus on comprehension of the content.…”