The purpose of this study was to examine effectiveness of paraphrasing interventions on mathematics word problem-solving accuracy in third grade children (N = 72) at risk for mathematics disabilities (MD). Three instructional conditions directed students' attention through paraphrasing, via writing, to different propositions within word…

Students with LD who struggle with reading comprehension can benefit from instruction on how to read strategically. One strategy that has been demonstrated to increase reading comprehension is self-questioning. In this study, two fifth graders with LD were taught to self-generate questions using a prompt fading procedure. The participants were…

According to national mathematics standards, algebra instruction should begin at kindergarten and continue through elementary school. Most often, teachers address algebra in the elementary grades with problems related to solving equations or understanding functions. With 789 second-grade students, we administered: (1) measures of calculations and…

The goal of the present study was to test three competing hypotheses about the nature of comprehension problems of students who are poor in reading comprehension. Participants in the study were first, second, and third graders, totaling nine cohorts and over 425,000 participants in all. The pattern of results was consistent across all cohorts:…

Early identification of students who are at risk for writing difficulties is an important first step in improving writing performance. First grade students (N = 150) were administered a set of early writing measures and reading measures in January. Sentence Writing Quality and Oral Reading Fluency demonstrated strong classification accuracy when a…

The Common Core Standards require demonstration of conceptual knowledge of numbers, operations, and relations between mathematical concepts. Supplemental instruction should explicitly guide students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) in these skills. In this article, we illustrate implementation of the concrete-representational-abstract…

This 4-year longitudinal research was designed to study special education determinations of students who participated in Tier 2 intervention in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model focused on reading across Grades 1-4. We compared identification rates for learning disabilities (LD) and student characteristics of 381 students the year prior to…

Sixty-three bilingual Latino children who were at risk for language impairment were administered reading-related measures in English and Spanish (letter identification, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition) and descriptive measures including English language proficiency (ELP), language ability (LA),…

Ten first grade students who had responded poorly to a Tier 2 reading intervention in a response to intervention (RTI) model received an intervention of video self-modeling to improve decoding skills and sight word recognition. Students were video recorded blending and segmenting decodable words and reading sight words. Videos were edited and…

This study investigated the role of strategy instruction and cognitive abilities on word problem solving accuracy in children with math difficulties (MD). Elementary school children (N = 120) with and without MD were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: general-heuristic (e.g., underline question sentence), visual-schematic presentation…

Researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology and education have been studying the negative effects of noise on human performance for almost a century. A new empirical study that builds upon past relevant research on (1) test accommodations and (2) auditory distraction and academic performance was conducted with elementary age students.…

The K-5 reading standards within the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards provide guidance to teachers about grade level expectations for students. Though the authors of the standards acknowledge that some students may experience difficulty reaching the rigorous expectations, they explain that the standards outline a pathway to…

The Common Core State Standards provide teachers with a framework of necessary mathematics skills across grades K-12, which vary considerably from previous mathematics standards. In this article, we discuss concerns about the implications of the Common Core for students with mathematics difficulties (MD), given that students with MD, by…

Students who struggle with learning mathematics often have difficulties with geometry problem solving, which requires strong visual imagery skills. These difficulties have been correlated with deficiencies in visual working memory. Cognitive psychology has shown that chunking of visual items accommodates students' working memory deficits. This…

Mathematics continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of the school curriculum for students with learning disabilities. The provision of pedagogically sound foundational computation and word problem instruction in the elementary grades is critical for students to progress through the mathematics curriculum successfully. A…