This purpose of the study was to determine the effects of teachers using the Question Exploration Routine (QER) in regularly scheduled secondary-level English Language Arts classes to help students answer questions about the development and use of main ideas in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." Questions were posed in both…

The Common Core State Standards for literacy in history and social studies present opportunities and challenges for teachers of and adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). In addition to reading challenges, students must engage in higher order thinking and reasoning. To provide opportunities for students to successfully respond to such…

Response to intervention (RTI) is advocated in elementary school as a system-wide, multitiered model of academic and behavioral interventions. Middle schools have begun adopting RTI models based on these existing elementary models. This investigation into current middle school RTI practices describes technical aspects as well as some of cultural…

This article chronicles the evolution of a programmatic line of research on strategic writing instruction for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) conducted by staff and affiliates of the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. The goal associated with this research is that students with LD learn the writing skills that they…

The changing job market requires a sophisticated array of literacy skills that adolescents with learning disabilities reading below grade level have not yet acquired. This summary of the research on reading comprehension highlights emerging findings and related instructional conditions necessary to achieve optimal student outcomes with limited…

During the past several years, one of the most frequently addressed topics at conferences and in professional journals is responsiveness to intervention (RTI). This is because it is viewed by many as a new way to think about both early intervention and disability identification. Despite its relative newness, a subset of RTI proponents contend…

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of a comprehensive writing program for students with and without learning disabilities (LD) in inclusive general education classrooms. The program incorporated research-based components including instruction in a prewriting planning strategy, narrative text structure, writing strategies, and the…

Three factors tied with secondary student success in content-area reading are demonstrated: validated teacher-focused and student-focused interventions, integrated and comprehensive service delivery systems, and well-designed, data-based professional developmental programs. The key role that school administrators play in ensuring each of the…

A study evaluated the effects of instruction in a comprehensive, independent assignment completion strategy on homework completion rates and the quality of products completed in response to assignments given in general education classrooms. Eight of nine students mastered use of the strategy and their homework completion rates and products…

This tribute to Samuel Kirk, an early leader in the field of learning disabilities, focuses on two of his powerful ideas and their effect on the author's work and later research. The first idea is that effective teaching requires knowing the students well, and the second idea is that explicit instruction in skills and strategies based on known…

Eleven teachers of inclusive seventh-grade life science classes were trained to use a teaching routine that stressed finding and using mnemonic devices to enhance students' recall of information. Evaluation indicated that trained teachers who used the method and their students, especially students with learning disabilities, were better than…