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Intervention in School and Clinic
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DOI: 10.1177/105345129803300403
1998 33: 209 Intervention in School and Clinic
Philip N. Swanson and Susan De La Paz
Teaching Effective Comprehension Strategies to Students with Learning and Reading Disabilities

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Teaching Effective Comprehension
Strategies to Students with Learning
and Reading Disabilities
PHI LI P N. SWANSON AND SUSAN DE LA PAZ
In this article, we summarize several metacogni-
tive strategies designed to improve reading
comprehension in students with learning and
reading disabilities and describe an instructional
model showing how to teach comprehension
strategies to students. Each recommended strat-
egy has been formally evaluated and found to be
effective for improving students' reading com-
prehension. Practical suggestions are also
provided to help teachers implement these
strategies in their classrooms.
P
roficient readers typically execute one or more
metacognitive behaviors as they read. For exam-
ple, as they read this article, teachers may consid-
er using one of the recommended comprehen-
sion strategies in their classrooms, leading them
to form questions such as, "How can I modify these
strategies to better meet the needs of my students?"
After reading, they may also choose to make a brief
summary of the procedures necessary7 for teaching a spe-
Photo
by
Lance Schriner
cific strategy. Moreover, for details they cannot recall,
some readers will "look back" until they locate the infor-
mation they need and then reread that section. These
are examples of some of the strategies good readers use
to promote comprehension. Many competent readers
are not aware that these actions require metacognitive
skills; rather, good comprehenders engage in these
strategic behaviors because they have proven, over time,
to be useful (Pressley et al., 1995). In addition, profi-
cient adult readers seldom recall being explicitly taught
how to comprehend text; nevertheless, they have become
strategic readers.
Researchers have consistently demonstrated that poor
readers, unlike good readers, do not acquire strategic
reading behaviors by themselves, and that poor readers
need to be taught how, where, and when to consistently
carry out such procedures. For example, Garner and
Reis (1981) noted that poor readers do not look back to
reread sections in their texts as often as good readers,
and they fail to monitor their comprehension. Raphael
and Pearson (1985) found that poor readers often seem
INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL AND CLINIC VOL. 33, No. 4, MARCH 1998 (PP. 209- 218) 209
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to ignore or be unaware that different assignments pose
different kinds of questions (whether, for example, ques-
tions are literal, require an integration of the text, or rely
on prior knowledge), and they often use strategies that
are inappropriate for task requirements. In addition,
according to Oakhill and Patel (1991), poor readers do
not make inferences from text and do not integrate ideas
from different parts of the text in order to create accu-
rate representations. Even when such students are able
to decode words correctly, they typically do not attend to
the meaning of the passage, relate what is being read to
their previous knowledge, or monitor their own com-
prehension (Bos & Vaughn, 1994). Therefore, students
who have difficulty comprehending text need to be
taught explicitly how to carry out appropriate strategies
so that their reading comprehension improves.
Although emerging and poor readers tend not to
read strategically, resulting in limited comprehension of
text, researchers have criticized how classroom teachers
usually teach reading comprehension. Durkin (1979)
observed several general education fourth-grade class-
rooms and found less than 1% of the total time devoted
to reading instruction was spent explicitly teaching stu-
dents to comprehend texts. She further noted that when
instruction did occur, teachers merely monitored stu-
dents' comprehension by asking questions after they fin-
ished reading a passage, rather than teaching specific
procedures to help students improve their comprehen-
sion skills. Similar findings were reported by Duffy and
Mclntyre (1982), who observed primary-grade teachers
in Grades 1 through 6.
In response to such findings, theorists and interven-
tion researchers have developed numerous strategies
that students can be taught directly to help them
improve their reading comprehension skills. To briefly
summarize these approaches, students are shown various
frameworks, models, or strategies for understanding and
interpreting written information. Students are also
taught self-regulatory procedures, such as self-monitoring,
to help them become aware of and execute specific cog-
nitive behaviors aimed at helping them understand what
they read. These procedures become metacognitive
strategies when students intentionally recruit and use
them to meet various task demands. These strategies
may be thought of as scaffolds, which support and facili-
tate learners as they internalize procedures, or heuristics,
which allow them to successfully complete comprehen-
sion tasks (Harris & Graham, 1996).
Teachers obviously share the common goal of helping
students with learning and reading problems to view
reading as more than a required activity done each day in
reading class; rather, teachers want students to see read-
ing as an activity that occurs in many settings and for dif-
ferent purposesreading for a history class, reading a
novel for relaxation, taking a test during a job applica-
tion, or following directions for setting a VCR. By
teaching students a variety of reading comprehension
strategies and helping them learn to use them indepen-
dendy, teachers help students to develop an arsenal of
approaches to comprehend texts regardless of the specif-
ic task or situation. Thus, when situations arise that
require comprehending new text, students will be able to
reflect upon the battery of strategies they know and
determine which will be appropriate for helping in a
given situation.
OVERALL APPROACH
Pressley and colleagues (1995), as well as numerous
other intervention researchers (e.g., Collins, 1997; Ellis,
1994; S. Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1997),
have advocated teaching students strategies in contexts
that are relevant and appropriate for their use. Thus,
strategies are not taught as curricular options in and of
themselves (Deshler & Shumaker, 1986); rather, they are
integrated as part of the regular program (Harris &
Graham, 1992, 1996). Students learn to use strategies as
the need arises and when a particular set of heuristics is
appropriate for an assigned task (Pressley et al., 1995). In
addition to this basic principle, teachers need to under-
stand bow to teach comprehension strategies so that stu-
dents will learn to use them autonomously. Intervention
researchers have used different terms to describe their
teaching models; S. Graham, Harris, and colleagues (Gra-
ham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1991; Harris &
Graham, 1992, 1996) have used the term self-regulated
strategy development (SRSD), for example, whereas Ellis
(1994) has used the phrase integrated strategies instruc-
tion. Instructional supports underlying these approaches
are similar; however, when describing how to teach one
or more of the strategies in this article, we have gener-
ally adopted the SRSD model (Harris & Graham, 1992,
1996; see Figure 1).
Readers should keep the following general points in
mind as they prepare to teach specific comprehension
strategies. First, start with simple materials (i.e., easier
reading levels) to ensure initial success; then help stu-
dents practice using a given comprehension strategy
with more challenging text. Second, individualize
instruction by deciding (a) what strategy is most likely to
benefit a given group of students, (b) which type of self-
regulatory procedure is relevant for each student, and
(c) how to give specific feedback to each student to mon-
itor his or her progress in using the target strategy and
overall success in comprehending text. Third, teachers
should realize that it may be hard, initially, to fade
instructional supports (such as prompting) because stu-
dents are often unsure whether they are implementing
various components of the strategy correctly. Finally,
students with learning and reading disabilities must be
explicitly taught to generalize whichever metacognitive
210 INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL AND CLINIC
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(it ^
1. Describe the target comprehension strategy. Explicitly describe the strategy
steps, and discuss why the strategy should be used, what it accomplishes, and
when and where the strategy may be used.
2. Activate background knowledge. Review information students may have
learned previously that is necessary for learning the target strategy.
3. Review current performance level. Provide feedback to students regarding their
current level of functioning and reiterate potential benefits of the strategy.
Goals for and commitment by the students should be reached collaboratively.
4. Modeling of the strategy and self-instructions. Demonstrate how to use the
strategy in a meaningful context, and use relevant self-regulatory behaviors by
thinking out-loud. Self-statements include ideas such as "What should I do
first?" "I am using this strategy so that I can understand what I am reading
better../'; or "I need to take my time," which show students the purpose of the
procedures and how to manage their performance.
5. Collaborative practice. Provide several opportunities for student practice using
the strategy and self-statements as a whole class, in small groups, or in pairs.
Monitor students' progress in following the strategy steps. Facilitate students'
success in using the strategies by prompting them to complete steps if they are
omitted or by providing assistance in completing strategy steps accurately. It
may be necessary to reexplain or model some of the more difficult aspects of
the strategies, based on student need.
6. Independent practice and mastery. After determining that the students know
and understand the steps of the strategy, each student practices using the
target strategy and self-statements without help. Continue to give guidance,
reinforcement, and feedback. Gradually fade assistance until each student is
capable of using the strategy without any help.
7. Generalization. Discuss with students throughout the week whenever situations
arise where it is appropriate for students to apply the strategies. In addition,
during collaborative and independent practice sessions, provide students with
different types of materials (e.g., lookbacks are useful with narratives, exposi-
tory text such as science book chapters, and learning rules to play a game) so
that students learn to use the strategies flexibly.
^
Figure 1. Self-regiilated strategy development model for teaching strategies.
V O L . 33. No. 4. M A R C H 199B 211
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strategy teachers expect them to use. To help students
master and generalize use of a given strategy, teachers
should show students how to monitor and keep track of
their progress.
It is also important to begin strategy instruction by
teaching just one or two strategies at a rime. New strate-
gies are introduced only when earlier ones are well
established. Also, as with strategy instruction in any con-
tent area, mastery takes time, and students are not likely
to improve their performance after one or two lessons.
The strategies described in this article may take up to
several days of practice before students can use them
independently. It should also be recalled that strategies
do not need to be taught as a separate part of the cur-
riculum and that simply instructing students how to use
strategic reading behaviors should not be a goal in and of
itself. Rather, they should be taught in context, when and
where reading comprehension is necessary.
Several strategies are described in this article, all of
which have empirical support for being effective in
improving students' reading comprehension. Although
some of the comprehension research has been conducted
with students not identified as having learning and read-
ing disabilities, these strategies nonetheless provide a
range of activities appropriate for many comprehension
skills required by students at different grade levels.
Further, the SRSD model for teaching strategies is espe-
cially useful, given that it has been proved to be success-
ful for teaching strategies to students with and without
learning disabilities in several academic content areas,
including writing (Danoff, Harris, & Graham, 1993, De
La Paz & Graham, 1997) and mathematics (Case,
Harris, & Graham, 1992).
SUMMARI ZI NG EXPOSITORY TEXT
Beginning in upper elementary school, students must
use their reading (i.e., decoding and comprehension)
skills in classes such as science and social studies to learn
new information. After reading a text, whether narrative
or expository, students are frequently expected to recall
main ideas and concepts from the assigned passage and
to provide support for their decisions. To do this, they
must process the content and determine which ideas are
important. Researchers have found that teaching stu-
dents in regular education classrooms how to summarize
expository text after reading has resulted in improved
comprehension and memory of the information (e.g.,
Bean & Steenwyk, 1984; Rinehart, Stahl, & Erickson,
1986; Taylor & Beach, 1984). Many summarization
strategies can be taught, including gist, rule-governed
summaries, and hierarchical summaries.
Gist Summaries
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Gist summaries are
those in which students use single sentences to summa-
rize information found in single paragraphs. Bean and
Steenwyk (1984) found this strategy to be effective in
increasing reading comprehension with general education
sixth graders who read isolated expository paragraphs. A
similar approach was used as part of a multicomponent,
peer-mediated instructional package developed by
Simmons, Fuchs, Fuchs, Hodge, and Mathes (1994) in
which students with low achievement, average achieve-
ment, and learning disabilities in Grades 2 through 5
created gist summaries of main ideas in single para-
graphs.
How TO TEACH. To teach students to create a gist of
what they are summarizing, show them how to restate
important information using a minimum number of
words. This can be done by starting with a single expos-
itory sentence, rather than a paragraph, and requiring
students to retell the main idea. After students are suc-
cessful, two sentences of text are retold, in 15 words or
fewer. This procedure is gradually expanded until stu-
dents are able to summarize an entire paragraph in 15
words or fewer. Guidance and feedback are necessary so
that students become skilled in retelling only the most
important information. When reviewing students'
current performance level, goal setting may be espe-
cially useful to help motivate students (see Note). They
can set goals (for example, to limit the number of words
when attempting to create a summary or to include con-
tent from a specific number of sentences in one main
idea statement), monitor their progress, and then set
increasingly ambitious goals as they become more profi-
cient in creating gist summaries.
Rul e-Governed Summaries
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Rule-governed sum-
maries are created by following an established set of
rules. The reader is guided through a process of elimi-
nating information that is not essential and reworking
the remainder into a condensed format. In their 1984
investigation on the use of gist summaries, Bean and
Steenwyk also examined the use of rule-governed sum-
maries for single paragraphs of expository text with
general education sixth-grade students. Their results
indicated that rule-governed summaries were even more
beneficial than gist summaries for the participating stu-
dents. Rinehart et al. (1986) used a similar set of rules to
teach students at the same grade level how to summarize
multiple paragraphs of expository text.
The work of Bean and Steenwyk (1984) and Rinehart
et al. (1986) suggests that the most useful rules are
(a) delete trivial information, (b) delete important but
redundant information, (c) compose a word to replace
either a list or individual components of an action,
(d) select or create a topic sentence, and (e) relate the
important supporting information. Once the students
are able to effectively use rules to summarize single para-
212 INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL ANO CLINIC
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graphs, they are ready to learn to summarize multiple
paragraphs and extended passages. Additional rules are
to (a) create summaries of each paragraph, (b) write a
summary of the paragraph summaries, and (c) use the
previous summarization rules on this synopsis.
HOW TO TEACH. Because this strategy depends on a
set of rules, students must understand and learn what
those rules are prior to summarizing text. Thus, activat-
ing students' background knowledge is important
when teaching the rule-governed summarization strat-
egy. In other words, the teacher must begin by defining
what is meant by the terms "important information,"
"trivial or redundant information," and "topic sentences."
The teacher must also demonstrate how to generate
acronyms (such as HOMES to represent the names of
each of the Great Lakes). Students will need several
opportunities to practice following these directions
before they are able to demonstrate competence in
creating rule-governed summaries, and they will need
guidance and feedback during collaborative and inde-
pendent practice about their performance as they
attempt to create their summaries. In addition, to illus-
trate how comprehension strategies can be combined
into more complex instructional routines, students can
be taught to turn each summarization rule into a ques-
tion as they complete each step (e.g., "Did I delete triv-
ial information?"), thus incorporating a self-questioning
procedure (to be discussed in more detail later in this
article) to self-monitor use of the rule-governed summa-
rization strategy.
Hierarchical Summaries
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. The basic premise
underlying hierarchical summaries is that good readers
notice and make use of the way ideas are organized in text-
books to help them form a macrostructure, or mental
organization, of the important information that needs to
be remembered (Taylor, 1982). Hierarchical summaries
make use of text structure inherent in most expository
texts, using chapter, section, and subsection headings
found in each chapter. To use this strategy, students are
taught to skim the first few pages of the chapter or pas-
sage, paying close attention to the headings. They then
carefully read each subsection of the passage and create
an outline of the entire passage consisting of an overall
heading, main idea statements from each subsection, and
supporting information and topic headings. Taylor
and Beach (1984) taught seventh-grade students in gen-
eral education classes to create hierarchical summaries
when reading several pages of a social studies text, and
they found that this strategy effectively improved stu-
dents' comprehension of unfamiliar material.
How TO TEACH. Students first skim the entire read-
ing selection, carefully noting headings and subheadings.
IT
i
( -
Step 3 Key idea for entire passage
Step 2
Topic heading
{with lines connecting
simitar topics
A
Step 2
Topic heading
^
X
\
\
t
Stepl
(for the first subsection)
Main idea sentence
Supporting detail sentence
Supporting detail sentence
f
Repeat Step 1
(for each subsection)
Main idea sentence
Supporting detail sentence
Supporting detail sentence
1
Repeat Step 1
(for each subsection)
Main idea sentence
Supporting detail sentence
Supporting detail sentence
J
I
il
J
s J
Figure 2. Steps to creating a hierarchical summary (based on
data from llairis & Graham, 1992, 1996).
Then they are to create an outline of their summary on
lined paper, using a specific format (see Figure 2). This
format requires (a) space at the top of the page for the
major heading, (b) capital letters spaced down the page
for each subsection of text designated by a heading, and
(c) space provided in the left margin to write topic head-
ings and draw lines that connect related subsections.
Figure 2 illustrates the steps for creating a hierarchical
summary. After creating their skeletal outline, students
reread each subsection of the passage. They first select
two to three words from the subsection heading that
reflect the topic of the subsection and use these words to
create a sentence that reflects the most important idea
about that topic. Then, under the main idea sentence,
students write two or three sentences that contain details
about the topic and are important to remember. This
procedure is repeated for each subsection of the passage.
Second, after writing a main idea and two to three sup-
porting detail sentences for each subsection, students
generate topic headings, relating similar topics when-
ever possible. Third, in their own words, students create
a key idea for the entire passage that serves as the major
heading. To illustrate how a hierarchical summary might
look, Figure 3 shows a completed hierarchical summary
for a seventh-grade social studies textbook selection on
India.
When first presenting this strategy to students,
describe the strategy using graphic organizers and
examples such as those in Figures 2 and 3. Teachers may
wish to tell students that one reason why they are learn-
ing the hierarchical summarization strategy is that after
VOL. 33. No. 4. MARCH 1998 213
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Landforms
Climate.
India has a varied landscape and climate.
A. Much of India's border is coastline.
The Arabian Sea is to the west.
The Indian Ocean is to the south.
To the east is the Bay of Bengal.
B. The Ganges River is an important Indian River.
The Ganges begins in the Himalayan
Mountains, runs through the Ganges Plain,
and empties Into the Bay of Bengal. The
Ganges is very important to the religious
life of many Indians.
C. The Deccan Plateau is important for the economy.
It Is located in the south.
The Deccan Plateau has fertile farmland
and forests.
There are rich deposits of minerals there.
' D. Most of India is warm or hot most of the year.
The Himalayas block cold northern air
from coming into India.
*> E. The monsoons are essential for water.
The monsoons are seasonal winds.
During the rainy season they bring moist air
from the Indian Ocean.
People depend upon the monsoons for water
to live and farm with.
Figure 3. An example of a hierarchical summary for a social
studies textbook selection on India.
learning this strategy, students in sixth and seventh grade
were better able to summarize material, and that this
skill in turn helped them remember more information
they had read than students who didn't learn this strate-
gy. This description also suggests to students what the
strategy accomplishes, and it suggests when and where it
may be useful. Further discussion about the usefulness of
the hierarchical summarization strategy should focus on
tasks and situations relevant to a specific group of stu-
dents. It is also important for teachers to plan how to
teach students to generalize what they have learned
with any of the summarization strategies presented in
this section. To begin this process, teachers should pro-
vide students with a wide variety of reading materials and
discuss different situations in which the various strate-
gies can be used to help enhance comprehension.
COMPREHENDING STORY STRUCTURE
Anthropologic studies have demonstrated that when
people retell stories that they have read or heard, these
retellings, across many cultures, share certain similarities
(Gurney, Gersten, Dimino, & Carnine, 1990). Gen-
erally, narratives written in Western cultures include
some reference to setting (telling who characters are,
and where and when the story occurs) and an initiating
event, or problem or goal that the main character must
face at the beginning of the story. Subsequently, the
character makes an attempt, or series of actions, to solve
the problem or reach the goal. Eventually some sort of
resolution, or end to the story, happens. Characters may
also have reactions (internal or external) to the problem
or resolution. Numerous researchers have used this story
structure, often called story grammar, to help students
organize, analyze, and remember the content of stories.
Students are taught to recognize story structure to help
them retell and to make inferences, characterizations,
judgments, and predictions, as well as to determine the
author's purpose in writing the story.
Story Maps
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Researchers (e.g.,
Carnine & Kinder, 1985; Dimino, Gersten, Carnine, &
Blake, 1990; Gurney et al., 1990; Johnson, Graham,
& Harris, 1997; Short & Ryan, 1984) have consistently
demonstrated the benefits of using story grammar to
map narratives so that general and special education ele-
mentary and secondary students improve their reading
comprehension. Story maps are graphic organizers with
story elements used as headings on some kind of teacher-
made worksheet. These headings are used to prompt
students to locate key information from the story, and,
once located, to record it on the graphic organizer.
Support for teaching students to use story mapping as a
comprehension strategy comes from Baumann and
Bergeron (1993) and Idol (1987), who demonstrated that
first-, third-, and fourth-grade students with and without
reading problems improved their comprehension fol-
lowing its use in general education classrooms.
HOW TO TEACH. Prior to introducing this strategy to
students, teachers must decide which story grammar ele-
ments (and which terminology) are most important for
their students. They must also choose either to have stu-
dents record story element information informally or to
use a teacher-generated story map. Story elements may
either be referred to as simple headings (e.g., "charac-
ter") or phrased as questions (e.g., "Who is this story
about?"). With respect to the SRSD model for teaching
comprehension strategies, teachers must model how to
locate story elements in text and write them down,
whether on lined paper or on a story map. During the
modeling session, teachers should include explicit self-
instruction statements such as, "As I read, I am finding
and listing story elements so that I can understand what
happens next," or, "If I can find the problem in the
beginning of this story, I will understand why the char-
acter wants to do the next series of actions," to help stu-
dents understand the purpose of and how to execute the
strategy steps. During the independent practice and
mastery phase of instruction, teachers should gradually
fade out use of any graphic organizers or prompting so
that students become independent in their use of the
strategy.
214 INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL AND CLINIC
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SELF-QUESTI ONI NG
Teachers, through the use of questions, direct students
to focus on pertinent information from readings and to
monitor their comprehension. Alternatively, students
can learn to ask themselves questions (which they must
then answer) as a way to improve their own reading
comprehension.
Student-Generated Questi oni ng
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Intervention research-
ers (e.g., Singer & Donlan, 1982; Wong & Jones, 1982)
demonstrated that having students generate their own
questions to answer improves reading comprehension.
Moreover, in a meta-analysis of 68 studies designed
to improve reading comprehension for students with
learning disabilities, Mastropieri, Scruggs, Bakken, and
Whedon (1996) found that interventions including some
type of self-questioning resulted in greater improvement
than instructional approaches that did not include self-
questioning. Student-generated questioning may take
different forms. For example, students can develop ques-
tions about aspects of text they believe are most impor-
tant. In addition, students can ask themselves questions
to monitor their comprehension while they read. By cre-
ating questions about a reading passage and answering
them, students not only focus on important information,
but also remember it better.
HOW TO TEACH. Students need to learn that good
questions focus directly on important elements of text.
For example, students can be taught to follow Wong and
Jones's (1982) strategy to make up questions about the
main idea in reading passages. The strategy is to (a) ask
yourself what you are studying this passage for, (b) find
the main idea(s) in the paragraph and underline it/them,
(c) think of a question about the main idea you have
underlined and remember what a good question should
be like, (d) learn the answer to your question, and
(e) always look back at your questions and answers to see
how each successive question and answer provide you
with more information.
As an alternative, when reading narratives, students
can be taught to use Singer and Donlan's (1982) strategy,
which incorporates self-questioning with story grammar
elements. In this approach, students answer a general
story grammar question for each element included in
the story. Examples of general questions are as follows:
(a) Who is the leading character? (b) What is the leading
character trying to accomplish? (c) What obstacles does
the leading character encounter? (d) Does the leading
character reach his or her goal? (e) Why did the author
write this story? and (f) What does the author want to
show us about life? Using the general questions as mod-
els, students create and answer their own specific ques-
tions based on the particular story they are reading.
Modeling and collaborative practice are necessary so
that students learn how to create relevant questions,
regardless of which self-questioning strategy they use.
For example, after reading a passage, teachers not only
create and answer a question, but also discuss why it is a
good question.
Sel f-Moni tori ng
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Students can use
questions to ask themselves what they are doing, to help
them follow the steps of a strategy, or to make sure cer-
tain steps were completed correctly. Taylor, Harris,
Pearson, and Garcia (1995) cited the work of Gaetz in
their text on teaching reading, in which a question-
answering checklist was used to help average and below-
average fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade readers answer
questions correctly. The students were taught to ask
themselves the following questions: (a) Did I answer all
parts of the question? (b) Did I read the question cor-
rectly? (c) Did I say enough to answer the question so
someone else will understand? (d) Did I get ideas from
the text and from my memory so the answer makes
sense? and (e) Did I answer all of the questions? If not,
why?
Chan (1991) devised a different type of list of ques-
tions for students with learning disabilities in Grades 5
and 6 to ask themselves when they created summaries:
1. For deleting redundant information: (a) Does this
sentence repeat what has already been said? (b) Shall
I leave it out? and (c) What is the paragraph mainly
about?
2. For deleting trivial information: (a) Does this sen-
tence tell us anything new or more important?
(b) Shall I leave it out? and (c) What is the paragraph
mainly about?
3. For locating topic sentences: (a) What does the para-
graph seem to be about? (b) Does this sentence tell us
anything new or more important than the main idea?
(c) Is my guess right? (d) Which sentence gives the
main idea? and (e) Which answer gives the main idea
of the passage?
4. For identifying implicit main ideas: (a) What does the
paragraph seem to be about? (b) Does this sentence
just tell me more about the main idea? (c) Which
answer gives the main idea? (d) Which answer gives
the main idea of the passage?
How TO TEACH. Self-monitoring checklists can be
developed for almost any comprehension activity stu-
dents complete independently. The teacher must try to
anticipate whether students will benefit from questions
that help them understand and execute a given strategy
correctly or from a list of questions that will help them
internalize a given series of strategy steps. While teach-
Voi. 33, No. 4, MARCH 1908 215
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ing students to self-monitor, teachers should review with
students how to ask and answer questions and how to
perform the needed actions.
TEXT LOOKBACKS AND
QUESTI ON-ANSWER RELATIONSHIPS
Whether reading expository or narrative material, stu-
dents frequendy are asked to locate specific information
or to answer questions about major or minor points in
text. Lookbacks and question-answer relationships are
two strategies to assist students with finding relevant
information from texts.
Text Lookbacks
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Garner and her col-
leagues observed that poor readers do not spontaneously
"lookback" to locate information (Garner, 1982; Garner,
Hare, Alexander, Haynes, & Winograd, 1984; Garner &
Reis, 1981). Even when told they could look back to find
answers to questions, many students thought that it was
"illegal" to do so and needed teacher confirmation that
this was allowed (Garner et al., 1984). Based on this find-
ing, Garner and colleagues (Garner, 1982; Garner et al.,
1984; Garner & Reis, 1981) conducted a series of stud-
ies including both poor and good readers from 4th
through 10th grade to evaluate the effects of teaching
students lookback strategies. Not only did student per-
formance on comprehension measures improve in
response to instruction, but also their increased perfor-
mance was maintained long after their initial lookback
training.
How TO TEACH. Teachers first show students how to
look back in different texts to locate specific information.
It is helpful to model skimming the text to find the most
likely section where the necessary information is located
and then to read carefully to identify the correct answer.
The teacher might say, for example,
The question is asking us which mountains separate
France from Spain. I don\ remember, so Vll look back in
the chapter until 1 find it. First, Vll skim over the chap-
ter until I come to the section where I think III find the
answer. The first section of chapter is about the history of
France, so the answer wouldn V be there. The second sec-
tion talks about the people and culture, so that answer
wouldn V be there. The next section is about the landscape.
I think that the answer will be here somewhere, so Vll
start to look a little more carefully. The first part talks
about rivers, so Vm not going to worry about that. The
next part talks about mountains. This is where the
answer probably will be, so I will read this paragraph
carefully. Here we go, it says that in the southwest, the
Pyrenees separate France from Spain. So, my answer to
the question is the Pyrenees.
As students work, the teacher should prompt them to
look back and provide several opportunities for practice
and feedback. Collaborative and independent prac-
tice should begin with short reading selections and
progress to longer passages. Generalization may be
encouraged by providing students with a variety of dif-
ferent types of materials to be read (such as science text-
books or driving manuals) and by eliciting suggestions
from students regarding other opportunities during the
day when lookbacks may be useful. Because some ques-
tions require students to reflect on their prior knowledge
rather than locate information directly in the text, it may
be useful to teach students about the question-answer
relationships strategy as well.
Ques t i on- Ans wer Rel at i onshi ps
RATIONALE AND DESCRIPTION. Students often rely
excessively on either background knowledge or text infor-
mation when asked to read and answer questions
(Raphael, 1984), despite the fact that not all answers
come from text. In contrast, according to Pearson and
Johnson (1978), answers for questions can be text explicit
(in which the answer is stated explicitly in the text), text
implicit (in which the answer is inferred from the text,
using information across sentences or paragraphs), and
script implicit (in which information comes from the stu-
dent's own knowledge base). Intervention researchers
have generated various terms such as "right there,"
"think and search," and "on my own" (Raphael &
Pearson, 1985; Raphael & Wonnacott, 1985) "here,"
"hidden," and "in my head" (L. Graham & Wong, 1993),
or "in the book" and "in my head" (Raphael, 1986) to
teach average and poor readers in fourth through sixth
grade to answer literal and inferential questions.
HOW TO TEACH. Students are first shown how to
identify question-answer relationships and are then
given opportunities to practice labeling questions
according to those relationships. It is important for
teachers to stress that both the question and the answer
must be considered to come up with the appropriate
label. Moreover, students must be taught to integrate
knowledge from both texts and their prior knowledge
when answering questions. To differentiate between "in
the book" and "in my head" questions, for example,
teachers can ask students some questions that have
answers in the text and other questions that rely on the
students' own experience. As students answer questions,
teachers should help them determine how they knew the
answers by asking where the answer was in the story or,
if not, how they knew the answer. After students under-
216 INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL AND CLINIC
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stand these two question-answer relationships, instruc-
tion can be expanded to differentiate between different
types of "in the book" and "in my head" relationships
(Raphael, 1986).
SUMMARY
The purpose of this article was to show teachers how to
teach students with learning and reading disabilities
to comprehend the material they read. Researchers have
consistently demonstrated that students with learning
and reading problems can learn metacognitive compre-
hension strategies and that these strategies help students
improve their understanding of text. Strategies reviewed
in this article emphasize different aspects of reading
comprehension: Some focus on the overall task, whereas
others are more appropriate for helping students locate
minor details. The strategies we reviewed do not address
all (e.g., affective or evaluative) aspects of comprehen-
sion; nevertheless, we chose these strategies because
their effectiveness has been well documented with stu-
dents with regular or special educational needs.
Although sometimes time-consuming for teachers and
students to learn initially, students can learn to use
strategies independently and thus become equipped to
comprehend what they read in a variety of teacher-
directed and self-selected situations. Many strategies
may be combined (for example, students may create a
rule-based summary of a passage, lookback to find
missing information, and ask themselves questions to
monitor their summarization). Finally, when teaching
students to use one or more of these strategies, we rec-
ommend that teachers follow the SRSD model princi-
ples to teach strategies to students.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Philip N. Swanson, MA, is a doctoral student in special education
at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He worked for 10 years
teaching children with special educational needs from preschool to
high school. Swanson's current interests include teaching metacogni-
tive strategies to students with mild to moderate disabilities and
teacher preparation. Susan De La Paz, PhD, is an assistant professor
of special education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.
She currently conducts intervention research in the area of writing for
elementary and middle school students with learning disabilities.
Address: Susan De La Paz, Department of Special Education, Pea-
body College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TX 37203; e-mail:
susan.delapaz.@vanderbilt.edu
NOTE
Bold text is used throughout this article to highlight suggestions for
incorporating elements from the SRSD model into teaching compre-
hension strategies.
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