Learning Disabilities

Curry School of Education

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Reading Comprehension

Reading is a problem for very many students with learning disabilities. Ability to read influences the child's success across the curriculum and success in later years. Comprehension in reading, which is the ultimate goal of reading instruction, presents a problem for students with learning disabilities. They may lack skills in any or several of the following areas:

• Students need to be able to decode fluently.
• Students need to recall specific stated information from a reading passage. This refers to literal comprehension of the text. Click here for techniques for improving literal comprehension.
• A second area involves sequencing which requires students to identify the order in which events occur in a passage. This recall skill is important to gaining comprehension. Click here for techniques for improving sequencing.
• Differentiating main ideas and details is used in the process of summarization . This aids in retention of information. Click here for techniques for improving summarization.
• Inference requires students to examine stated relationships in the passage to draw conclusions. This involves higher order thinking skills. Click here for techniques for improving inferential thinking.
• As students progress in reading they encounter more complex sentence structure that includes higher level vocabulary and grammar knowledge. Click here for techniques for improving understanding of sentence structure.
• Students should be encouraged to develop critical thinking skills through reading instruction. Readers will need to be able to analyze and verify information they encounter. Click here for techniques for improving critical thinking.