Learning Disabilities

Curry School of Education 

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Summarization

The purpose of summarization is to allow students to pull out key ideas from the story. This is a skill they need to acquire to help them remember the main events rather than all the details.

Direct Instruction

It is best to start out with a short passage in which students write a sentence for each main idea. You would want to select passages in which the student-written sentences have subjects that are characters and the predicates are the actions the characters performed.
  1. The teacher tells the students a rule for writing a main idea sentence (e.g. "Name the person and tell the main thing the person did in all the sentences").
  2. The students read the passage.
  3. The teacher asks the students to figure out the main idea sentence by naming the person and telling what the person did in all the sentences.
  4. The teacher calls on a student to name the sentence. The teacher corrects the student by telling the correct answer.
  5. The teacher repeats the same procedure with the remaining passages.
  6. The teacher has the students write the main idea sentence for each paragraph.
This is an effective strategy because it carries over to the writing process.

If students have trouble identifying main ideas, there are direct instruction strategies for teaching this skill on page 300 of the same text. 

Carnine, D. , Silbert, J., & Kameenui, E.  (1990).  Direct

   instruction reading.  Columbus, OH:  Merrill.

RIDER

RIDER is an acronym for a specific comprehension strategy. This strategy will aid recall and comprehension by encouraging students to develop a visual image of what they have read.

Read
Read the first sentence.
Image
Make an image of the material.
Describe:
Describe your image. (a) if you can not describe it, explain why (b) if you can make an image, compare it to the earlier image (from earlier sentences). (c) describe to yourself the image
Evaluate:
Evaluate your image for completeness; check to see ` that your image includes as much of the information as possible and if it is complete move on.
Repeat:
Repeat the earlier steps for the next sentence. 

Bender, W..  (1992).  Learning disabilities: Characteristics, 

   identification, and teaching strategies.  Needham Heights, MA: 

   Allyn and Bacon.

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