Can Students with Learning Disabilities Learn How to Learn? | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities.
If your child is in regular education classes, has little difficulty quickly recognizing the vast majority of words in his reading materials, has sufficient background experiences and listening vocabulary to understand whatever he reads, but typically struggles to understand the materials, his regular class teachers need to help improve his reading comprehension. Why? Without comprehension, reading has no value.
If, like many excellent subject matter teachers (e.g. history), his teachers have little knowledge of how to teach reading comprehension, the school’s reading specialist should work with them to develop an intensive program of reading comprehension instruction that includes time-saving learning strategies like PROVE. If a strategy like PROVE is taught and reinforced properly and used frequently in his different classes—until it becomes part of his everyday thinking—it will likely help him through school and adulthood.
If your child is eligible for special education, make sure that his Individualized Education Program (IEP) specifically contains goals (and in some states, short-term objectives) that mandate the mastery of research-based learning strategies, such as PROVE. If his teachers or other school personnel complain that this will require too much change in the regular class curriculum, gently but firmly make clear that research shows such strategies also benefit children without disabilities and that teachers can readily adapt such strategies to the existing curriculum. You can do this by sharing the PROVE article with them, or by bringing a private reading specialist to your child’s IEP meetings.