The Relative Effects of Reading Interventions on Reading and Understanding from Science Text for High School Students with Learning Disabilities

High school teachers require their students to gain information independently from text; however, up to 40% of high school students are unable to do so. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the need for teaching reading at the secondary level. Twenty tenth-graders with learning disabilities participated in this study. The independent variable was the type of reading intervention: text reading, vocabulary learning, a combination or text reading and vocabulary learning, and no intervention. The dependent variables were reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and science knowledge. Student participants were assigned to conditions in a counter-balanced order using a within-subject design, and passages were coupled with intervention so that each passage appeared equally across interventions. Instructional reading passages were taken from a standard biology text, and treatment was conducted on these passages only. Two weeks following treatment, measures on generalization passages were taken. Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. Results from this study could have implications in furthering the body of research for teaching reading to adolescents.

Two of the measures included 10 comprehension questions from the narrative
passages only; no comprehension questions were included on the science
passages. ... Students practiced the strategy by first using the narrative passages
written at their ability level and then proceeding through increasingly ... A
generalization probe on reading fluency only was obtained on the grade level
science text.