Comprehension strategy instruction for two students with attention-related disabilities

Abstract

Many students struggle to maintain the attention needed to comprehend while reading. One 4th-grade student and 5th-grade student, both with poor comprehension and attention-related disabilities, were taught to use a proven systematic reading comprehension strategy, TWA (Think Before Reading, Think While Reading, Think After Reading), when reading science passages. TWA consists of 9 strategies: State Author’s Purpose, What I Know, What I Want to Learn, Adjust Reading Speed , Reread , Link Knowledge, Identify Main Idea, Summarize, and State What I Learned . Students received scaffolded support throughout the intervention and learned to self-monitor and self-reinforce their reading performance. Both students’ reading comprehension improved during and after lessons when compared with performance before instruction. TWA appeared to help these students regulate their strategy use and sustain attention during reading.