Building a Deep Understanding of Literature with Middle-Grade Students with Learning Disabilities

State frameworks emphasize literacy goals such as understanding literary concepts and understanding how to read and compose texts with varied purposes. Students with learning disabilities need to engage in instruction that addresses these goals and takes into account the special literacy challenges these students face. This article describes a study of how middle-school teachers in general education classrooms implemented a Supported Literacy approach and how students with disabilities performed in relation to their peers. Supported Literacy engages students in integrated thematic units in which they read, discuss, and write about a shared, age-appropriate text. Findings indicate that teachers provided students with disabilities access to the full range of challenging reading and writing activities in the unit. Students with disabilities performed similarly to normally achieving and honors students in one of the most challenging comprehension and writing activities, writing persuasively about their interpretation of a text. Results also indicate that all students need a fuller understanding of the process of developing a persuasive argument and that teachers need more skill in assessing students' work to determine and respond to students' levels of understanding. The article discusses implications of these findings for studying complex literacy interventions.