Teaching Rural Students with Learning Disabilities: A Paraphrasing Strategy to Increase Comprehension of Main Ideas

The study compared the effects of repeated readings versus paraphrasing cognitive strategy instruction. Main idea comprehension skills of rural fifth, sixth, and seventh grade learning disabled students with moderate levels of decoding fluency (100 words per minute), and high levels of decoding accuracy (97%) were used. The study also investigated the relative power of combining the two procedures. Results indicated that paraphrasing instruction was superior to the repeated readings procedures. Pairing repeated readings with the paraphrasing strategy was no more effective than teaching the paraphrasing strategy alone. Instructional implications are discussed.