Building a deep understanding of literature with middle-grade students with learning disabilities

State frameworks emphasize literacy goals such as understanding literary co ncepts and understanding how to read and compose texts with varied purposes . Students with learning disabilities need to engage in instruction that ad dresses these goals and takes into account the special literacy challenges these students face. This article describes a study of how middle-school te achers in general education classrooms implemented a Supported Literacy app roach and how students with disabilities performed in relation to their pee rs. Supported Literacy engages students in integrated thematic units in whi ch they read, discuss, and write about a shared, age-appropriate text. Find ings indicate that teachers provided students with disabilities access to t he full range of challenging reading and writing activities in the unit. St udents with disabilities performed similarly to normally achieving and hono rs students in one of the most challenging comprehension and writing activi ties, writing persuasively about their interpretation of a text. Results al so indicate that all students need a fuller understanding of the process of developing a persuasive argument and that teachers need more skill in asse ssing students' work to determine and respond to students' levels of unders tanding. The article discusses implications of these findings for studying complex literacy interventions.