Students with severe learning disabilities can learn higher order comprehension skills

An instructional program designed to help middle-school students with sever e learning disabilities learn about story themes, and focused on enhancing ability to generalize to themes not included in the instruction, was evalua ted. Ten small-group special education classrooms were randomly assigned to receive either the Theme Identification Program or a series of lessons wit h a traditional instruction framework. The program classrooms scored higher on concept of theme, identification of instructed themes, application of i nstructed themes to real-life situations, and identification of themes that were not included in the instruction. These findings indicate that student s with severe learning disabilities can profit from instruction geared towa rd abstract higher order comprehension when it is designed according to the ir particular instructional requirements.