Teaching Middle School Students With Learning Disabilities to Comprehend Text Using Self-Questioning

Middle school students with learning disabilities often struggle to gain meaning from text. Engaging in self-questioning is an effective strategy for comprehending text, however, middle school students with learning disabilities often do not naturally engage in self-questioning before, during, or after reading. These students may also have difficulty generating questions to ask themselves while reading text. This article presents evidence-based methods and specific instructional scaffolds for teaching middle school students with learning disabilities to generate questions on their own before, during, and after reading. A discussion of how to progress monitor students' acquisition of self-questioning will also be provided.