Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources

What is it? How does it work?

Background:
A system of learning strategies for students with learning disabilities and teacher instructional strategies. It has been developed over a period of twenty years by researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.

Overview:
The Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) is a system of student learning strategies (called the Learning Strategies Curriculum) and teacher instructional routines (called Content Enhancement). SIM was developed over a period of twenty years at the University of Kansas to support students with learning disabilities. Increasingly, SIM is being utilized by general education teachers to help them work with their struggling readers.
Two of the seven strands of the Learning Strategies Curriculum, the Acquisition strand and the Storage Strand, apply specifically to reading. The Acquisition Strand consists of four reading strategies, which can be implemented separately.

1. The Word Identification Strategy was developed by B. Keith Lenz to help students decode unknown words while reading of content area texts. The strategy teaches students to predict meaning from context and to use word analysis. It was found to work best when the word being read was in the student's listening vocabulary (Bryant, Vaughn, Linan-thompson, Ugel, Hamff, & Hougen, in press).
2. The Paraphrasing Strategy teaches students to read a limited section of material, to determine main idea and details, and to express the meaning in their own words.
3. The Self-Questioning Strategy teaches students construct questions about key pieces of information in a passage and then to read to answers for these questions.
4. The Visual Imagery Strategy teaches students to visualize the scene that is described, incorporating actors, action, and details. They learn and practice in short passages. The strategy is designed to improve their learning and recall of prose material.

The Storage Strand includes strategies for learning during reading. The Vocabulary Strategy teaches students to apply key-word mnemonics to create associations among the critical elements of a concept, visual imagery, and their prior knowledge. Students create a study card to help them extend comprehension and recall.

SIM further supports teachers through eleven Content Enhancement Routines. The routines are instructional strategies for opening, planning, and managing a class as well as reading tasks, and to teach concepts. The routines aid general education teachers with mixed ability classrooms.