Effects of a direct instruction main idea summarization program and self-monitoring on reading comprehension of middle school students with learning disabilities

The study examined the effectiveness of a main idea instructional program on and a self-monitoring technique on improving the reading comprehension of middle school students with disabilities. The intervention consisted of a series of seven lessons that were carefully sequenced to teach students to identify key ideas from passages. The study included four culturally diverse sixth-grade students with learning disabilities who were receiving specialized instruction for a reading deficit. Three of the students were male and all were from a small northeastern school district. The results suggested that the main idea program improved students' ability to identify and generate main ideas. Performance was higher following self-monitoring instruction.