1 Make a Movie in Your Head: Visualization with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learning Disabled Students in the Reading Classroom

What happens to reading comprehension when multi-lingual learning disabled middle school students are taught a specific reading comprehension strategy? The purpose of this study is to explore best practices in teaching Learning Disabled English Speakers of Other Languages (LD/ESOL) reading comprehension strategies. Every school year this researcher is faced with 6th graders who read and comprehend 4-5 years below grade level. Research indicates that successful readers use several strategies to derive meaning from text. This research focuses on the explicit instruction of the visualization strategy. The Qualitative Reading Inventory, Gates MacGinitie, teacher observations, and student interviews are used as indicators of growth. Results indicate that students require much modeling and practice, concrete examples, and a slow pace of instruction. Students apply the visualization strategy with instructional level materials, but are unable to transfer the skill to content areas as much o