Strategy mastery by atrisk students: Not a simple matter

Teachers have succeeded in teaching at-risk stu-dents, including those with learning disabilities, to master and apply complex learning strategies. The majority of this instruction has been pro-vided in resource rooms or other remedial set-tings where intensive and systematic instruction has been possible. Increasingly, teachers in reg-ular classrooms are being asked to provide learn-ing strategy instruction to diverse classes that include students with disabilities. This expecta-tion presents many challenges to the classroom teacher, including the creation of an instructional balance between content and strategies instruc-tion while at the same time ensuring both the interest and growth of all students in an aca-demically diverse class. In this article we review the results of a line of programmatic research on learning strategies instruction that has been con-ducted on students with learning disabilities. From this research, a set of instructional prin-ciples about how to teach learning strategies to at-risk students has emerged. These principles and implications for teaching strategies to at-risk students in regular classrooms are presented