They recognize that some students have mastered the mechanics of reading but still have comprehension problems. This type of problem may not be evident until the higher grades when comprehension challenges increase. Although students with learning disabilities may have the ability to process information, they do so with great inefficiency. It is not atypical for students with learning disabilities to be unaware of basic strategies that good readers use as a matter of course, such as re-reading passages they don't understand. Strategic processing is the ability to control and manage one's own cognitive activities in a reflective, purposeful fashion, and involves metacognition, the ability to evaluate whether one is performing successfully.
Research shows that instruction can improve students' strategic processing of text.
This digest summarizes relevant research and promising practices in the strategic processing of text, focusing first on the strategic processing of narrative and then expository text. For one thing, the content of a narrative is usually more familiar than the content of an exposition. Most research on narrative text has focused on teaching students to utilize story structure as an organizing framework for understanding critical aspects of the stories they read. Even preschool children use story structure to aid their comprehension. As they get older, children improve in their ability to use it.