According to Reid, Lienemann, and Hagaman (2013), students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) have difficulty in academic, behavioral, and social-emotional areas. Their disability, in turn, may affect their ability to “listen, think, speak, write, or do mathematical calculations” (Reid, Lienemann, & Hagaman, 2013, p. 3). Problems with working memory greatly impact one’s ability to access, organize, recall, retrieve, and comprehend information (Montague, Krawec, Enders, & Dietz, 2013). In order to alleviate difficulties with one’s cognitive processes and increase attentiveness, educators can utilize cognitive and metacognitive strategies. According to the Reid et al. (2013), strategies are skills taught in sequential order that ultimately assist students with completing a task or solving a problem. Unfortunately, without direct explicit instruction, it is common for students to not use strategies, or rather, misuse them. This may be due to a lack of declarative, procedural, or conditional knowledge. When faced with a problem, it is key that students have the self-awareness to know what strategy to use, how to use it, and when and where it is appropriate to apply the skill. This knowledge is a combination of both cognition and metacognition, which is “thinking about thinking” (Reid et al., 2013, p. 27).

Students with disabilities (SWD) tend to associate school-related failure to their intellectual ability (Chen, Yeh, Hwang, & Lin, 2013). To decrease maladaptive behaviors (i.e., self-harm, negative self-talk, tantrums, avoidance, withdrawal) educators must rework students’ thinking so they do not resort to learned helplessness. SWD have to be taught that mistakes happen and it is not because of their lack of ability, but rather a lack of effort or strategy use. Metacognitive and cognitive strategies can be learned through the use of step-by-step prompts, questions, models, and explicit explanations (Reid et al., 2013). To decide where to begin, in general education classrooms, educators must informally and formally assess students to see which prerequisite skills the students already have and which need to be retaught. This information helps guide instruction. After acquiring this information, strategies can be taught for specific content. The use of strategies can assist with progress monitoring, self-regulating, planning, and executing. With pre-taught strategies, SWD can learn how to complete academic tasks for a variety of subjects. Moreover, the skills taught can be generalized across people and settings, increasing student success. To ensure that students can use newly learned skills with different teachers, family members, and people in society, it is critical that they are given the opportunity to practice in different environments, especially natural environments.

While students are practicing the skills and steps in sequential order, educators can use formative assessments and direct observations to make adjustments to instruction (Nagro, Hooks, Fraser, & Cornelius, 2016). At times, changes need to be made to lesson plans in order to better suit students’ individual needs. To assist with processing, educators can teach students how to tag, chunk, and cluster information (Reid, et.al., 2013). Students can also benefit from learning specific mnemonics that can be applied to diverse areas of reading and math, as well as social-emotional and behavioral areas. For example, in regard to math, students may be taught the strategy Understand, Plan, Solve, Check (UPSC) to solve word problems (Powell & Fuchs, 2018). This mnemonic strategy can help students organize their thoughts and navigate a word problem using their knowledge of its underlying structure.

No matter what skill is being taught, it is imperative that educators not only scaffold the task by breaking it up into manageable parts, but also use the I do, we do, you do model to deliver instruction. Based on the students’ level of understanding, educators can determine the level of prompting that is required to complete the task and fade prompts as necessary. With this being said, younger children may need for educators to provide additional prompts and make more concrete explicit connections so they can develop a network of knowledge structures or schemas (Texas Educational Agency, 2002). This will allow children to categorize visuals, words, topics, and content based on their experiences, which will build upon their schema. The concept of schemas goes back to the idea of teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies instead of teaching students to tie words (i.e., more, each, per, fewer) to operations or restricted rules. Often times, there are exceptions to a rule, so it is important not to become reliant on them, but rather dig deeper to find the root of the language used. Being that word associations may not always work, it is important for students to truly dissect language and comprehend its meaning (Powell & Fuchs, 2018).

In order to reach mastery, students must be able to acquire, generalize, and maintain the skills over time. To increase the likelihood of this happening, people working with SWD should provide several opportunities for the student to practice the skill. Additionally, educators, professionals, and parents must provide immediate corrective feedback in order to limit errors. Using this approach, SWD will begin to practice the correct way of solving a problem. In order to ensure success, family, educators, and others must remain in constant communication. Sharing the pros and cons of certain practices can help educators make the necessary changes to best suit students’ needs. With the use of a strategies approach, SWD can be active contributing members of society, further their education, and perform daily life skills independently. The goal of this approach is to increase independence and overall success, but it goes beyond just completing tasks correctly. This approach, if done effectively, will increase a students’ self-esteem, confidence, and outlook on life (Gollwitzer, Oettingen, Kirby, & Mayer, 2011).

This guide breaks down each strategy across the content areas of reading (i.e., decoding, comprehension,) writing, math, social/behavioral, and independent study skills. Within each area, the specific strategy is described and specific steps to the intervention are provided. Moreover, resources and video demonstrations are included for decoding. It is hoped that this is a beginning point for educators to start to implement, add, and create strategies based on their students' needs.