Sami Richmond

SPED 222 Independent Study

Summer 2015 Final Paper
Often times, students who struggle with learning new material
will be able to better obtain information through the use of cognitive
and metacognitive strategies. Due to this, focusing on
cognitive/metacognitive strategies is crucial when working with
struggling learners. Specifically, using cognitive/metacognitive to
enhance ones plan of gaining knowledge can be extremely effective,
as it will lead to students learning AND thinking about their learning as
a routine. Students will know their strengths and weaknesses, which
can be built on in the classroom. In addition, using
cognitive/metacognitive strategies with students of exceptional
learning needs give students more independence and responsibility for
their own learning which is an especially important aspect when
working with adolescent learners nearing transition (either transition
into high-school or post-secondary transition). Specifically in reading,
writing, and math, teaching cognitive/metacognitive strategies in the
classroom can truly impact students learning positively.
While all cognitive strategies are crucial to adolescent learning,
reading cognitive strategies are extraordinarily important. While math
and writing strategies are important as well, neither of these subjects
can be fully comprehended without reading comprehension. Due to
this, it is imperative for teachers to take an early stance on students

who seem to be falling behind in reading identification and

comprehension. One of the best ways to enhance reading skills in
adolescents who are struggling is to use the Question-Answer
Relationship strategy (QAR).
QAR is a strategy to use with students after they have finished
reading a passage or story to help enhance comprehension. According
to WETA (2015), the QAR strategy teaches students how to decipher
what types of questions they are being asked and where to find the
answers to them. In the QAR questions, four different categories exist:
Right There Questions, Think and Search Questions, Author and You
Questions, and On My Own Questions. Right There Questions are
extremely straightforward, as they are literal questions with answers
found directly in the text. Think and Search questions require a little
more thinking, as they are questions based on information provided in
multiple areas of the text. Author and You questions are questions that
students are required to apply their own experiences to what is said in
the text. Lastly, On My Own questions are questions that are on the
subject of the text, but require students to use background knowledge
to answer rather than reading the text (WETA, 2015).
The QAR strategy really focuses on helping teachers help
students. The intended end result of using QAR is that all students will
achieve higher levels of literacy, while also bridging the literacy gap for
learners who may be falling behind their peers (Raphael & Au, 2005).

According to Raphael and Au (2005), the main purpose of QAR is to

provide a framework that offers teachers a straightforward approach
for reading comprehension instruction with the potential of eventually
closing the literacy achievement gap (p. 208). As a starting point,
there are multiple ways in which QAR bridges the gap for learners with
deficits.
QAR focuses on organizing questioning activities to increase
comprehension across multiple grade levels and subjects in regard to
helping students engage in a higher level thinking through literacy
instruction. This also provides students with necessary skills for highstakes testing (Raphael & Au, 2005). Using Right There questions,
students are encouraged to first scan the text to locate crucial
information. Following this step, students should take notes on the text
and use context clues to clarify definitions. With Think and Search
questions, students should first identify important information, and
then summarize the information to come up with potential answers.
They can follow by using the physical organization of the text to
properly come up with an answer. With Author and Me questions,
students are taught to first predict in the text, then visualize, then
begin to make inferences. The last step in Author and Me questions is
to make text-to-self connections. The most challenging question type,
the On My Own question, adds to the Author and Me questions by

adding text-to-text connections and additional inferences (Raphael &

Au, 2005).
Encouraging students to understand the reading cycle is another
important process toward achieving reading comprehension using QAR.
To understand the reading cycle using this strategy, students will think
about questions directly related to the text, such as who is the main
character? (Right There questions), what is the problem and how is it
resolved? (Think and Search questions), what might this story be
about, based on the title or cover (Author and Me Questions), and
what do I already know that can connect me to the text? (On My Own
questions) (Raphael & Au, 2005).
The most effective way to utilize these strategies of questioning
is through teacher modeling. Teachers should come up with
predetermined questions from each category, read a passage aloud,
ask questions, model thinking about which category each question fits
into, and model showing the students where to find each
answer/thinking process behind finding the answer. After modeling
these skills, students should be able to begin attaining basic reading
and comprehension skills (WETA, 2015).
Research exists to prove that QAR works for adolescent learners
with comprehension and general reading deficits. According to Raphael
and Au (2005), to demonstrate high levels of literacy when reading
nonfiction, students will need to draw on their knowledge of text

organization and be able to identify important details in texts, graphs,

photos and other materials (p. 207). QAR enhances this process by
encouraging students to be able to identify these details. In addition,
Raphael and Au attest that two decades ago, research showed that
QAR could reliably improve students comprehension (p. 208). It is
also important to note that QAR has been proven effective while
adjusted for multiple grade levels and content areas. The progression
of difficulty provided by the questioning categories has proven
effective across multiple domains (Raphael & Au, 2005).
Overall, QAR is an incredibly effective reading cognitive strategy
to utilize with adolescent learners. The steps detailed within the
strategy allow learners to separate their reading comprehension into
categories and be able to answer questions from each category. This
has been effective with learners of all ages, in multiple discipline areas.
As important as reading cognitive strategies are, writing
cognitive strategies are also crucial to the success of individuals
communication skills. POW + TREE is one strategy that works to help
students develop writing skills. While this strategy is primarily used for
individuals with deficits in writing, it has been an effective strategy for
all individuals. Having most research based on helping individuals with
learning disabilities, Mason and Shriner (2008) focus on how POW +
TREEs usage can support children with emotional and behavioral
needs.

The POW + TREE strategy has a variety of purposes to help

students with writing development. According to Mason and Shriner
(2008), POW + TREE helps students by teaching them to develop their
opinions and thoughts into manageable components prior to and
during the writing process (p. 74). The key word in this is
components. This strategy has been proven an effective strategy to
help students break their writing down into parts. In particular, it helps
students organize notes and write persuasive papers based on this
organization. In addition, this strategy encourages students to add to
their essays (rather than writing simplistic essays) and to support the
details they include in their writing with explanations (Mason & Shriner,
2008).
POW + TREE works to bridge the gap for learners with skill
deficits by providing students with the opportunity to structure a
detailed plan prior to beginning the writing process. This strategy also
reminds students to evaluate their performance throughout the
process (Mason & Shriner, 2008). The first step in POW + TREE is the
POW step: pick an idea, organize notes, write and say more. This
refers to the steps in the process of which students are forming and
stating an opinion, creating a graphic organizer to organize this
opinion, and writing an essay using the information that has been
organized (IRIS, 2014). The writing process is where TREE is utilized.
The most traditional way to use the TREE method is to: come up with

a topic sentence, come up with your reasons, explain your reasons,

and create an ending. The topic sentence stage encourages students
to reflect on their own beliefs and make their beliefs into one sentence.
The reasons stage allows students to reflect on WHY they believe what
they do (in three or more reasons, thus creating three main ideas).
After coming up with three main reasons, students will explain their
reasons providing explanations (this is the meat of the paragraphs).
The last step is the ending, which encourages students to wrap up
their beliefs included in the essay or paper (Mason & Shriner, 2008).
When POW and TREE are combined, students have their writing broken
down into sensible sections. This allows them to reflect on their own
thinking, as well as creating a piece detailing effective writing skills.
Teachers are encouraged to model this process prior to teaching
students the step-by-step process.
As a writing strategy, POW + TREE has been found effective
when used with elementary students and secondary students.
According to Mason and Shriner (2008), using POW + TREE has been
shown to improve students essay length, elements, and quality (p.
86). In a study conducted with students diagnosed with
emotional/behavioral disorders, five out of six students (between ages
of 10 and 13) showed improvement in writing persuasive essays
(Mason & Shriner, 2008). Researchers determined improvement by

examining the cohesiveness of parts of the essay, quality of writing,

amount of words written, and usage of transition words.
Overall, students generally perform better on tasks when they
are given a graphic organizer to use. The POW + TREE writing strategy
expands on the concept, by giving students a step-by-step process to
follow. Helping students of all ages and abilities, POW + TREE is an
effective strategy that has been proven to help students enhance their
writing skills, particularly in persuasive writing.
While reading and writing are necessary for the mastery of most
subject areas, math is very applicable to every day life. Additionally,
math is a subject in which students tend to struggle most in. Due to
this, cognitive strategies in math are extremely important to the
success of individuals with learning difficulties. Particularly, word
problems in math seem to be of a difficult nature for students with
learning disabilities. Solve It! is a cognitive strategy utilized in math,
specifically to help individuals who have difficulties solving word
problems. This strategy proves to be especially effective for students
with learning disabilities in math but can be used in the general
education setting as well.
According to Montague, Warger and Morgan (2000), teachers
generally teach solving word problems in a problematic way. The way
this process is generally taught includes steps of 1) reading the
problem, 2) deciding what to do, 3) solving it, and 4) checking work.
The main purpose of Solve It! is to add to this original process, by

providing extra instructional assistance for teaching students how to

decide what to do (Montague et al., 2000, p. 111). Solve It! sets out to
teach students to first UNDERSTAND the problem, then ANALYZE the
information prior to developing a LOGICAL plan and evaluating the
solution.
When teachers encourage the use of Solve It! to solve word
problems in math, they do so in a step-by-step process with the
expectation that students will learn to read the problem for
understanding. First, students are taught to read the problem for
understanding. Then, students are encouraged to paraphrase by
putting the problem into their own words, followed by visualizing the
problem by drawing a picture or making a mental image to represent
the problem. The final steps include setting up a plan for solving the
problem, estimating the answer, and computing the answer. Finally,
students will verify the solution (Montague et al., 2000). This process
not only helps students engage in an effective step-by-step process,
but also teaches students the importance of self-regulation strategies
by checking their work throughout each step. This process is proven to
be student-centered, process oriented, and relevant to instruction.
Solve It! has been tested specifically in three studies with
students with learning disabilities. Research from these studies show
that the paraphrasing step of this strategy is especially important to
help struggling learners, as these students often have difficulty

representing and understanding problems. In addition, these students

benefit from using visualization and developing hypotheses, both of
which Solve It! promotes (Montague et al., 2000). In one of the studies
mentioned, the progress of twelve students was measured, using Solve
It! to take math assessments. Six of these students were grades six
through eight, while six were high school students. In this study, each
of the students increased their scores substantially, proving the
effectiveness of Solve It! as a cognitive strategy in math (Montague et
al., 2000).
Overall, the importance of using cognitive strategies in math
should not be diminished. Math is everywhere, and many students will
not master necessary skills without being taught proper strategies.
Solve It! is one of these strategies, as it maintains the importance of
solving word problems in math among struggling learners.
There are many clear benefits of using cognitive/metacognitive
strategies for struggling adolescent learners in reading, writing, and
math. In addition to helping students take responsibility for their own
knowledge, it also allows students to see their areas of strength and
weaknesses. Overall, using cognitive/metacognitive strategies provides
routine for students with learning difficulties, which allows for a more
practiced, efficient way to learn.

References
IRIS (2014). Improving writing performance: A strategy for writing
persuasive
essays. Retrieved June 26, 2015, from
http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu
Mason, L. H., & Shriner, J. G. (2008). Self-regulated strategy
development
instruction for writing an opinion essay: Effects for six students
with
emotional/behavior disorders. Reading And Writing: An
Interdisciplinary
Journal, 21(1-2), 71-93.
Montague, M., Warger, C., & Morgan, T. H. (2000). Solve It!: Strategy
instruction to
improve mathematical problem solving. Learning Disabilities

Research &
Practice (Lawrence Erlbaum), 15(2), 110-116
Raphael, T. E., & Au, K. H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing comprehension and
test taking
across grades and content areas. Reading Teacher, 59(3), 206221.
WETA. (2015). Question-answer relationship. Retrieved June 25, 2015,
from
http://www.adlit.org/strategies/19802/