Metacognitive Monitoring and Multimodal Cueing to Support Reading Comprehension for Multilingual Students With Developmental Disabilities

Multilingual students with developmental disabilities benefit from instruction that supports both comprehension monitoring and the development of expressive language. This study used a multiple-probe design replicated across three third-grade participants to evaluate a combined intervention involving explicit metacognitive self-monitoring routines and interactive digital versus static paper-based anaphoric cueing. Following the intervention, students demonstrated gains in comprehension-question accuracy and increased the complexity of their generated wh-questions. Gains were maintained during the maintenance phase, and accuracy was consistently higher with digital anaphoric cueing compared with paper-based anaphoric cueing. However, student feedback indicated a preference for paper-based anaphoric cueing, citing ease of use and familiarity. Students also reported high satisfaction with the intervention’s goals, procedures, and outcomes across modalities. Findings suggest that embedding multimodal supports within metacognitive frameworks can foster comprehension and language production in ways that recognize and build on multilingual learners’ cognitive and linguistic assets.