Metacognitive strategy instruction was used to teach two deaf children (ages 11 and 12) with differing American Sign Language and English language skills to summarize stories in writing. The instructional program used a knowledge of text structure--specifically story structure--to improve literacy skills by enhancing the children's ability to comprehend, remember, and generate stories. Program components addressed learning reasons for summarizing, identifying the kinds of information contained in a story, finding this information, organizing it for a summary, and writing the actual summary. Mechanical aspects of writing such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation were not stressed. Effectiveness of the program was evaluated using a single-subject design. Baseline measures revealed that the subjects had only a meager knowledge of story structure. During intervention, subjects' performance rose dramatically. Although the summaries they produced were not mechanically perfect, they had the structure of a story and therefore appeared to be better writing samples than those produced before intervention. In one subject, this level of performance was maintained; in the other, performance declined during the maintenance period. (Author/VW)