Helping struggling readers to learn history content in middle school can be difficult due to heavy reading demands. In this study, researchers taught poor readers with and without disabilities in 8th grade to generate main idea statements, create compare and contrast paragraphs, and identify cause and effect relationships, along with relevant multisyllabic word study and vocabulary, as they read history text. The 34 participating students included 14 with disabilities and 20 without disabilities, who scored below the 5th percentile in reading, on average. The results were compared across special education and English Learner status and with 81 typical readers from the same classes who studied the same units of history. Treated students made significant gains in use of these strategies, and poor readers with and without disabilities performed similarly to their typical reader classmates in two of the three strategies following instruction. The instructional routines for each strategy are described. [At time of submission to ERIC this article was in press with "Learning Disability Quarterly," v40 n3 p174-186 Aug 2017 (EJ1148124).]