Reading comprehension is one of the fundamental components of students’ academic learning. Students with learning disabilities may experience difficulties, particularly when reading informational texts, in identifying important information, establishing relationships among pieces of information, and making use of the structural features of texts. The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed description of the theoretical foundations and instructional procedures of a text-structure-based strategy instruction model developed to support the comprehension of definitional informational texts. In this respect, the article is important to the literature. The model presented in the article consists of the following components: recognizing the definitional text structure, identifying its structural elements, organizing information through graphic organizers, and using the strategy independently. The instructional process is based on the stages of modeling, guided practice, and independent practice. The article also presents recommendations regarding the characteristics of the texts to be used in implementing the model, students’ prerequisite skills, and instructional practices for teachers. The model is important in terms of providing guidance and contributing data to future research on the informational text comprehension skills of students with learning disabilities, as well as to future studies on text structure instruction. The proposed model provides a theoretical and practical framework for classroom practices aimed at supporting the comprehension of informational texts among students with learning disabilities.
Keywords: reading comprehension, expository texts, definitional text, text structure, strategy instruction