Developmental Reading is the name given to a branch of reading instruction designed to support

students in content area classes, such as social studies, history, and the sciences.
Developmental reading programs teach students strategies for engaging content texts, such as
textbooks, articles, and resource books that they will encounter in high school and beyond, in
higher education settings.
Developmental reading does not address basic reading skills, such as phonemic awareness,
decoding, and vocabulary.

Strategies for Success in Developmental Reading

Text Features
Important tools to help students to understand and access information in informational texts are
the "text features." Text features are both ways in which the authors and editors make the
information easier to understand and access, as well as explicit means of supporting the content
of the text through illustrations, photographs, charts, and graphs. Using text features is an
important element of developmental reading, which teaches students to use these parts to
understand and comprehend the content of the text
Text features are also part of most states high-stakes tests. Students in fourth grade and above are
usually expected to be able to identify the text features common to most non-fiction and
informational texts. At the same time, they help struggling readers find and identify the
information they are expected to know in content area classes, such as social studies, history,
civics, and science.
Helping students recognize and learn to use text features is a foundational part of developmental
reading. Teach students to first scan the text, reading captions and titles and subtitles, and they
will be better able to understand and remember the content of the text.
Text Features as Part of the Text
Titles, subtitles, headings, and sub-headings are all part of the actual text, used to make the
organization of the information in a text explicit. Most textbook publishers, as well as
informational text publishers, use these features to make the content easier to understand.
Titles
The chapter titles in informational texts usually prepare the student to understand the text. It tells
specifically what the author intends you to find in the chapter or article.
Subtitles
Subtitles usually immediately follow the title and organize the information into sections. Titles
and subtitles often provide the structure for an outline. It shows how the author organized the
information and can help students find the specific information they need.
Headings
Headings usually begin a subsection after a subtitle. There are multiple headings for each
section. They usually lay out the major points made by the author in each section.
Subheading
Subheadings also help us understand the organization of the thoughts contained in the section
and the relationships of the parts. Title, subtitle, heading, and subheadings could be used to
create guided notes, as they are pivotal parts of the author's organization of the text.
Illustrations
The illustrators are the pictures, of course.
Photographs
An image, a picture or likeness obtained by photography
Maps
Often to be found in social studies texts, and can typically be pivotal to understanding content.
Captions
They are found under illustrations, photographs, and maps, captions usually label what the
student sees, often offering import information for unlocking the meaning.
Index
Usually found at the back. Very important to know how to use it.
Glossary
Often word (new content-specific vocabulary,) will be boldfaced in the text, and students need to
know that the glossary has a definition.
Prediction
Getting students to prepare for approaching a text is an important part of success in reading. In
other words, scanning (using text features) was to lead to questions: What do I know? What do I
want to know? What do I expect to learn?
READING DEVELOPMENT COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
Generate Questions
A good strategy to teach all readers is that instead of just rushing through a passage or chapter, is
to pause and generate questions. These can either be questions about what has just happened or
what they think might happen in the future. Doing this can help them focus on the main ideas
and increase the student's engagement with the material.
After reading, students can go back and write questions that could be included in a quiz or test on
the material. This will require them to look at the information in a different manner. By asking
questions in this way, students can help the teacher correct misconceptions. This method also
provides immediate feedback.
Read Aloud and Monitor
While some might think of a teacher reading aloud in a secondary classroom as an elementary
practice, there is evidence that reading aloud also benefits middle and high school students as
well. Most importantly, by reading aloud teachers can model good reading behavior.
Reading aloud to students should also include stops to check for understanding. Teachers can
demonstrate their own think-aloud or interactive elements and focus intentionally on the meaning
“within the text,” “about the text,” and “beyond the text” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006). These
interactive elements can push students for deeper thought around a big idea. Discussions after
reading aloud can support conversations in class that help students make critical connections.
Promote Cooperative Talk
Having students stop periodically to turn and talk in order to discuss what has just been read can
reveal any issues with understanding. Listening to students can inform instruction and help a
teacher to can reinforce what is being taught.
This is a useful strategy that can be used after a read aloud (above) when all students have a
shared experience in listening to a text.
This kind of cooperative learning, where students learn reading strategies reciprocally, is one of
the most powerful instructional tools.
Attention to Text Structure
An excellent strategy that soon becomes second nature is to have struggling students read
through all the headings and subheadings in any chapter that they have been assigned. They can
also look at the pictures and any graphs or charts. This information can help them gain an
overview of what they will be learning as they read the chapter.
The same attention to text structure can be applied in reading literary works that use a story
structure. Students can use the elements in a story's structure (setting, character, plot, etc) as a
means of helping them recall story content.
Take Notes or Annotate Texts
Students should read with paper and pen in hand. They can then take notes of things they predict
or understand. They can write down questions. They can create a vocabulary list of all the
highlighted words in the chapter along with any unfamiliar terms that they need to define. Taking
notes is also helpful in preparing students for later discussions in class.
Annotations in a text, writing in the margins or highlighting, is another powerful way to record
understanding. This strategy is ideal for hand-outs.
Using sticky notes can allow students to record information from a text without damaging the
text. Sticky notes can also be removed and organized later for responses to a text.
Use Context Clues
Students need to use the hints that an author provides in a text. Students may need to look at
context clues, that is a word or phrase directly before or after a word they may not know.
Context clues may be in the form of:
Roots and affixes: origin of the word;
Contrast: recognizing how word is compared or contrasted with another word in the sentence;
Logic: considering the rest of the sentence to understand an unknown word;
Definition: using a provided explanation that follows the word;
Example or Illustration: literal or visual representation of the word;
Grammar: determining how the word functions in a sentence to better understand its meaning.
Use Graphic Organizers
Some students find that graphic organizers like webs and concept maps can greatly enhance
reading comprehension. These allow students to identify areas of focus and main ideas in a
reading. By filling in this information, students can deepen their understanding of the author's
meaning.
By the time students are in grades 7-12, teachers should allow students to decide which graphic
organizer would be most helpful to them in understanding a text. Giving students the opportunity
to generate representations of the material is part of the reading comprehension process.
Practice PQ4R
This consists of four steps: Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review.
Preview has students scan the material to get an overview. The question means that students
should ask themselves questions as they read.
The four R's have students read the material, reflect on what has just been read, recite the major
points to help learn better, and then return to the material and see if you can answer the questions
previously asked.
This strategy works well when coupled with notes and annotations.
Summarizing
As they read, students should be encouraged to stop periodically stop their reading and
summarize what they have just read. In creating a summary, students have to integrate the most
important ideas and generalize from the text information. They need to distil the important ideas
from the unimportant or irrelevant elements.
This practice of integrating and generalizing in the creation of summaries make long passages
more understandable.
Monitor Understanding
Some students prefer to annotate, while others are more comfortable summarizing, but all
students must learn how to be aware of how they read. They need to know how fluently and
accurate they are reading a text, but they also need to know how they can determine their own
understanding of the materials.
They should decide which strategies are most helpful in making meaning, and practice those
strategies, adjusting the strategies when necessary.