Week 4 powerpoint
- 2. WHY DO WE NEED READING INTERVENTION? Reading intervention begins with a child’s response to a given classroom reading program. As this week’s readings point out, greater attention is now being paid to how and what students are being taught in classrooms when considering a child’s “struggle” with learning how to read and write. RTI reflects this change in perspective, with it’s emphasis on classroom instruction that meets students’ needs, tiered approach to providing assistance, and targeted support based on assessment. The hope is that we can meet the needs of most, if not all, students in the classroom. Yet even with excellent, exemplary classroom practices in place, some children will undoubtedly still need more help with learning how to read and write. Our readings this week helped me to remember that a great deal of differentiated instruction can take place in the classroom during literacy instruction if the right program and practices are selected and executed. I will talk more about this in the next slide. The readings also helped me to understand the structures that are most effective for literacy intervention whether it is push in or pull out. Whether you are providing intervention within your literacy program or implementing something outside of the classroom, you will have to consider what program you will use and how it will be delivered. Will you modify your classroom curriculum? Will you purchase an intervention program? Will you pick and choose activities from a variety of sources? These are just some of the questions you will have to ask and answer.
- 3. QUALITIES OF A GOOD READING PROGRAM I enjoyed the article, Teaching struggling readers in elementary school classrooms: A review of classroom reading programs and principles for instruction, because it placed the issue of reading intervention first and foremost in the classroom literacy program and looked at how quality literacy instruction can help teachers meet the needs of struggling readers in classrooms. This kind of thinking about intervention is in line with the RTI approach, and supports a teaching philosophy that believes good curriculum should be designed to meet students where they are and provide ongoing opportunities to individualize instruction. This is what intervention does, but on a much smaller, intensive, and even more individualized scale, based on demonstrated need. Creating and executing classroom literacy programs that meet the needs of all students is our end goal, yet as Ann M. Duffy-Hester points out, this is “not easy to accomplish” (Duffy- Hester 1999). Our readings this week suggest that while we may not be able to meet the needs of all students during regular classroom instruction, the same principles, knowledge and qualities that go into planning excellent classroom literacy instruction, should also be applied when designing and implementing a quality intervention program. If teacher preparation programs can effectively address this area of professional development, more teachers will be better equipped to meet the diverse needs of the students they will teach. The qualities of a good intervention program will be discussed next.
- 4. QUALITIES OF GOOD INTERVENTION Unsurprisingly the qualities of a good intervention structure are similar to the qualities of good teaching in general. Any intervention session should have a lesson plan. All lesson plans should have an objective, an overall structure, and activities chosen to meet the objective (Caldwell & Lesley, 29). As was discussed in chapter three of, Intervention Strategies to Follow Informal Reading Inventory Assessment: So What Do I Do Now?, the structure of reading intervention should be balanced in its approach the same way that we take a balanced approach to reading instruction in the classroom. All areas of reading development (word identification, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension) should be addressed in intervention, however more time and focus will be given to areas of need as demonstrated by students assessments (Caldwell & Lesley, 29 ). It is also suggested that intervention sessions have a consistent and predictable lesson structure to increase student comfort, develop predictability, optimize time, and allow the teacher to be more present and responsive to student performance in the moment. This is true of good classroom teaching as well. A large and important decision to make when structuring intervention is selecting the program(s) and/or approaches you will use. It is also important to consider how this intervention will support what is being taught in the classroom and how you can work with the classroom teacher to plan accordingly. There are also important practical decisions regarding structures of intervention that have to be made such as: group size, frequency of meeting, length of session times, and push in or pull out models. Many decisions about how the intervention will go will be based on the needs and experiences of your students at that given time, as they should be. Any good intervention program should be flexible and responsive to student needs. An example of an intervention session might be: rereading of known text (fluency), guided reading introduction to new text (vocabulary, comprehension, fluency), word work with words/spelling patterns from new text (word identification), guided reading of new text (word identification, fluency,
- 5. READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS It is dizzying how many reading intervention programs are out there and it is worth looking at what each has to offer. It is important to choose a program that is proven to be effective, matches your instructional style and goals, and meets student needs. I don’t think it is worth discussing all of the programs presented in this week’s readings. However I do think it is important to know what you are looking for in a program and to choose one that reflects your beliefs and your students’ needs. In my experience. I have never used a program in its entirety, mostly because as a classroom teacher I have never had the luxury of that much time. I have, however, found it effective to use parts of programs and practices that I know are effective as supplements to classroom instruction during my literacy blocks. This has included guided reading, word study, skill/strategy building small groups, and the Wilson Fundations program. I do Fundations small groups for repetition and also have a literacy block dedicated to Fundations whole group. I believe in a balance of direct explicit phonics instruction and rich authentic literacy instruction. In my experience, all kids learn best with both, and strugglers in particular need this approach. When I taught an afterschool literacy enrichment for struggling readers in my classroom (which was essentially small group intervention) our schedule went something like this: shared rereading of known text or kids rereading known books, introduction to new book in a guided reading structure, guided reading, word work.