What Does Intervention Really Mean?
I am going to be really honest here and say that when I was a classroom teacher, I thought intervention did not apply to me. I thought first and foremost that I wasn't qualified to deliver it. I also thought that it was probably best to leave that type of instruction to the reading specialist.
Looking back, I feel like I heard the word intervention and thought that my students would be pulled out, this magic wand would be waved over their heads, and they would come back to me reading by the end of the year. The truth is, reading intervention does not have to be a scary word. In a nutshell, reading intervention is meeting our students where they are and teaching them exactly what they need to become successful readers. Who better to do that than their classroom teacher? As a classroom teacher, you know your students better than anyone. You are on the front lines. You work with them every single day and you know their strengths and their weaknesses and more importantly their learning style. You are also the one who has given them all of the assessments.
I decided to write this blog post today, because I don’t want you to be like me. I want to empower you to take the first step in changing the path of the struggling readers in your classroom. The truth is, you don’t need hours and hours of training to be a successful reading teacher. You just need to understand the science behind reading and the gaps your students have.
Let’s break it down.
What is reading intervention?
Reading intervention is a specifically designed approach that is provided to students for the primary purpose of increasing reading skills. This simply means that we design a plan around student needs.
If we know and understand this, then we can help our students by knowing exactly where to start.
Where do we start?
I always start by giving a couple different assessments. The first assessment I give is a quick phonological awareness assessment. I want to know specifically what gaps my students have. I recommend using this assessment if you teach k-1 (Phonological Awareness Assessment) and this assessment if you teach grades 2-5 (PAST; David Kilpatrick)
I also like to give some sort of spelling assessment. I think in light of the Science of Reading topics, spelling tests can get a bad rap. Here is my position on the topic: If you are using a spelling assessment as a diagnostic tools, you are using it in the right way. This means, if you are giving your students a spelling test to assess their knowledge, and help drive their instruction- Awesome, good for you! If you are giving your students a list of words on Monday, asking them to memorize them by Friday and assessing them on those words, please stop (sorry, not sorry)! If you know better, do better!
Okay, now that my Ted Talk is over, let’s talk about the information you can gather from a diagnostic spelling test. Believe it or not, you can get a lot of insight into a child’s reading ability by simply analyzing their spelling mistakes. I would encourage you to look at the entire word vs. a right or wrong approach. Here is a video to break it down for you!
Now that we have some data, it’s time to make a plan and start instruction. Remember: it is not a one size fits all model, therefore we have to make sure we use the data we collected and group our kiddos accordingly.
Here are some helpful tips:
Analyze what they have mastered and what they still need to know. I use this document to help me figure out where to start instruction. You can download it here. Once I know what each student needs, I can look at the scope and sequence and begin planning my instruction.
Plan instruction around the needs of your students. Most of the time, I am able to group my students into similar categories. Example: Johnny, Sam, and Ella all need work on CVC and CVCe words
Re-Evaluate student progress often. Here are some things to look for. I hope that you found this post helpful. If you take anything away from this post, let it be this
Are my students transferring their learning into their writing?
Are my students able to decode the phonics skills within text?
Am I seeing growth?
You have the power to reach your students. Don’t wait for the interventionist. Get started now and of course accept the help as it comes. You can download all the goods from this post below:
