Reading intervention provides extra support and instruction to help struggling students improve their reading skills. This can be done in small groups or with individual instruction.
Reading instruction should be based on research and proven practices. This helps to ensure that students are getting the best possible results.
There are five core aspects of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Individual Interventions
Students who struggle with reading often have deficits in one or more of the core aspects of literacy. Intervention strategies focus on teaching and developing these skills. They can include explicit instruction (teacher-led, interactive learning with clear explanations and demonstrations) and supported application of the new skill through aligned student materials.
Interventions can occur in small groups or in one-on-one sessions with a qualified interventionist to provide personalized support. Educators who implement reading interventions typically are highly trained in specialized instructional strategies for struggling readers.
Educators also may use a variety of diagnostic assessments to pinpoint the specific areas of reading proficiency that require attention. They can then provide focused instruction, addressing individual needs through individualized goals and customized milestones that are measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, if students are having trouble with comprehension, teachers can teach them to activate background knowledge, identify text structure, and compare and contrast narrative structures. These strategies help students develop literary analysis and writing skills.
Group Interventions
Small-group reading interventions provide intensive instruction that is tailored to students’ individual needs. These groups can help students master the five core elements of reading: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
This group is best suited for students who are proficient at decoding isolated phonemes and blending sounds to form words, but who still struggle to recognize common phonics patterns in multisyllabic words. This group focuses on building reading fluency and expanding vocabulary by using techniques like repeated reading, guided oral reading, and word work.
This group helps students make the transition from proficient decoders to thoughtful, analytical readers. This group teaches students how to ask deeper questions about text and explore new ideas and perspectives through reading. Groups can be grouped strategically based on skill needs, and daily formative assessment allows educators to adjust instruction based on student responses. Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals for each student also allows for incremental progress to be monitored and celebrated.
Blended Interventions
A number of reading interventions incorporate research-based instructional routines to help students at risk for academic failure. However, these strategies often require substantial time in the school day and may not be a comprehensive reading curriculum for struggling students. The NCII lessons are designed to illustrate concepts and supplement, not supplant, existing reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers.
Reading comprehension involves the efficient access, retrieval, and integration of semantic information into sentence- and discourse-level translations. Interventions that target these processes, such as word and world knowledge, summarizing text, inference making, and text-based discussion, are known to improve comprehension among early elementary and middle-grade struggling readers.
Let’s Go Learn offers individualized instruction based on each student’s strengths and needs, enabling them to make significant progress in the areas they struggle with the most. The program also provides educators with detailed progress monitoring to ensure students are on track for literacy success. Request a demo to see how Let’s Go Learn can support your students and teachers with evidence-based reading intervention.
Professional Development
A strong professional learning program provides educators with a deep understanding of how students learn to read. This knowledge of the science of reading (SOR) enables teachers to implement research-backed teaching strategies, promoting a literacy instruction that meets every student where they are on their individual reading journeys.
For example, a student struggling to decode may need a phonics intervention, while one who struggles with comprehension will need to build background knowledge to better connect to what they’re reading. This can be accomplished by incorporating SOR-based strategies such as activating prior knowledge, teaching students how to infer and predict, and providing opportunities for collaborative discussion of complex texts.
Let’s Go Learn offers products and resources that support individualized reading interventions, including diagnostic assessments to pinpoint each student’s skills and challenges. Educators can also learn how to use these tools to create engaging learning experiences that cultivate student motivation and achievement. This demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement, which encourages innovation in classroom instruction.