Reading intervention is a program that focuses on boosting the skills of slow readers. It can be a great way to help students develop a reading habit and improve their academic performance.
Generally, reading intervention focuses on developing key reading skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, and comprehension. It also focuses on teaching students strategies for reading different types of literature.
Identifying the Problem
When it comes to reading intervention, identifying the problem is vital. Whether it’s a student who struggles to read or a parent who suspects their child might be struggling with reading, identifying the problem will help you tailor instruction to meet each person’s unique needs.
A common reading problem is a lack of focus or attention to detail. Students may skip words, add sounds they don’t hear, or have trouble noticing details like endings and punctuation.
The most successful intervention programs are systematic and explicit, which means they follow a well-defined sequence of steps. They also include frequent meetings with the teacher and the student’s parents.
When teachers and literacy specialists look at children’s reading problems, they often find three common patterns that recur repeatedly. Understanding these common patterns can be a key to effective intervention and classroom differentiation.
Identifying the Student’s Needs
A teacher should determine the student’s reading needs before planning any reading intervention. There are several factors to consider: age, grade level, academic language and background knowledge, and reading comprehension and decoding difficulties.
Some students experience mixed reading problems with decoding and comprehension issues at the same time. This can be a common problem for English learners and students with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (ADHD).
The student should be provided with reading programs and materials that address their reading needs at their own pace. This will be helpful in improving their skills and achieving reading fluency.
One common issue for struggling readers is phonological awareness. It involves being aware of every sound made.
Struggling readers often guess a word when they recognise a few letters rather than decoding all of the sounds.
For these students, it’s important to teach them the correct way to decode a word by teaching phonics and highlighting the different types of words that they may have trouble with. It’s also important to use a variety of reading intervention techniques that can help them develop their skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and comprehension.
Planning Your Lessons
When implementing reading intervention, it’s important to plan your lessons ahead of time. This is especially true if you’re working with a large number of students at once.
Planning your lessons is a great way to ensure that students are receiving a comprehensive and effective program that will help them improve their reading skills. It also helps you ensure that you’re not wasting precious resources.
In addition to ensuring that your lessons are engaging, it’s also important to make sure that they’re being taught at an appropriate level for your students. You want to provide them with materials that are challenging but not too difficult, so that they can be successful.
Using text to text connections during reading intervention is a great way to engage your students in powerful conversations about the books they’re reading. They can discuss similarities and differences between the characters, or how their own lives relate to the stories they’re reading.
Keeping a Reading Log
In the classroom, teachers need to keep reading logs for students to track their progress. These can be on paper or done virtually.
Keeping a reading log is helpful for teachers and parents, but it can also be a turnoff for some kids. Some studies suggest that mandatory reading logs can discourage kids from reading for pleasure and make them feel as if they have to read to achieve a goal.
One alternative is to have students keep book reviews in a bullet journal or online. This allows them to be creative and more free with their writing.
Another alternative is to have students participate in a reading challenge. These can be weekly or monthly challenges that involve reading different types of books.
Whether you’re teaching a struggling student or a well-read student, it’s important to find the best way to keep them motivated to read. By offering them options in their reading material, how they keep track of their progress and how they want to share their progress, you’ll be able to grow their excitement about reading!