Reading intervention is a process by which educators work with students to address specific reading difficulties. It involves teaching reading skills to students who need help and offering extra practice outside of the classroom.
For example, students may be given a universal screener to see what reading skills they need more work on. Teachers will then give a diagnostic assessment to figure out the areas of concern.
Reading Clinics
The Reading Clinic provides intensive, one-on-one reading intervention for students who struggle. It’s also an internship site for M.S. in Reading Specialization graduate students.
Early interventions focus on foundational skills like phonemic awareness, letter recognition and basic vocabulary. Engagement is key for children in this stage, so educators may employ games or storytelling to make learning fun.
As children gain confidence in their ability to read, interventions often shift to improving reading fluency and expanding vocabulary. This can be done through repeated reading, guided oral reading and other techniques.
It’s important to monitor progress throughout an intervention. Educators can do this by utilizing reading assessment tools and holding regular parent-teacher conferences. By tracking a child’s progress, teachers can determine whether an intervention is working and make adjustments as needed. This is especially helpful for English Language Learners who often have additional literacy hurdles to overcome.
One-on-One Instruction
Students who are far below grade level may require individualized reading intervention. This is most commonly provided through one-on-one instruction or private tutoring.
One-on-one instruction allows teachers to customize strategies to each student’s needs, increasing the likelihood of success. Personalized instruction also provides opportunities for extensive practice and high quality feedback that is often lacking in group tutoring sessions.
Unlike in classroom instruction where students may be distracted by their peers, one-on-one instruction eliminates outside distractions and allows learners to concentrate solely on the skills that need work. This can boost confidence and lead to greater progress over time.
Providing intensive instruction is an important step to improving reading proficiency. However, this type of intervention can be challenging to implement in a large class or in small groups. In these cases, a blended approach with tier 2 and tier 3 interventions can be more effective. This includes using a research-proven program like Lexia Core5 to ensure every student is receiving differentiated instruction.
Reading at Home
A daily reading routine is a powerful tool that can help kids of all ages and reading levels. Parents can establish a time of day that is dedicated to reading and make it a consistent part of their children’s daily lives. They can also create a cozy reading corner at home with comfortable seating and a variety of books for kids to choose from.
Reading at home can help kids improve their vocabulary, expand their knowledge of the world around them and boost their overall reading fluency. It can also help them develop a positive learning attitude, which is critical for success in school and life.
Our program uses interactive instruction to help students build key literacy skills, including letter recognition and phonics (blending sounds together to form words) as well as vocabulary development, comprehension strategies and reading aloud. This process helps children become confident readers and unlocks a lifetime of opportunity and wisdom. The program begins with a brief, interactive placement test that discreetly matches each child to their appropriate reading level.
Support from Parents
Parents can help their children at home by setting aside time for reading. They can also provide a library of books at their child’s reading level and monitor their progress. Parents can be a strong influence on their children’s literacy development, skills and attitudes towards reading.
Reading intervention is a way to target the main issues that students have in reading. This is done by implementing curriculums or programs that break down the main components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension. This can be done by giving a student formative assessments and diagnostic assessments, or through using various teaching methods that are more tailored for struggling readers.
Tutoring can also be an effective way to target the specific areas of difficulty. For example, students who struggle with comprehension can be taught strategies like understanding story structure and genre to better understand what they are reading. They can also be taught morphological awareness (understanding prefixes, suffixes and base words) to help them pull apart and define words that don’t follow traditional patterns.