Reading intervention provides students with supplemental instruction in decoding, reading comprehension, writing and study skills at their instructional level. It also gives them opportunities to read self-selected books outside of class.
Becoming a competent reader is a long and arduous process that requires many steps. Children who struggle with reading often become frustrated when they do not experience immediate success.
Learning Styles
Reading intervention is one way of helping a struggling reader to become proficient. However, it is important to remember that the main skill students need to learn in order to read well is reading itself! The best way to get better at reading is simply to spend a lot of time doing it.
While it is true that most people exhibit traits of more than one learning style, most have a preferred style. Each learning style is a distinct pattern of cognitive, affective and physiological behavior.
There are a wide range of learning styles, each with its own characteristics and recommended study methods. The verbal learning style is the most common, which refers to a preference for learning through language in written and spoken form. Other learning styles include visual, aural and kinesthetic styles. The majority of publicly available test-preparation materials that mention learning styles advocate for modifying instruction to cater to different learners. This is also known as differentiation.
Learning Strategies
Learning strategies are an integral component of reading intervention, and there are many different types. Some involve students engaging in peer-tutoring activities, which can help improve their literacy and decoding skills. Others involve a more structured approach to teaching reading, including attribution retraining, strategy instruction and reading comprehension practice.
Other methods of improving reading comprehension include activating prior knowledge, introducing text structures such as compare and contrast, problem and solution and cause and effect, and encouraging students to retell and summarize texts they have read. Also important is ensuring that students read widely, as this helps to expand vocabulary and reading fluency.
Students are selected to participate in reading intervention based on teacher recommendation, classroom performance and assessment results including standardized tests, district local assessments and individual screenings. Small groups of students meet on a regular basis with a certified reading specialist to receive supplemental reading intervention that complements classroom curriculum and instruction. The pace of instruction is adapted to accommodate each student’s rate of learning.
Developing Reading Skills
Developing reading skills is one of the most important aspects to teaching children at all grade levels. Teachers can help students develop reading skills by incorporating activities that focus on building phonological awareness, decoding practice and exposure to varied reading materials and literature. Reading intervention, however, takes this further by providing specialized instruction that is more specific to individual students and their current reading level.
This can be done in a variety of ways such as outside class time instruction, private tutoring or adjusting a regular classroom curriculum to make sure the students who need it are getting the support they require. It’s also important to remember that just like with any skill, you get better at what you practice so reading intervention should include lots of it! Especially since research shows that the earlier an intervention is carried out, the more likely it will be to produce beneficial results. Hurry and Sylva (2007) found immediate post-test effects for children receiving reading intervention, but longer term impact has only rarely been studied.
Teaching Reading Strategies
Teaching reading strategies can be challenging for teachers, but there are many different techniques that can help students develop their comprehension skills. These include activating prior knowledge, visualizing, asking questions while reading, summarizing and retelling. It’s important to teach these strategies through explicit instruction and model them to kids of all ages so they can practice them and become familiar with them.
It’s also important to remember that students need lots of time to build their comprehension skills and that reading should be fun! So don’t be afraid to let them read for fun, have them read at recess or during transitions and provide them with a variety of books.
Lastly, remember that students get better at what they practice. So the most important thing to do is spend a lot of time on reading! The more they read, the more confident and proficient they will become. This is especially true for students with disabilities.