Reading intervention is an approach that accelerates the reading skills of students who are struggling. It is implemented within a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework and provides intensive, targeted instruction to students reading below grade level.
The five essential components of reading include phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading aloud and comprehension. In addition, teachers should make sure they are providing relevant content and frequent assessments to identify kids who need extra help.
Phonological Awareness
Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness improves and accelerates reading development. Research shows that children who struggle with reading have poorer phonological awareness than their peers. (Good, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998; Torgesen, 1987).
Children who have poorer phonological awareness are more likely to experience difficulty in decoding words. The larger a child’s expressive vocabulary, the more advanced phonemic awareness skills they will be able to learn, including blending, segmenting, adding, deleting or substituting individual sound elements of a word (e.g., /m/, /a/, /p/).
Explicit teaching of the sounds of speech is critical for all students, especially those with dyslexia and those with speech or language disorders. The key is integrating this with phonograms and orthographic patterns. This is done through explicit instruction, practice and repeated exposure. It is most effective if done before letter learning begins. The following are examples of screening and progress monitoring measures that have been proven to be valid and reliable through research.
Vocabulary Building
Vocabulary development is one of the most critical factors in reading comprehension. It is estimated that students need to know 90-95% of the word meanings in a text to comprehend it at grade level. Research shows that explicit vocabulary instruction is effective for increasing knowledge of word meanings, facilitating decoding and comprehension skills.
It is also important to teach students the morphological features of words (prefixes, suffixes, and roots) to help unlock word meanings. This can be done through activities such as using paint chips to teach synonyms or by creating a word wall to identify important content specific words.
It is important to teach key vocabulary words before, during, and after reading. It is recommended that teachers pre-teach important reading text words using explicit instructions and then provide strategies for retention (EH Hiebert & Kamil, 2005). It takes multiple encounters of a word to become a part of a student’s vocabulary bank. For example, some studies indicate it can take up to 17 exposures before a new word is retained!
Reading Aloud
Whether it is a classic picture book packed with action and emotion or a chapter book that exposes students to new vocabulary and language, reading aloud helps build students’ listening skills. It also gives children the opportunity to hear how a word is pronounced so they can use that knowledge when they begin to decode words themselves.
In addition, research supports the effectiveness of read-alouds in developing students’ vocabulary and comprehension skills. In fact, children who hear more words from parents and teachers tend to have larger vocabularies than those who do not.
When reading aloud, make sure to incorporate voice intonation, pauses and eye contact. This will allow students to absorb the text and participate in the discussion. You might even encourage students to act out parts of the story or to write about what they learned from it. All of these activities help students develop the active listening skills that will be necessary when they are reading independently.
Oral Comprehension
During reading intervention, students practice comprehension by hearing text read aloud. Guided oral reading is important to teach error correction and phrasing, as well as to reinforce vocabulary and reading strategies such as predicting what happens next or finding the main idea. In addition, it’s a great way to build reading stamina. Students can alternate with a classmate, or listen to a teacher-led audio version of the text.
The effectiveness of oral reading has been linked to executive functions such as working memory and semantic fluency, which are also important for comprehension. A recent study on reading comprehension found that post-treatment gains on receptive language subtests (Concepts and Following Directions and Word Classes – Receptive) and on comprehension of paragraphs and narratives were correlated with post-treatment gains in oral comprehension skills.
In the example below, each student had a low reading comprehension (RC) score before the intervention. Using the Simple View, it’s clear that Student A was weakest in decoding (D) and strong in language comprehension (LC), so he improved his RC score dramatically. Student B, on the other hand, improved his RC score only minimally because his D skill was already strong and his LC score was relatively weak.