Reading intervention is a program that helps children who are struggling with reading. It provides individualized attention and supports classroom instruction.
These strategies help build students’ foundational skills in reading, including phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary and comprehension. You can learn more about effective interventions by visiting the What Works Clearinghouse for reading research.
Phonics
Phonics teaches children the correspondence between sounds and letters (graphemes). This knowledge makes it easier for them to sound out and decode words. Students who use phonics in their reading become fluent readers.
Teachers monitor a student’s progress with phonics through periodic assessments. Listening to a student read while tracking errors and examining written work can help teachers identify areas of strength or struggle. Teachers also examine if students are able to use their phonics skills in reading connected text.
Systematic synthetic phonics instruction is a proven approach to literacy instruction, particularly for struggling readers. The program is based on research and teaches all students the skills they need to be successful readers. It includes explicit instruction, small group instruction, guided practice and independent application to decodable texts.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the key to understanding what you read. It’s like a toolbox–without the right words, you can’t understand the bigger picture.
The National Reading Panel reports that students who have poor vocabulary skills tend to have lower comprehension scores, and vice versa. It’s important for teachers to be aware of the role vocabulary plays in reading, so they can help students build their word knowledge.
To improve students’ vocabulary, consider teaching Tier two words, which are words that are partially familiar but not fully understood, as part of classroom read-alouds and word instruction. Additionally, promote word consciousness by having students make flashcards and say a word’s definition every day (every day is best).
Using hands-on strategies like this helps kids build their word recognition. Another great way to help them learn vocabulary is by having them label pictures with the appropriate adjectives on sticky notes. Then, they can walk around the room and place the word-stickies on objects that apply to them.
Comprehension
Comprehension is a cognitive skill that involves extracting meaning from text. Strategies that promote comprehension include questioning, visualizing, monitoring/clarifying, inferring, and summarizing. When teaching comprehension, strategies are best taught in groups rather than one at a time. It is also helpful to use grade level complex texts for strategy instruction.
Reading comprehension is what makes reading enjoyable, fun, and informative. Children who comprehend are able to visualize stories, anticipate what will happen next, laugh at jokes, and make inferences from the text.
To develop reading comprehension, teachers should provide direct instruction on the grammatical structures of written language, deconstructing mentor text from read alouds to help students understand how words work together. They should also teach children the different genres of literature, how narrative and expository text are structured, and what characteristics of figurative language are used. They should also promote class discussions and questioning to encourage higher-level thinking about the text.
Fluency
Explicit interventions focused on fluency have a positive impact on students’ reading skills. They provide opportunities for students to practice decoding, high-frequency words and multisyllable words. They also provide explicit instruction in phonological awareness (identifying first sounds, blending and segmenting the sounds in words, and connecting letters to their sounds) and phonics, including letter-name and letter-sound correspondence and recognizing spelling patterns.
Children who are not fluent readers need to focus on figuring out the words, which leaves them little time and energy for understanding the meaning of the text. Teaching children to read with a steady rhythm and prosody allows them to focus on comprehending the meaning of the words and stories they are reading, develop images from their own imaginations, and ultimately enjoy the experience of reading.