Reading intervention is a process that helps students progress toward literacy. It is usually a part of a school’s multi-tiered support system.
Reading interventions should include explicit instruction and supportive scaffolding with a straightforward approach to learning. They should target the five core aspects of reading: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.
Phonics
Students with learning disabilities often have a phonics gap, which is why they need explicit, multi-sensory phonics instruction. Many phonics programs follow a scope and sequence, starting with the alphabet and moving to sounds, letters, and words. Other phonics programs teach a multi-sensory approach, like Orton-Gillingham, which is typically delivered one-on-one by trained teachers.
When planning a strong phonics intervention, teachers must consider the students’ individual needs and determine which skills they need help with. Teachers can use a universal screener or standardized assessments like MAP/NWEA and iReady to identify the reading skills each student has trouble with. Once they have these areas of need, teachers can assign them to a group for phonics.
Teachers should also consider the impact of a student’s verbal memory on their progress with phonics, as this can have an effect on their decoding and word reading abilities. Our research with students with ID has found that lower verbal memory is associated with less progress with phonics-based interventions.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words in our language and is a critical component of reading. The words that a student knows form the foundation of comprehension, but in order to read well, a student must also have an understanding of higher-level grammatical concepts and morphology (Florida Center for Reading Research Glossary of Reading Terms).
Students learn vocabulary both indirectly, through daily engagement in oral language and listening to adults read to them, and explicitly, through word learning strategies such as simple definition, synonyms and antonyms, models, good examples and bad examples, and pictures. Students must encounter a new word many times in multiple contexts before it is firmly anchored in their long-term memory, as described by Stahl (2005).
Vocabulary instruction should include both academic language, or “bricks” (words students are likely to find in textbooks and on tests) and connecting words, or mortar, that provide additional meaning across texts. The 5CCL Activity Library contains many resources to support students with building and expanding their vocabulary.
Comprehension
Reading comprehension is a complex cognitive process that requires an individual to analyze, integrate, and construct mental representations of written or spoken text. This includes tracking the connections between ideas and recognizing the intent of authors. It also involves assessing whether a given piece of information aligns with or adds to what you already know, or offers a new viewpoint or perspective. Comprehension also involves understanding text structure and organization, including genre features like pacing, narrative conventions, and figurative language.
Teaching comprehension strategies often begins with a focused and explicit teaching of vocabulary and decoding skills. However, a large body of literature shows that this initial instruction may be too focused and results in the neglect of important instructional goals such as predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. Moreover, this approach can be counterproductive to students’ overall development because focusing on these foundational skills can actually make it harder for children to acquire the higher-order literacy abilities that are essential to comprehension.
Fluency
Fluency is a reading skill that allows children to process word recognition and comprehension effortlessly. Most kids first become fluent by late second or early third grade, but they each develop their fluency at their own pace. Reading fluency is best taught by having kids do a lot of reading at their appropriate reading level. Using a stop watch to time them helps them see their progress and feel motivated to keep going.
Many studies have shown that Repeated Reading (RR) improves fluency for students with dyslexia and/or reading difficulties. It is a highly effective intervention for improving fluency rate and accuracy when the passages are easier than the students’ current grade level and when they are given explicit model-reading and performance feedback.
One of the most popular strategies for implementing RR is pairing students based on their reading ability and having them take turns repeated reading a passage to a target fluency goal. Adding in the use of a passage preview and/or a goal setting procedure also enhances outcomes.