interventions in action-our journey
Approximately 50 teachers in our district were led through Action Research projects surrounding a common problem. We all had primary students who were falling behind in reading. We knew that a focus on word-level reading skills would improve their reading so that they could then read more fluently and understand connected text. So, the question became, " How will improving word-level reading skills affect the reading achievement of our struggling readers? " Our project yielded remarkable results. Automaticity played a key role in these results as teachers applied strategies daily, and consistently built student's level of fluency in recognizing high frequency words, common clusters and independent reading. We utilized every transition more effectively, buying extra time for drills of the words and clusters and took time to practice blending these clusters together.We embedded short bursts of instruction throughout the day. We eliminated less meaningful activities and tasks and replaced them with extra reading time, and opportunities to search for clusters and words in authentic text. Students were prepared for the afternoon by placing books on their desks before lunch break, therefore no minute went by that was not purposeful. From the moment students entered the class, they were learning. No Daily Language or Math review booklets. No pointless workbook pages. No dead time. Each minute before the bell was spent reading or responding to a morning message. Agendas in grade one can sometimes mean pointless copying from the board. Not for us. Anything important went up on our website, eliminating the need for an agenda. We found ways around most of those "housekeeping tasks" that teachers think they need to do.
Teachers began this process with an explanation to students. "The more we read, the smarter we get!" and " If we want to read like grade 6er's, we need to practice, practice, practice!" All students bought into the reading culture and it didn't take long for routines to develop. Reading books were already on their desks when they arrived in the morning, and again after lunch. We taught until the bell, so every instructional minute was used. By severely reducing transition times and by being highly organized we bought our students an extra 25 minutes per day. That is 125 minutes per week, 8 1/2 hrs per month of extra reading time!! Sure, we used some of those minutes to review HF words and clusters but the majority of it was devoted to independent reading with appropriately leveled text.
During DAILY guided reading with our strugglers, we spent 5 minutes on quick, focused HF word activities. Another 5 minutes of focused work with clusters, or if necessary phonemic awareness activities, then onto a guided reading lesson.
All of these interventions were based on current research from leading literacy experts such as Richard Allingham, Linnea Ehri, Tim Rasinski, P Nevills, Fountas and Pinnell, D. Shankweiler, K Stanovitch and C. Juel and C. Minden-Cupp.
Teachers began this process with an explanation to students. "The more we read, the smarter we get!" and " If we want to read like grade 6er's, we need to practice, practice, practice!" All students bought into the reading culture and it didn't take long for routines to develop. Reading books were already on their desks when they arrived in the morning, and again after lunch. We taught until the bell, so every instructional minute was used. By severely reducing transition times and by being highly organized we bought our students an extra 25 minutes per day. That is 125 minutes per week, 8 1/2 hrs per month of extra reading time!! Sure, we used some of those minutes to review HF words and clusters but the majority of it was devoted to independent reading with appropriately leveled text.
During DAILY guided reading with our strugglers, we spent 5 minutes on quick, focused HF word activities. Another 5 minutes of focused work with clusters, or if necessary phonemic awareness activities, then onto a guided reading lesson.
All of these interventions were based on current research from leading literacy experts such as Richard Allingham, Linnea Ehri, Tim Rasinski, P Nevills, Fountas and Pinnell, D. Shankweiler, K Stanovitch and C. Juel and C. Minden-Cupp.
videos
Below are samples of interventions that teachers used in small groups or individually with strugglers. All interventions were tailored to student's literacy needs, however you will find many similarities in approach and activity. All of these worked to bring students up several reading levels in a short time.