(Research and Planning for Intervention

Intervention Day 1

Student 1:

Student 2:

Student 3:

Areas of Focus

Decoding

Letter/Sound Automaticity

Comprehension

Measurable Literacy Goals

Student will score at least 94% accuracy on running record during day 2 of guided reading lesson.

Student will increase fluency at identifying known letter sounds.

Student will be able to retell story including setting, character names, key details from beginning to end, including problem and solution.

Intervention Strategies/ Progress Monitoring Tool

Student will use tap to read to help decode words (see description below). This is a strategy from Wilson Fundations. Student will take part in whole class word work lessons and one-on-one lessons to gain confidence with strategy so that he feels confident using it alone during guided reading and independent reading. Progress will be monitored by observations along with anecdotal notes being made during word work and guided reading lessons. Progress will also be monitored during day 2 in guided reading group by looking at accuracy during running records.

Student will go through letter naming cards provided by Wilson Fundations curriculum each day. Student will also take part in letter name/sound activities during station time. One activity will be a game called Snap. This is done with a pile of letter cards. Working with high school helper, reading partner and/or teacher turns are taken laying down cards as fast as possible and saying sound. There is a focus sound that when it is turned over the first person to lay their hand on it and say the sound gets to keep all the cards in the stack trying to win the game with the most cards (National Center on Intensive Intervention, n.d.).

Progress will be monitored during guided reading group as she is reading, and student will also go through cards each day while being timed to see how fast she can say the sound that each makes.

To start with, during guided reading group, teacher will have student read a couple of pages of the assigned book, stop and tell what is happening and then read a couple of more pages and repeat until book is finished. Teacher will then teach retelling using a retell rope. This is a manipulative that the student holds to assist in getting each necessary part. The retell rope is made out of yarn and pictures. At the top it starts with a picture of a house and two people, which represents setting and characters. Then there is a knot representing the problem followed by a B, M and E for beginning, middle and end. At the bottom there is a bow for the solution. Regarding the problem and solution, student may include these in the B, M or E sections.

Progress monitoring will be through observation, running records on day 2 of guided reading lessons and running record on cold read after day 3 of intervention.

Research/Resource

Wilson Fundations, Wilson Language Basics – Grade 1

Decoding enables students to figure out words in books and is an important base for other literacy skills such as fluency and comprehension (Reading Horizons, n.d.). Decoding needs to be taught explicitly and systematically. Wilson Fundations does that. In 1st grade, this curriculum starts by reviewing letter names and sounds and then teaches students how to read simple words by tapping them out and then sliding sounds together to make words. The first tap is with the thumb and pointer finger, followed by thumb and middle finger and then thumb and ring finger. The curriculum does move on from simple words to words that have a bonus letter like ‘bell’ and words with glued sounds like ‘ball’ where the /b/ would get a tap and then the glued sound /all/ would get a tap. Digraphs, blends and suffixes are also covered.

Wilson Fundations, Wilson Language Basics – Grade 1

Students need to be able to know letter sounds with automaticity to help them decode words. When a student does not have the automaticity, they are focusing all of their effort and attention on just remembering the letter sounds, which makes it difficult to put letter sounds together quickly to hear the word and ultimately, they may not be able to comprehend what they are reading (Brainspring, 2020). Wilson Fundations curriculum uses letter cards that are practiced daily during warm-up to help with automaticity. An example would be for the letter /a/ teacher would say A, apple, /a/ and students echo. When practicing writing letters teacher would repeat this again with students echoing to help the students connect the sound, a word that starts with it and the name to how the letter is made.

Literacy Footprints Guided Reading Books and Lesson Cards

Literacy Footprints is a guided reading curriculum that comes with leveled books and lesson cards for teachers. Each lesson starts with a book introduction where children are taking a picture walk with the teacher talking about what they see and what they think will happen in the story. Next, tricky words are pointed out and found and then students read. There is sight word work each day and also on day two there is a writing component.

The retell rope is a manipulative that the student holds to assist in getting each necessary part. The retell rope is made out of yarn and pictures. At the top it starts with a picture of a house and two people, which represents setting and characters. Then there is a knot representing the problem followed by a B, M and E for beginning, middle and end. At the bottom there is a bow for the solution. Regarding the problem and solution, student may include these in the B, M or E sections.

Observations

During book introduction, student finds unknown words and talks about what is happening in the pictures. During reading, he struggles with simple words like ‘let’ and ‘cat’. At unknown words, he silently pleads for help or says, “I don’t know ”. He makes little attempt to tap words out unless directed. During guided reading, student struggles with high frequency words that most 1st graders enter knowing like ‘the’, ‘and’ and ‘an’. He has little to no confidence as a reader. Student worked with high school helper for two days and briefly with teacher for two mornings practicing tapping to read. Teacher/helper would say word, tap it and then student built the word, then tapped it again and read. He did seem to gain some confidence after these lessons and was at least attempting to tap out words on his own, although he was not always successful.

During guided reading when student comes to a word that she does not know and is asked what the first sound says, she struggles coming up with the sound, but will eventually. Because it takes her so long tapping to read the word happens so slowly that it is hard for her to slide the words together and hear the word. She is trying to tap and read at my prompting and on the second book of the week made some attempts without prompting. I feel that she understands the process of tapping to read, but her lack of automaticity on letters is hurting her efforts. Student is good at recognizing the pattern in the books and using picture clues to figure out words that are unknown so that is a strength.

During guided reading this student has trouble staying focused, especially when I am helping other students or listening to other students read. He is a very bright student, who is a strong reader, but when asked to retell does so with minimum details and effort. He is always wanting to move onto the next thing without focusing on the task at hand. Once he does have the retell rope it does help to focus him and he will spend more time on each section, but still is lacking details especially in the middle of the story. He wants to tell just one detail from this section. I continue to urge him to tell me more at this point in his retelling.

Progress Monitoring Data

Running record on book 1, day 2, student had 85% accuracy.

Running record on book 2, day 2, student had 87% accuracy. He did tap out the word ‘cat’ and ‘fat’. This was a success, but these were also in book introduction and book had strong picture clues.

Letter Sound Timed data:

Day 1: 2:05

Day 2: 1:45

Day 3: 1:30

Day 4: 1:01

Day 5: 1:03

Student got faster each day except the last and it was close to the day before. The activities are helping her recall. The test will be if that sticks or she reverts back.

After day 1 of intervention student told characters, setting, one detail from beginning, 1 detail from middle and 1 detail from the end. They did naturally include problem and solution. Teacher had to prompt for middle detail as student initially went from beginning to the end of the story during his retell.

Intervention Day 2