Response to Intervention--Reading

The breakdown: Thirty students. About five voracious, fluent, and critical readers. Three or four in critical need of intervention (tier three). Maybe ten who require something more than "first good instruction" (tier two). This leaves about twelve students in the "I can take it or leave it" category. I don't worry about them. They will make progress. My job is to make them "takers" every day.

The background: My cooperating teacher has a solid reading program in place. She used to teach first grade so her approach is filled with strategies that work across the spectrum of reading development. This is the first part of the solution: A fully differentiated literacy block.

The strategies: A few listen to stories and follow along on mp3s. These students also practice decoding with short, reading level specific books to help close the gap. Whole group instruction is spent on teaching critical response for good comprehension.


I decided to focus my energy on a couple students with serious comprehension challenges. When I meet with them we all read a page silently and then discuss it as a group. We re-tell, make connections, ask questions, predict etc. Then we read another section and repeat. If we struggle, we back up and re-read. If we don't, we take longer sections of text at a time.

The challenge: While the mp3s provide teacher-absent support for the decoding/fluency-challenged, I wondered, how could I ensure they would practice these strategies alone? While I intend to meet with them every day, realistically I needed a very structured tool for them to practice the strategy on days I meet with other readers.

The solution: I made a guided, micro-response tool. It looks like this:

Name:___________________________

Date:_____________

Comprehension Tool

Instructions: Use these questions to monitor your understanding after each section of reading. If you cannot answer the questions you must back up, re-read, and fix up your comprehension. Remember, you can do hard things.

Pre-Reading:

Do not skip this. It is one of the most important parts of the reading process!

Step one: Do an in-your-head hand retell about what you have already read. If this is a new book, read the back and look at the cover and table of contents if there is one.

Step two: Ask a question or make a prediction before you begin reading. Write your question(s) and prediction(s) below:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Page #______

1.     What is the main action?______________________________________________

2.    Make one connection (Choose either T2T, T2S, or T2W) OR make a prediction/ask a question. ____________________________________________________________

Page #______

1.     What is the main action?______________________________________________

2.    Make one connection (Choose either T2T, T2S, or T2W) OR make a prediction/ask a question. ____________________________________________________________

Page #______

1.     What is the main action?______________________________________________

2.    Make one connection (Choose either T2T, T2S, or T2W) OR make a prediction/ask a question.

 ___________________________________________________________

These questions continue on a second page. Not only does this exercise guide students through the stop, think, back-up and re-read strategy, it provides formative assessment that guides my own instruction. I encourage them to mix up the second part of each micro-response after they recount the main action on that page. By paying attention to what they leave out, I can zoom in even closer to specific critical thinking deficits.

The Result: The students are buying into this "tool" so far. They will use it intensely for a week or two, then I will have to introduce something a little different so we don't all get bored. I will also give them breaks to read without the requirement of such intense thinking. There has to be time to allow for the joy of reading right where you are, working with what you already have.

One of the children has made significant progress using this approach. I'm happy to have the data, but my not-so-secret bigger hope is that these students become book lovers. The answer to the question, "How does one motivate students to want to read, even when it's hard?" is to make them fall in love with stories. This is when it helps to be hopelessly in love with stories yourself, whether they be non-fiction, fiction, realistic fiction, non-realistic non-fiction, historical fantasy fiction, steampunk fiction, postmodern fiction, newspapers, grocery lists. . . .


Love + Strategy = Results.     More or less. . . .hopefully more.


Take a look at a hand retell strategy here.