Intervention
Early interventions are designed to help students before they begin to fail. Knowing which students are at risk for reading difficulty and what to do for those students are the first steps in providing effective early intervention. Find out how to use this knowledge to help prevent reading problems for struggling readers.
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A Description of Foundation Skills Interventions for Struggling Middle-Grade Readers in Four Urban Northeast and Islands Region School Districts
Zorfass, J., & Urbano, C. (2008). A description of foundation skills interventions for struggling middle-grade readers in four urban Northeast and Islands Region school districts (Issues & Answers Report, REL 2008-No. 042). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs.
This study, conducted during the 2006/07 academic year, describes how four midsize urban school districts in the Northeast and Islands Region-Worcester, Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; Yonkers, New York; and Providence, Rhode Island-conducted foundation skills assessments and providing foundation skills programs to struggling middle-grade readers.
The study identifies six factors that, according to the district representatives interviewed, can promote or hinder program implementation:
- Building on the federal Reading First initiative by expanding selected aspects of the program to upper elementary and middle grades,
- Using Response-to-Intervention and three-tier reading models,
- Fostering collaboration among relevant departments and programs,
- Recruiting highly qualified teachers in relevant areas,
- Solving problems of time and scheduling, and
- Ensuring that programs are carried out as designed.
A Theory of Adolescent Reading: A Simple View of a Complex Process
How do adolescents move from reading words to applying knowledge learned from a text? See the adolescent reading model and the Strategic Intervention Model (SIM) clearly illustrated.
Clues to Dyslexia in Young Adults and Adults
Learn about how the specific signs of dyslexia, both weaknesses and strengths, in any one individual will vary according to the age and educational level of that person.
Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling Readers: A Practice Brief
Boardman, A. G., Roberts, G., Vaughn, S., Wexler, J., Murray, C. S., & Kosanovich, M. (2008). Effective instruction for adolescent struggling readers: A practice brief. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction.
The Center on Instruction created this practice brief to provide schools, districts, and states with background knowledge about best practices for older students who struggle to read. It focuses on the reading skills that adolescents need to more fully access content-area curricula and, in turn, secure a productive future.
Having Your Child Tested for Learning Disabilities Outside of School
Children who struggle with reading often need extra help. This help usually comes from the school, but some parents choose to look outside of the school for professionals who can assess, diagnose, tutor, or provide other education services. The following article provides information on how to find the right person for your child.
Interventions for Struggling Adolescent Readers
This article presents a round-up of intervention initiatives aimed at struggling adolescent readers. It provides a snapshot of program characteristics and research findings for: Reciprocal Teaching; Apprenticeship in Reading; Read 180; Language!; SRA Corrective Reading; and Strategic Instruction Model (SIM).
Re-Conceptualizing Extra Help for High School Students in a High Standards Era
The push to ensure all students engage in challenging classes in high school has created new demands on high schools, including a demand to providing extra help for students who are behind in reading, mathematics, and advanced reasoning skills. This report from the Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) at Johns Hopkins University looks at the nature of the extra help schools must provide, and argues that the old model of offering only three types of extra help-functional skills for students deemed to have limited futures, remedial instruction in elementary skills; or tutoring for students struggling to pass a course or improve their test scores—must be abandoned and replaced by interventions that support and accelerate the development of intermediate and even more advanced skills.
The Effects of an Intensive Reading Intervention on the Decoding Skills of H.S. Students with Reading Deficits
This article summarizes a study that evaluated the effectiveness of intensive instruction in reading decoding skills with struggling 9th grade readers. Subjects in one school were removed from their English classes for 4 to 8 weeks, during which they received intensive small-group instruction in the Word Identification Strategy, a learning strategy for decoding multi-syllabic words. Students in the comparison school received traditional reading instruction. The experimental students made an average gain of 3.4 grade levels in decoding skills compared with an average gain of 0.2 in the comparison school. Results indicate that intense strategy instruction within a relatively short time period can boost students' decoding skills by several grade levels.
The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early Impact and Implementation Findings
While much has been learned about literacy in the elementary grades, less is known about programmatic approaches that help struggling adolescent readers acquire the skills they need to succeed in high school. The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study tests the effectiveness of two supplemental literacy interventions targeted to ninth-grade readers with reading comprehension skills that are two to four years below grade level. The interventions studied are (1) Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy from WestEd and (2) Xtreme Reading from the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early Impact and Implementation Findings
Kemple, J., Corrin, W., Nelson, E., Salinger, T., Herrmann, S., and Drummond, K. (2008). The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early Impact and Implementation Findings (NCEE 2008-4015). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
While much has been learned about literacy in the elementary grades, less is known about programmatic approaches that help struggling adolescent readers acquire the skills they need to succeed in high school. The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study tests the effectiveness of two supplemental literacy interventions targeted to ninth-grade readers with reading comprehension skills that are two to four years below grade level. The interventions studied are (1) Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy from WestEd and (2) Xtreme Reading from the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
