Paired Reading - An Intervention to Address Reading Fluency

Last week, I talked about a popular basic-skills intervention. This week, I wanted to present an intervention to build reading fluency. Again, below I hope to present all of the information you would need to get this intervention off it's feet with your own students. If I leave anything out or if I do not explain something well enough, please feel free to leave a comment and I will do what I can to address your concerns.

Overview
Paired reading is an intervention designed to build reading fluency through the student and another person reading in stereo at the student's pace. Paired reading also draws attention to and immediately corrects incorrectly-pronounced words to help support accuracy.

Skills Being Targeted (Rathvon, 2008)

• Reading Accuracy
• Reading Rate
• Word Identification
• Reading Comprehension

Progress Monitoring Probes

As always, there is some room for creativity with regards to creating progress monitoring probes. Typically, a standard probe for fluency investigates rate and accuracy, as these fluency skills are easily quantifiable. However, despite the probe used, listen to the student's prosody while they read. While more qualitative, in nature, these observations are important to ensure the student isn't "reading like a robot" or ignoring punctuation, which could impact comprehension.

Progress monitoring probes for fluency can come from several different sources. DIBELS has several options for fluency probes in which teachers time how long it takes students to read short passages (rate) and mark how many words were inaccurate (accuracy). The DIBELS passages are beneficial since they also provide norms for grade-level performance, which are also displayed on the CBM Focus spreadsheet discussed in a previous post.

Alternatively, you could use passages selected from their reading textbook. You can type them in to a probe generator such as the one that can be found here. This generator also allows for a readability analysis to ensure the passage is on a level appropriate for the student and keeps the format consistent across different probes. 

Finally, if available, you could consider using a published measure such as the Informal Reading Inventory (IRI), which has four different reading sets. The IRI measures fluency and comprehension and helps determine at what grade-level the student is currently reading. Though not particularly adept as a frequent progress-monitoring probe, the IRI could be used at the beginning and at key points during the intervention (i.e., middle and end) to keep an eye on grade-level changes. 

Progress Monitoring Frequency

Progress monitoring for this intervention should take place at least once per week. Again, the more frequent the progress-monitoring, the more informative the data will be. 

Materials Needed

This intervention primarily takes advantage of materials being used in class. It requires:

• Copy of the story or materials currently being read in class or another reading at the student's instructional level.
• Timer/stopwatch
• Progress-monitoring probes

Recommended Frequency/Duration

Again, the logistics of the intervention is flexible depending on the child's needs and school resources and schedule, but I would recommend the intervention last at least 8 weeks, with a formative assessment occurring at 4 weeks. The intervention should last approximately 30 minutes roughly 2-3 times per week.

Steps in the Intervention

1. Meet with the student in quiet room with minimal distractions. Position yourself near the student so that both you and the student can read from the book/passage.
2. Explain the procedure to the student: You will be reading aloud with the student. When the student feels he/she is ready to read alone, they are to tap the back of your hand.
1. When he/she does, stop reading
3. Begin reading aloud. When the student misreads a word, point to the word and read it to them. The student then repeats the word. After the student reads the word correctly, continue reading aloud.
4. When the student indicates he/she wishes to read alone, follow along silently while he/she reads aloud.
5. Offer praise for reading.
6. If the student makes an error when reading alone, point to the word and read it to them. Afterward, begin reading aloud with them again until they give the signal for you to stop again.

Alternative Formats

The intervention as described above includes the student working with the teacher or an interventionist. Alternatively, this intervention can be run using the parents (parent training for this intervention takes about 20 minutes) or with a classroom peer who is a strong reader. Peer-mediated interventions may be helpful when students would benefit from more opportunities to build social relationships with peers. Peer paired reading should be supervised by the teacher. 

The Research

There is a fairly strong research base behind this intervention, with several studies investigating the effectiveness of paired reading. The literature suggests paired reading is highly beneficial to students' reading fluency and tends to be viewed positively by students (Topping, 1987; Fiala & Sheridan, 2003). Therefore, it is safe to say paired reading passes the "evidence-based" requirement of RtI and IDEA 2004. 

References

• Fiala, C. L. & Sheridan, S. M. (2003). Parent involvement and reading: Using curriculum-based measurement to assess the effects of paired reading. Psychology in the Schools, 40, 613-626.
• Rathvon, N. (2008). Effective School Interventions: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Student Outcomes, 2nd Edition. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
• Topping, K. (1987). Paired reading: A powerful technique for parent use. Reading teacher, 40, 608-614.

Concluding Thoughts

Above I presented an intervention that focuses primarily on building reading fluency. Like Incremental Rehearsal, this intervention is relatively low-cost and is shown to be effective in the literature. So far, I have gone through a basic skills intervention and a fluency intervention. Next time, I will look primarily at comprehension, followed by something involving writing interventions. My plan is to go through one intervention for each major skill before going back and presenting more, as there are multiple strategies for each skill (fluency, comprehension, etc.). That's it for now.

Until next time!
Steven P. Malm

Incremental Rehearsal: A Flash-Card Intervention to Build Basic Skills

Today, I want to talk about one of my personal favorite interventions for building basic skills: Incremental Rehearsal. Below, I hope to present all of the information that any teacher or interventionist would need in order to implement this intervention if so desired.

Overview
Incremental Rehearsal* (IR) is a flash-card drill intervention designed to foster mastery and fluency of information retrieval. By combining a low number of new cards with a high volume of known cards (a 1:9 ratio), this intervention provides a high frequency of exposure to target information and provides multiple opportunities for success. By using cards containing information the student already knows, this intervention allows the student to gain momentum and gain motivation through repeated success.

*Note: the link above describes a math intervention using IR. However, IR is also appropriate for various reading skills.

Skills Reading Targeted

• Letter Identification
• Letter-Sound Identification/Phonics
• Sight-Word Identification
• Vocabulary (more advanced skill)

Above are listed several different possibilities for the information targeted by IR. However, IR can be appropriate for building any skill requiring rote memorization of information, including math concepts, history information, etc. (Bunn et al., 2005).

Alternative Ratio
As stated, IR uses a 1:9 unknown to known ratio. This is not the only type of flashcard drill intervention used. Another very popular style of flash-card drill is:

• Drill Sandwich - 3:7 unknown to known ratio in which known and unknown cards are alternately presented.

I wanted to briefly present this type of drill to let you know that the ratio is somewhat flexible and I will talk about comparing these two styles later on in this post.

Progress Monitoring Probes

The type of probe that should be used with IR is dependent on the skill being targeted. Get creative with this. However, since the goal is to build fluency of basic skills (the groundwork for more advanced reading), progress monitoring should deal specifically with those basic skills and not assess more advanced skills (i.e., do not use fluency or comprehension probes if you're teaching sight word identification). 

• Sight-Words: If sight-words are being targeted, probes that provide students with a random set of sight-words from the dolch word list could be used (A word list generator can be found here). alternatively, if you use word walls, the word wall words can be used instead. 
• Letter-Name Fluency: If letter-name identification is being targeted, probes that provide students with a randomize list of letters could be used (A probe generator can be found here)

Other early reading/basic skills probes can be found through DIBELS and EasyCBM.

If you would like, you could also give the student a short reading passage containing the words being drilled in order to check if the skills are generalizing to more natural reading exercises. This should not be done as a primary progress monitoring assessment, but can be useful to know when it comes time to make decisions regarding the intervention. This could be done anywhere from once per week to once per month.

Progress Monitoring Frequency

Progress monitoring for this intervention should take place at least once per week. However, due to the simple nature of the probes for the targeted basic skills, progress monitoring can easily occur at the end of every intervention session, which would provide the most accurate data regarding the student's progress.

Materials Needed

The incremental rehearsal intervention is relatively low-cost with regards to physical materials needed, making it particularly ideal in settings in which budget concerns may be an issue.

• Index Cards (for making flashcards)
• Stopwatch
• Progress Monitoring Probes
• Deck Chart/Progress Chart*
• Pen

*Personal recommendation

Recommended Frequency/Duration

Though the logistics of the intervention can be flexible and depends on your school's policies and schedules, I would recommend that this intervention meet for a minimum of 20 minutes per session, 3 days per week. The duration of the intervention as a whole depends on the information being targeted, but the intervention should last no shorter than 6-8 weeks, with a formative assessment occurring at 3-4 weeks, at which time it can be determined if changes need to occur. 

Preparing for the Intervention

After establishing baseline (discussed in a previous post), the first real step is to determine what is known and what is unknown.This is done by presenting each target item (letter, word, etc.) in a random order. Items correctly identified within 2 seconds are considered known. Then, sort the cards into "known" and "unknown" piles. Note: If fewer than 8 items are "known," other information that the student knows can be substituted (colors, shapes, etc.). Then, take 1 card from the "unknown" pile and 8-9 cards from the "known" pile to create the rehearsal deck. After making the rehearsal deck, you are ready to go.

Personal Recommendation: write down all of the items in the rehearsal deck onto a little chart and the date the initial deck was created. Make sure the 1 unknown card is the last on the list of the rehearsal deck. After the items included on the rehearsal deck, continue entering items that still need to be known onto the chart. This will allow you to keep track of how much still needs to be learned and when items entered the deck.

Running the Intervention

Here are the steps to actually executing the intervention with fidelity:

1. Present "unknown" item and immediately provide correct answer --> have student repeat the answer
2. Present flashcards in the following sequence:
1. UK (unknown) - K1 (first known)
2. UK - K1 - K2
3. UK - K1 - K2 - K3
4. (etc. until reaching the unknown followed by all known cards)
3. Then, present unknown item to see if the student can respond accurately within 2 seconds
1. If no, repeat sequence
2. If yes, UK becomes K1, select a new UK item, and the final known card is removed

That last step is the reason why keeping the chart can be so helpful, since it allows you to track which cards have been in the deck the longest and should then be the next to be discarded. By doing this, it ensures the unknown card stays in the deck long after it has become known, providing additional exposure and over-learning, which helps foster mastery. Here is a little diagram I created to help show the intervention:

The Research Base

As always, interventions need to be evidence-based. So what does the evidence say? I won't go too deep into it, but I wanted to go over a couple of studies. First, a meta-analysis summarized and analyzed the results of 12 different studies investigating the effectiveness of IR. Their results found that IR consistently resulted in significant gains in information compared to controls. They concluded that IR was most appropriate for students who have severe disabilities (thus needing more exposure/repetition) and when the information is more basic and necessary for more advanced skills (Burns et al., 2012). 

Compared to Drill Sandwich interventions, some evidence suggests IR results in a higher rate of word retention (Macquarrie et al., 2002), and there is also evidence to suggest that IR results in better generalization (i.e., sight-word intervention resulting in reading those words in natural sentences; Joseph et al., 2012). 

Finally, compared to other flashcard methods, one study suggests IR is the least correlated with measured IQ (Burns & Boice, 2009). What does this mean? IR would be expected to be just as effective for students regardless of their intellectual level, whereas the other drills did not work as well for the lower-functioning students compared to the typical or higher-functioning students. Therefore, it could reasonably be expected that IR will work with any student in need of assistance with basic skills. 

References

• Bunn, R., Burns, M. K., Hoffman, H. H., & Newman, C. L. (2005). Implementation guidelines: Using incremental rehearsal to teach letter identification to a preschool-age child. Journal of Evidence-Based Practices for Schools, 6(2), 134-136
• Burns, M. K. & Boice, C. H. (2009). Comparison of the relationship between words retained and intelligence for three instructional 
• Burns, M. K., Zaslofsky, A. F., Kanive, R., & Parker, D. C. (2012). Meta-analysis of incremental rehearsal using phi coefficients to compare single-case and group designs. Journal of Behavioral Education, 21, 185-202. DOI: 10.1007/s10864-012-9130-2
• Joseph, L., Eveleigh, E., Konrad, M., Keef, N., & Volpe, R. (2012). Comparison of the efficiency of two flashcard drill methods on children’s reading performance. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 28, 317-337. DOI: 10.1080/15377933.2012.66974
• MacQuarrie, L. L., Tucker, J. A., Burns, M.K., & Hartman, B. (2002). Comparison of retention rates using traditional, drill sandwich, and incremental rehearsal flash card methods. School Psychology Review, 31(4), 584-595.

Summary

IR is a versatile flashcard intervention that has a fairly strong evidence-base supporting it. It is relatively cost-effective and requires very minimal training to implement. By frequently presenting new information, this intervention over-teaches information to students, ensuring that it is mastered and can be fluently retrieved. As I said, this is one of my personal favorite interventions, as it fits really well with the behavioral perspective of repeatedly drilling information to facilitate retention. It also helps build the important basic skills that are the backbone of more complex reading skills. I hope you found this post informative and helpful. I will be back next time for yet another intervention. Until next time!

Preparing for an Intervention: Progress Monitoring and Student Selection

Hello again!

Last time, I talked about the RtI 3-tiered system. As you may recall, all students participate in Tier I instruction - that is, the evidence-based instruction in the general education classroom setting. But, as we know, what works for some will not work for everyone, so it is important to be able to identify when students are struggling in the classroom and need additional help. Today, I am going to talk about progress monitoring and student selection for intervention. Along the way, I will provide links to some resources you may find helpful.

Tier I Progress Monitoring
If you recall from the diagram in my previous post, progress monitoring at Tier I occurs approximately three times per year. This involves a screening assessment to ensure students grasp a variety of concepts related to reading and writing, including phonics, sight-word reading, reading comprehension and fluency, and spelling. Many schools (even those that do not claim to follow an RtI structure) use these tools already. You may be well aware of the most popular Tier I progress monitoring program:

DIBELS - DIBELS is a relatively inexpensive universal screening tool for Tier I progress monitoring. It is easy to administer and many schools have their teachers conduct these assessments following a brief training session. It is typically administered individually to the student and assesses a wide range of academic skills. For each skill area assessed, DIBELS will determine if the student's performance is green (at benchmark; no need for intervention), yellow (below benchmark; possible need for intervention), or red (significantly below benchmark; likely in need of intervention).

The data for all students should then be collected and analyzed (which is typically done by a school's data coach). This data can provide a lot of information. For instance, if the majority of students are in the yellow or red across classrooms, then a school-wide curriculum shift may be in order. If there are a considerable amount of students below benchmark in one class but not in others, maybe that teacher needs to work on better implementing evidence-based instruction. Most importantly, however, this data can be used to identify which students are struggling and in need of additional support. Given the multifaceted assessment approach of DIBELS, the data also shows in which areas the student is struggling, which allows for the formation of groups based on the students' area of deficit.

Organizing the Data
With the whole school's worth of data coming in, there can be a lot of information to sift through. Even if you as a teacher are simply wanting to keep track of the data for your own class, that's 20-30 different reports to keep track of. Luckily, there are some amazing data organization systems out there.

CBM Focus is an excel sheet that was shown to me during my training and I have to say, it is amazing for keeping track of data. The website contains a tutorial video, free downloads for the CBM Focus spreadsheets, and a filled spreadsheet to serve as an example to help demonstrate how the program works. Here are some of the cool features of CBM Focus:

• Tracks student data and flags those who are below benchmarks
• Provides several different benchmark norms that can be followed
• Automatically creates graphs per student to visually show progress
• Has a tab for tracking progress monitoring for interventions (to be discussed in a bit) 
• Provides a list of resources (with links) for progress monitoring probes, assessment tools, and intervention ideas.
• Has tabs for reading, writing, and mathematics so that each skill is tracked separately. 

Seriously, I can't recommend this program enough (and it's free)!

Progress Monitoring at Tiers II and III

A tri-annual assessment is good for progress monitoring at Tier I, but Tier II and III require considerably more frequent data-collection methods. So, after conducting the initial assessment (using DIBELS data to figure out what area of weakness must be targeted), you need to choose an appropriate probe to use for collecting baseline and progress monitoring. At Tier II, progress should be monitored at least once per month, if not twice per month. At Tier III, progress should be monitored at least once per week, if not every day. As the level of intervention intensity increases, the number of data points must go up. 

Several different kinds of probes are available online at:

• Intervention Central/CBM Warehouse
• AIMsweb
• The University of Maryland Curriculum Based Measurement for Early Literacy

Or, Create Your Own!

It is also very possible to make your own probes from materials used in the classroom. Get creative! For example, for reading comprehension interventions, I have loved the use of Maze passages (modified cloze reading). Progress monitoring probes using Maze passages can be created using the student's own reading textbook. Here is what you do:

1. Select a passage (about 300-450 words in length) and copy it on a computer.
2. Leave the first and last sentence alone...do not change anything.
3. Starting with the second sentence, remove every sixth word (except proper nouns)
4. For each removed words, type in three possible choices (presented in a random order)
1. The correct word
2. A close distractor (an incorrect word that is the same part of speech [i.e., noun--> noun])
3. A far distractor (an incorrect word that is a different part of speech [i.e., noun --> verb])
5. There you have it! Repeat until the desired number of probes has been created.

Then you have the student read through the passage and circle the word he/she thinks fits in the blank space, tapping into their comprehension and ability to utilize context clues to determine the meaning of the sentence. One advantage this has is ensuring that the reading passages are at an appropriate grade level and are similar to what is being taught in class. Caveat: do NOT use passages the student has already read. This may throw off the results due to previous exposure.

The Can't Do/Won't Do Assessment

So a student has been found to be below benchmark and an area of deficit has been identified. Do we intervene and put them through various layers of additional support? What if the student is simply not motivated? I'm sure you have all seen this kind of student: he knows things - more than he lets on - but he just doesn't want to work. When it comes down to it, a typical academic intervention won't be much help for a student like this because he/she already knows the information being taught...they just don't want to work. So, in order to figure out which students are legitimately having difficulties with the academic material, you may wish to conduct a Can't Do/Won't Do assessment. Here's what you do:

1. Have student complete a progress monitoring probe
2. Score the probe quickly.
3. Then, give the student a second probe (same type, but different in content)
4. This time, tell the student that if they do better than they did on the previous probe, they will receive a reward (this can be small, but talk with the student beforehand to find something that they would likely work for).
5. Have student complete the 2nd probe.
6. Score the probe.
1. If the student's score does not improve by more than would be expected from random error, it is evidence that the material is something the student CAN'T DO.
2. If the student's score improves, it is evidence that the material is something the student WON'T DO (but can if the proper contingencies are in place). 
7. If the student does better, offer the reward. If not, STILL OFFER THE REWARD (in my opinion)

Here's why. You have established a contingency for the student: do better and receive the reward. If they do better, then you have to reward them to establish trust (this will be important for subsequent intervention). But if they don't do better, well they're trying their hardest and, in my view, should still be rewarded for making an honest attempt. Some people may disagree with that practice, but this is just my view. 

If the student's performance leads you to believe it's a CAN'T DO, move forward with an academic intervention. If it's WON'T DO, then a behavioral intervention may be more appropriate in which you create a reward contingency system in the classroom to help motivate him/her to perform. Behavioral observations are a little off-topic, so I won't talk about them now (but I can later, if anyone wants me to). 

Baseline Collection and Charting the Data

After you have selected your probes, it is critical to establish baseline levels of functioning on the assessment probes.  That is, it is important to see how well the student does on the skill being measured BEFORE the intervention begins. To do this, administer a different probe to the student on no fewer than three consecutive days all while providing NO intervention. If the baseline is stable after three data points, start the intervention. There are some guidelines to follow with regards to determining baseline stability:

• If there is a trend in the scores (score is increasing or decreasing), a baseline is only acceptable if the trend is in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of the desired goal. In other words, in academic interventions, higher performance from baseline is expected, but if baseline shows the student is already improving, then you're not getting an accurate estimate yet of where his/her abilities fall - more data points need to be collected to find this level. If the trend is going downwards, however (i.e., the student's performance deteriorates), then go ahead and begin the intervention.
• If performance is highly variable (i.e., one baseline score is significantly higher or lower than the others), continue collecting baseline until there are three consecutive scores that are relatively similar.

Once you have baseline, begin charting the data (if you use CBM Focus, this gets done for you). Place the three (or more) baseline data points on a graph and take the average - this is your baseline level. Then, there are two goals to figure out: the ideal goal (the ultimate level you would like the student to achieve) and the realistic goal (the level that you think would be attainable and acceptable for the student). Create lines connecting the baseline to both of these goals at the end-point of the intervention (6-12 weeks away) to get the aim lines - the level of growth expected to reach the goals.

Data-Based Decision Making

As previously stated, RtI relies on data-based decision making, hence why the organization and charting of data is so important. Also as previously stated, the frequency of data collection increases as the intensity of intervention increases to ensure that data is reliable. I would recommend constantly monitoring the data trends, but about midway through the intervention, you should definitely analyze the progress to determine if the student is responding to the intervention or not. As a general guideline, if the student is consistently below the realistic aim-line (as defined by three consecutive progress monitoring probes that fall below the aim line), something needs to change!

For those who are new to interventions, I would recommend consulting with a school psychologist or an interventionist in your school to figure out what changes to make, but changes to an intervention may include:

• Changing reward contingencies
• Changing progress monitoring probes
• Changing duration/intensity of intervention
• Changing the intervention in its entirety

Obviously, the decision to make any of these changes should be supported by data suggesting the student is not making adequate progress towards his/her goals. It is at this stage that you may want to think about the next step (i.e., moving from Tier II --> III or referring the student for a special education evaluation). 

Wrapping Up

I went over a lot of information today about getting started with interventions, from data organization to progress monitoring to starting to collect data. Again, I cannot recommend programs like CBM focus enough - it supplies all of the information and resources needed to get interventions off the ground! If you are interested, I definitely suggest you take a look at it. I have also provided some links to other resources for selecting progress monitoring probes and a description of how to conduct a Can't Do/Won't Do assessment. At this point, I think I have laid enough ground work to start talking about specific interventions that you can use in your classrooms. While many are commercially available, I will be focusing on the cheap and easy interventions that may be more feasible for today's teacher-on-the-go. At some point, I will talk about some of the big intervention packages, but that's a topic for another day. That's it for me!

See you all next time!

An Introduction to Response to Intervention

Hello again!

Today I want to talk about Response to Intervention (RtI). In my experience working in the schools as part of my training, I have come to realize that, although many teachers already know quite a bit about RtI, there are some that do not. Therefore, I feel like it is important to take a few minutes and go through some key points about RtI to help give some background for future posts.

What is RtI?
RtI is a school-wide system with tiered supports to help students succeed. RtI uses a series of evidence-based approaches to provide high-quality instruction to students and came about, in part, as a result of the 2004 re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004). Importantly, it is highly data-driven with regards to making decisions about the effectiveness of instructional approaches.

Prior to RtI, students who were struggling in class were often referred for a special education evaluation - which were traditionally based on the discrepancy model (i.e., a student's achievement score within the area of difficulty had to be significantly lower than their level of cognitive ability). There were many problems with this system (such as the fact that achievement and cognitive abilities are linked, so a discrepancy often would not be seen until the child has failed consistently over the course of years) and it also sort of created the notion that there were two categories: learning disabled children and non-learning disabled children. Students who were struggling but did not meet the cutoff criteria, then, were left without services and would often start to fall further and further behind until (potentially years later), their scores magically dropped far enough to qualify for additional services.

Enter RtI. This system is based on the idea that students are capable of learning and there are some students who simply need more help to grasp the content. RtI allows school psychologists and teachers to differentiate between students who need help and those with a true learning disability (as I will discuss more a little later). In a way, it is a system of prevention in that it offers additional assistance to struggling students (both general and special education) so that they can keep up with course content and not fall so far behind as to A) require qualification of special education and/or B) become so discouraged with school that they give up.

In short, RtI is a system that uses data-based decision making and evidence-based practices to provide high quality instruction to all students and interventions for those who need additional help.

The Tiered Structure of RtI
There is no single right way to do RtI. With the exception of the requirement to use evidence-based practices, there is a lot of freedom for interpreting what the system looks like. Typically, RtI is a three-tiered system, though there is even some debate on this (with some schools adding a fourth tier). Below I will present the tier-system that appeals most to me, which is taken from Brown-Chidsey and Steege (2010) and discuss briefly where the major differences in the system may lie from school-to-school. The RtI structure can be pictorially represented as:

(from Brown-Chidsey & Steege, 2010, pp. 5)

Tier I: Tier I includes instruction for all students. This involves teachers implementing evidence-based instructional practices in the classroom. In other words, Tier I is simply the teacher doing what he/she does best. Progress-monitoring for Tier I occurs at certain points throughout the year (typically 3 times: beginning, middle, and end), which includes a screening for all students to assess their skills in content areas. I will talk more about progress monitoring in the next post. Furthermore, as I am not a teacher, I feel like I am less qualified to talk about what instruction looks like at Tier I and will leave that up to the teachers and teacher training programs. It is believed that roughly 80% of students will make adequate progress at Tier I. For students who do not show adequate progress at Tier I (as evidenced through progress-monitoring results), they may be selected to move into Tier II.

Tier II: Tier II includes small group interventions. When a student fails to make adequate progress at Tier I, their skills in that area of content (in this case reading and/or writing) need to be assessed to figure out where to start. I will talk more about assessments when I talk about progress monitoring. From the assessment, students would be grouped together based on their area of difficulty and administered an intervention to address those deficits. These interventions should be led by qualified teachers, school psychology clinicians, or interventionists and occur in addition to general class/Tier I instruction (not instead of). This simply gives students more opportunities and more practice to master concepts. Progress-monitoring would occur more regularly than at Tier I, occurring roughly between every other week or once a month. Of the students in Tier II, it is expected that 75% of students will make adequate progress (15% of the overall school population). Those that do not show adequate growth at Tier II may be moved to Tier III.

Tier III: Tier III includes individualized interventions. This tends to be the most intensive tier and requires an accurate assessment of the student's academic strengths and weaknesses. An evidence-based intervention is then selected and tailored to the child's unique constellation of skills (targeting the weaknesses while building off the strengths) and a teacher, school psychologist, or interventionist works with the child one-on-one, often multiple times per week over the course of several weeks. Progress monitoring at Tier III typically occurs weekly or (in some cases) daily. If a student fails to respond at Tier III (and, therefore, has been unable to learn the information despite evidence-based and targeted methods), it may be indicative of a true learning disability and may thus require a comprehensive evaluation for special education services. 

Tier III is often where different RtI systems differ. Some systems use Tier III to represent special education services. However, in the system proposed by Brown-Chidsey and Steege (2010), special education is not restricted to a single tier, but rather runs through all tiers. This makes sense, as students who require special education services differ widely from one another in the scope of the services required, with some special education students able to be successful at Tier I with some added support. 

Ending Thoughts

Many schools have RtI programs in place. If a formal system is not in place, the teachers are hopefully, at the very least, using evidence-based teaching approaches. I was in a school that did not have a formal RtI system in place but rather used Title I services in order to provide interventions similar to Tier II. To those teachers who are reading this blog, consider the system that is in place at your school and the types of class-wide assessments you are asked to do throughout the year (e.g., DIBELS, mCLASS, Acuity, etc.). With luck, these results are used to make sure students' potential is maximized and their difficulties addressed. 

I am aware that this information may have been a review for a lot of teachers. However, for those of whom it was not, I hope you found this information informative. It will be important background knowledge to have as I move forward and talk about more concepts related to reading and writing interventions. Coming soon, I will discuss progress-monitoring, assessment, and student selection for interventions. I will try to include links to resources you may find particularly helpful for these concepts. 

Until next time!

Steven P. Malm

References:

Brown-Chidsey, R. & Steege, M. W. (2010). Response to Intervention: Principles and Strategies for Effective Practice, 2nd Edition. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Personal Introduction and Philosophy on Reading

Hello!

My name is Steven Malm and I am a graduate student of School Psychology currently pursuing my doctoral degree at Ball State University. Through my various applied experiences and practica in the schools, I have had the opportunity to help develop and implement a number of academic interventions using evidence-based intervention methods as required by IDEA. I also realize the need for ongoing investigations of interventions and will be learning more throughout this blogging process. I have started this blog as part of a project for a class on teaching reading to elementary school students.

In this blog, I will share my growing knowledge of interventions to help educators know what to do when reading goes wrong! What I mean by that is that I will share several resources that may be helpful in making decisions about how to intervene when a student is struggling in reading and (to a lesser extent) writing.

To briefly preview the kind of information that will be posted on this blog in the coming weeks, I will present my ideas and the ideas discussed in the literature regarding the Response to Intervention (RtI) structure, identification and assessment of students in need of intervention, and how to conduct progress monitoring. I will also be describing several evidence-based interventions that can be used relatively easily in a school setting to address difficulty with skills such as phonemic awareness, sight-word identification, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and writing. These descriptions will include steps, materials needed, as well as an investigation of the literature in support of the various interventions.

Philosophy on Reading Instruction and Intervention
Before I dive into other topics, I feel that it is important for me to describe my theoretical approach to reading instruction.  My personal philosophy of reading could best be described as a bottom-up, cognitive-behavioral orientation. 

To begin to elaborate, I believe in the bottom-up approach. Specifically, I believe that learning to read follows a very important progression of skills: from letter naming --> letter/sound identification --> sight-word reading and phonemic awareness --> comprehension and fluency. Students who cannot sound out or read words accurately cannot hope to understand what they have read nor could they be expected to read efficiently. I acknowledge that this may not necessarily be in agreement with others' beliefs regarding reading. There are instances in which reading occurred through interpreting pictures, modeling, etc. While this may work and form adequate connections for some students, I am more interested in how to go about instructing students when reading goes wrong. In that case, it is my belief that intervention must follow the progression from basic skills to more advanced skills. Therefore, when students are showing difficulty with reading, their mastery of basic skills must be determined before instruction can work on more complex comprehension/fluency skills.

Furthermore, I have included the cognitive-behavioral perspective to my personal literacy philosophy. From the behavioral perspective, I believe that the single best way to teach reading is through repetition and practice. With more basic skills, this could be accomplished through flashcard drills to over-teach concepts through repeated exposure. However, going beyond the behavioral perspective, I cannot understate the importance of personal interest and motivation in teaching reading. For students to learn to read, they have to want to learn - they have to want to pay attention (since attention is a critical cognitive aspect of learning as well). One thing I know is that you can only learn what you are paying attention to. Motivation can be achieved to a degree behaviorally through verbal or tangible contingency management, but it can also be achieved through allowing students to have opportunities to select their own reading materials. This also has the added benefit of allowing the students' unique background knowledge and interests make the act of reading easier, which makes the required practice less effortful and potentially more enjoyable. 

I suppose this leads me to my definition of Balanced Literacy: Balanced Literacy is an approach to reading instruction that provides students with strong foundational reading skills and then moves into refining these skills using a combination of teacher-selected readings aimed at practicing specific skills and student-selected readings aimed at providing fun and interesting practice and fostering a joy of reading. 


And there you have it. Today I have presented a little about me and my approach to reading interventions. I have also previewed a little bit about what you all can expect from my blog in the future. I hope you find my posts both stimulating and helpful. Until next time!