As a Reading Recovery teacher, I work with first graders who are struggling with learning to read and write. I often wonder if lower achieving students in the upper grades would also benefit from this one-to-one intervention. Next year our K-2 school will combine with the 3-6 school across town, and the teachers and principal at the new site will be looking to our Reading Recovery teachers for help with their struggling readers. I chose to read this journal article, Delivering the Promise of Academic Success Through Late Intervention by Judith Neal and Patricia Kelly to learn more about late intervention. Neal and Kelly cite Rousing Minds to Life by Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore in their article, and I will also include relevant information from their book in my summary.
Early intervention programs help struggling readers in the primary grades, but many students continue to struggle with reading and writing in the upper grades. Why do schools have so many struggling students in the upper grades? Neal and Kelly suggest that students who move frequently have holes in their education, and students from lower socio-economic groups tend to be at risk throughout their school years. Many schools do not provide early intervention for struggling learners, and some children “cannot benefit from the classroom literacy program because their understandings are too limited for where literacy instruction begins” (Neal & Kelly, p. 102). If a student does not receive early intervention, schools are obligated to provide struggling students with late intervention to help them accelerate their learning and catch up to their classmates.
Typically schools offer struggling learners remediation, which in reality is often a slow progress, skills-based approach to instruction taught by paraprofessionals. In contrast, the authors define intervention as “taking a proactive, catch-up stance toward the specific learning needs of students” (p. 103). What really differentiates intervention from remediation is the concept of accelerative teaching. Before each lesson, teachers must ask themselves, “Will this activity serve the larger purpose of enabling students to move forward in their understanding and capabilities, and how will it serve that end?” (p. 104). The rest of the article outlines six essential elements of school programs that promote accelerative learning for late readers.
1. Consider Individual Student Needs
Up to 40% of students could be making better progress in the upper grades. These “reluctant learners” often have motivation issues, but they can become more engaged given a positive, constructive classroom environment. About 15-20% of struggling students have learning confusions, and avoid reading. These students benefit from individualized tutoring or small group intervention to accelerate learning. Their teachers should have “special expertise in literacy development” (p. 105). Teachers must assess students frequently (with running records, writing tasks and retellings), and use these assessments to learn what their students’ strengths are and build upon what is known. Daily lessons optimize acceleration.
2. Implement an Apprenticeship Model of Teaching and Learning
Neal and Ryan cite Tharp and Gallimore’s theory of assisted performance as a teaching approach that benefits older students. When Tharp and Gallimore wrote Rousing Minds to Life back in 1988, they called for a redefinition of teaching and learning in our schools. “The attitude that individuals must learn from their textbooks on their own, without teaching, will not be altered easily” (Tharp & Gallimore, p. 5). Their theory of assisted performance is based on Vygotsky’s work (1978), and the concept that teaching occurs when a child is operating in his Zone of Proximal Development, receiving assistance from a “more capable other.”
Tharp and Gallimore define assisted performance as “what a child can do with help, with the support of the environment, of others and of the self” (p. 30). When we assess children, we want to know what they can do without any assistance. Our ultimate goal is to lead students from performance with assistance to completing tasks independently with self-regulation. This theory applies to adults as well as children. Parents, teachers and peers can take on the role of the “more capable other”
Tharp and Gallimore present a four stage model of the Zone of Proximal Development in Chapter 2. In Stage I, the child needs a “more capable other” to help regulate the task. For example, when stuck on a multisyllabic word, the adult might scaffold the child’s learning by modeling how to break the word into parts to solve it. In Stage II, the child takes on the task independently, but that does not mean that it is automatic or fully developed. The child may begin using the strategy of breaking words to read familiar words, but not new words. Children also begin to develop self-directed speech at this stage, and may use this self-speech to guide their thinking. In Stage III, learning is internalized and assistance from others is no longer needed. Continuing the above example, the child smoothly solves familiar and new multisyllabic words. In State IV, the child may forget something previously known. Sometimes the child will remember by talking himself through the problem, but the child may also need help from the teacher to proceed. Learning is a recursive process, and in Stage IV something that was automatic may now need assistance. The teacher’s goal is to scaffold the learning or repeat the lesson, and help the child move back towards self-regulation.
In Chapter 3, Tharp and Gallimore provide more detail on how assisted performance occurs. Musicians and coaches appreciate the value of modeling in learning. Struggling learners also benefit when teachers model reading strategies through a Think Aloud or when their peers model how to solve an algebraic equation. Contingency management could be praising a student or sending him to take a time out. Teachers assist performance by rewarding or punishing certain behaviors. Although praise has limits, teachers use it correctly to reinforce certain behaviors and create a positive classroom climate. Tests and grades are a form of feedback. Students need feedback to monitor their performance. Schools must set standards in order to give students feedback on their performance.
Instructing calls for specific action, and it occurs when teachers take on the responsibility for assisted performance. The learner gradually internalizes the teacher’s voice of instruction. Teachers use questions to hear what the child is thinking. Assistance questions help children connect information that they are learning. Finally, cognitive structuring “provides a structure for organizing elements in relation to one another” (p. 56). If a teacher asks her class, “What is a hero?” and they create a graphic organizer on heroes, students begin to build a cognitive structure for that idea. Teachers can use each of these methods to scaffold student learning and guide them through their Zone of Proximal Development.
3. Select Appropriate Materials
Selection of appropriate reading materials can be tricky with older readers. When students read at an instructional level, their accuracy can fall in the 90-94% range. Books read independently should be at 95% accuracy or above. Textbooks are especially difficult for struggling readers, and teachers should use easier books with the same content whenever possible. Students need the opportunity to choose their own books, and teachers must show students how to choose books that are just right. Older students are motivated to read easier books when they are paired up with K/1st grade “reading buddies.” These practices help reluctant students become more motivated to read and willing to take risks.
4. Establish a Focus of Accelerative Instruction
If students are to accelerate their learning, teachers must choose their teaching examples carefully. According to Marie Clay, who created Reading Recovery, teachers must design lessons based on students’ strengths. Teachers choose “the clearest, easiest, most memorable examples with which to establish a new response, skill, principle or procedure. For example, the child trying to recall how to use the verb ending ‘ing’ may be helped by the first example of an ‘ing’ word that he learned” (Clay, p. 23). Teachers must also provide students with “strategic scaffolds” to help them problem solve text, as well as opportunities to problem solve new and familiar text. Gradually, students take over more and more of the task as learning is internalized.
5. Consider the Role of Fluent Responding
Students must sound fast and fluent when they read and intervention teachers should keep in mind that fast responding plays a key role in acceleration. Sight words need instant recognition. Students develop fluency by rereading easy books and practicing their reading strategies. Clay states that “performing with success on familiar material strengthens the decision-making processes of the reader” (Clay, p. 23). Neal and Kelly recommend paired readings, predictable books, choral reading, and readers’ theater to improve older students’ fluency in reading. Students may need instruction and modeling on how to read in phrases as well as specific feedback on their reading. Teachers instruct students on how to practice sight words until they are known quickly and build a bank of known words that they can write fluently.
6. Provide Affirmation of Success
Once students begin to experience success, teachers must recognize their accomplishments with specific praise to build a bridge toward future success. This is especially useful when students are in Stage II of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, and learning is not yet automatic. Neal and Kelly stress that teachers need to make success overt to the learner. They give this example of a teacher affirming success. “Statements such as, ‘I notice that when you read this time, you went back to reread the first paragraph to check the information there,’ alerts the student to a productive behavior and signals that the teacher noticed and attended to it – that must make it important!” (Neal and Kelly, p. 113). Students can document what they are learning in learning logs, or by creating posters or anchor charts of useful strategies.
In summary, Neal and Kelly maintain that late intervention, with at focus on accelerated learning, should be an option for all struggling older readers. This could be in the form of one-to-one or small group instruction. Preventative early intervention is preferable because “early intervention efforts catch reading difficulties at a time when the least distance has to be made between children and their peers, that is, before years of reading failure have fossilized and habituated students’ ways of responding to print” (Neal and Kelly, p. 114). School leaders must convince stakeholders that students benefit from both early and late intervention. Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in school, and future academic success depends on all students developing competence in reading and writing.
References:
Clay, M. M. (2005). Literacy lessons designed for individuals part one: Why? When? And How? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Neal, J.C. & Kelly, P.R. (2002). Delivering the promise of academic success through late intervention. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 18: 101-117.
Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning and schooling in social context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.