Many students struggle with multiple components of literacy, such as decoding, fluency, and comprehension, and will do better when they receive interventions for these challenges together. Here is an example of a student for whom multicomponent interventions are planned.
Leo’s Profile
I support a seventh-grade student (entering eighth grade next month) who has not yet learned to read. I worked with him about three times weekly this year with structured literacy, and he made some improvements but he is still a very emergent reader. He has dyslexia, anxiety, and a specific learning disability in reading and writing. He struggled to come to school until grade six, when he began attending regularly. Because he missed almost all of his early years of school (one year he missed 150 days of school), he did not receive structured literacy instruction or interventions until grade six. Leo struggles with decoding, phonological awareness, comprehension, and fluency. His comprehension is relatively strong but still needs support. Leo is bright, kind, respectful, and polite. He is a very hard worker when he understands what he is supposed to do. He likes school this year and loves his teacher. He is excellent at listening, memorization, and working with his hands. He can build and take apart anything, and his shop teacher told me that he has never seen a student with the kind of kinesthetic knowledge that Leo has. Leo loves biking. He is a good friend. Leo also has a mild speech impediment, but the speech pathologist checked him out at my insistence (we operate on an early intervention model and generally our speech pathologist does not come to middle school), but said that she didn’t think that his speech impediment would impact his learning to read.
Goals and Objectives
I want to support Leo in learning to read. I want to support Leo in moving from emergent literacy to a strong phonological foundation. Through targeted, strategic interventions, Leo will be reading at a fourth grade level (he’s currently at a first grade level, after a year of interventions) by the end of the school year.
Timeline
In one block out of eight, Leo will receive small-group or one-on-one literacy instruction. This works out to three or four one-hour sessions per week, but last year was slightly less, because Leo’s teacher loved to go on field trips.
Phonemic Awareness:
- Work with Leo on developing his phonemic awareness through listening as I say words, then having him take turns saying the words
- Have a mirror available for Leo to watch his mouth as he makes the sound and sees how exactly it looks/feels like for his mouth to make the sound
Phonics:
- Practice phonics in structured literacy lessons (such as UFLI)
- Repeatedly work with letter sounds, repeating them after I say them, and writing them as he says them
- Track (for Leo, so he sees his progress) all of the word sounds that he has mastered
- Practice blending and segmenting phonics
- Word sorts
Fluency:
- Support Leo in reading short connected texts after practicing and learning certain phonics sounds
- Give Leo some success by being able to read short connected texts for letter sounds he knows
- Model what good fluency sounds like, and talk that out with Xander
- Teach Leo to check himself for what good reading sounds like
- Repeated reading opportunities with simple, decodable texts
- Echo reading with his reading teacher
Comprehension:
- Teach Leo comprehension strategies like retelling, summarizing, and monitoring himself for understanding as he reads
- Build vocabulary with Leo by teaching him morphology whenever possible
- Point out vocabulary for Leo and define as he reads passages
- Define all vocabulary in student-friendly language
- Come back to vocabulary throughout the week, through games, review, writing, and giving Xander homework to find an example of the new word at home
- Practice writing about what we read to support Leo’s comprehension
- Scaffold questioning what he reads by prompting Leo with who, what, when, where, why questions
Resources
- Structured literacy lessons from UFLI or a similar program
- Paper and pencil for writing lessons
- Decodable texts about Leo’s interests (biking, mechanics, building, etc.) that are not babyish!
Progress Monitoring
- Diagnostic assessment in the beginning to pinpoint exactly which phonics Leo has grasped and which he needs further work with
- Ongoing Acadience or DIBELS assessments (every term) to track improvement
Reflections
I am cautious about planning for phonemic awareness, given Susan Brady’s presentation from earlier in the course (2022) that showed us that there was little benefit to focusing on phonemic awareness, and recommended over and over that we skip phonemic awareness and jump right to phonological awareness. Because of this, I would likely not spend much time on phonemic awareness, but would incorporate some phonemic awareness activities into my phonological instruction. I have been working with Leo already for a year, and saw that he responds positively to interventions but that his reading challenges are so entrenched at this point, and that he is so discouraged, that it has been a real struggle to convince him that he can learn to read. He wants to, and sets the goal for himself to learn to read, but he at some level does not believe that he can. Steven Dykstra’s podcast episode (2022) about reading trauma resonated very deeply for me, for Leo and for many, many of my ninth-grade students for whom school is absolutely an ongoing trauma site. I have been very cognizant of this idea when teaching Leo, and we keep instruction positive and I tell him all the time that he can learn to read. I let him bow out any day that he says he doesn’t want to come because he doesn’t want to miss something in class. Given my new understandings of literacy instruction, I will diversify Leo’s lessons, building up his confidence by letting him read short, decodable passages, and write short sections. I will ensure that we do lots of repeated reading, and that I scaffold his reading aloud when he is nervous or not ready. I will give him a diagnostic assessment to figure out exactly which phonological skills he is missing, and move forward on that basis. I am confident that I can be a much better teacher for Leo this year than last year.
References
Brady, S. (2022). Phoneme awareness research updated. Reading Simplified. https://readingsimplified.com/susan-brady-phoneme-awareness/?psafe_param=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=20429512529&utm_content&utm_term&place&net=x&match&gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw3dCnBhBCEiwAVvLcu6Cv74ti28u3LDrq221IG6s_U5PS8kvthFfJNdDPkNeoAZmyi_ZcxxoC_3MQAvD_BwE
Dykstra, S. (Guest) (2022). Trauma and reading. Melissa and Lori love literacy podcast. Episode 100. https://literacypodcast.com/podcast?podcast=Buzzsprout-10273364