What Other Approaches Do Teachers Use to Teach Reading Comprehension?

This past school year, my grade level team had five first grade teachers (one class had two teachers because they did a job share, and only one of them taught reading). One colleague and I used both the basal reading program and "The Cafe" for teaching our students reading comprehension strategies. We began using The Cafe in February and found that even with only four months of instruction, the students learned a lot of strategies and referred to The Cafe Menu daily. We can't wait to begin the program at the beginning of the school year!



The other two teachers taught their students reading comprehension strategies through the use of modeling, using the basal, reader response journals, and think-alouds. For think-alouds, the teacher cut out big thinking bubbles and wrote "I wonder..." in the middle of them. Then, she laminated them for durability and had the students use the bubbles as they were reading independently and reading with a partner to check their understanding and make connections. The students would have to make a statement about what they were reading or about what their partner was reading. Also, the students made thoughtful responses in their journals about the stories that they read. Sometimes the students had prompts to answer and other times the students were free to write about what they wanted as long as they made some kind of connection to what they were reading (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world).

Our Favorite Reading Comprehension Strategies

I have taught first grade for the past five years. We focus heavily on reading instruction for 90 minutes every day. One of my favorite things to teach in reading is comprehension. My favorite reading comprehension strategies are activating prior knowledge and using graphic organizers. I love showing students the cover and pictures of a big book and asking them what they already know about the topic they are getting ready to read about. They love to share their stories! This is turn gets them very excited about what they are about to read, because they know they will be able to make connections to their own lives. Graphic organizers are great because it is an opportunity for my students to do something else they love-draw and write. Graphic organizers also serve as a great assessment. Graphic organizers can easily be differentiated based on the level of your students. Some of my favorite graphic organizers are Venn Diagrams, Sequence of Events, and the KWL chart (which helps to activate prior knowledge). You can find these graphic organizers and others at Scholastic’s website: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2983

by Shalini


I teach first grade and use The Literacy Cafe Menu to teach strategies to my students in the areas of comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. Last year was my first year to implement the program, and I didn't start it until February. I am very excited to begin the program from the very first day of school to see how much further my students develop in their strategy use. Something that stood out for me about my cafe board was that my students and I had the most comprehension strategies listed than any other area! Comprehension is very important in first grade because we don't just want them to be able to decode the words, but actually understand what they hear and read. My students use the comprehension strategies when they are reading to themselves and when they read to someone.

Some strategies that I think have been very effective with my first graders are Make a picture or mental image, Ask questions throughout the reading process, Retell the story, and Check for understanding. A technique that I use for teaching "check for understanding" is making check for understanding hands. To do this, I make enough hands for pairs of students in my class and write "Check(check mark) for Understanding" in the middle of the hands. Whenever students are reading in pairs, the students take turns holding the hand and stopping the person reading to ask a question about the text, for example, "Did I just hear you say..." This is a very effective way to make the students stop and think about their reading. Anyone that is interested in learning more about The Cafe can visit the website http://www.the2sisters.com/.

by Sarah


I have found have found that centering my instruction around the study of comprehension strategies has brought a new level of excitement into my classroom. I always start my year with teaching schema or making connections. This is a strategy that virtually all my students are successful with and it builds their confidence. I try to fill my classroom with books of all types so that everyone can feel success with this strategy.

I usually follow schema instruction with asking questions. I love using a question circle to teach this strategy! I pick a book that I think will spark lots of questions with my students. We ask questions about the pictures and cover before reading and continue to ask questions during reading and after reading. We save these questions and they are a great example of how some questions help us understand what we are reading and other just get in the way of our comprehension.

Creating images is a great strategy to get the artists in your class involved! My students bring their Reader’s Workshop notebooks with them to the carpet for read aloud. As I read from our chapter book they sketch images that come to their mind. We do this throughout the entire book so that they have pages of illustrations that tell a story. I often choose a book that is also a children’s film (Holes for example) and show the film after the reading. We then discuss how the images that students drew were different from the images in the film.

by Kelli


I first start out with making connections when reading. By teaching students how to connect to text they are able to better understand what they are reading. Accessing prior knowledge and experiences is a good starting place when teaching strategies because every student has experiences, knowledge, opinions, and emotions that they can draw upon.

I then move onto visualization. When we visualize while reading, we create pictures in our minds. Visualizing helps us to relate to the characters in a text. We imagine what they look like and how they act. When children hear a well-written text, they can mix the author's words with their own ideas to create a visual image. The child adds his/her own experiences to the words to create a picture of the event. Children can describe these visual images or draw a picture to illustrate the images. When we first began practicing the strategy, students drew a picture about what they were visualizing when I was reading. We call our visualizations "Mental Pictures."

by Rachel


- Activating background knowledge to make connections
• The use of K W L charts are a hit with the kids. They love to list what they know and see what their classmates know. It gives me an idea of what kind of experiences I am dealing with. Often times I take out the W, if we are working mostly on the prior knowledge part.
• Think- Pair- Share- Students love getting together at the start of a lesson to share what they already know about a topic we are going to read about. It promotes discussion and seems to hold them all accountable to contribute.

-Creating Mental Images

• This is my favorite to teach right along with details in writer's workshop. Many of my students lack the details in their writing. When I show them how important it is for their reader, by having them paint the images in their head as they read, they seem to "get it"!

by Shelley

What is Important to Know About Reading Comprehension?

Comprehension strategies are conscious plans or sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. The seven strategies appear to have a firm scientific basis for improving text comprehension.


There are seven important strategies that all readers must be able to apply to text in order to read and understand content. Students explore comprehension using a range of strategies that include monitoring for meaning, asking questions while reading, making inferences, determining importance, synthesizing ideas, visualizing information, making connections between texts, the world, and their lives and using sensory and emotional images.


In the last several years, more and more educators have been paying attention to comprehension instruction in the elementary grades. Teachers know that the ultimate goal of reading is to make sense of a variety of texts. Emphasizing only decoding in the early grades can lead to students parroting back text by the third and fourth grades with little understanding. Teachers also know the limitations of emphasizing phonics instruction without meaningful literacy contexts.

One teacher’s evolution of reading comprehension instruction

Year 1- As a new teacher I followed suite with the other teachers on my team and began teaching our newly adopted Literacy By Design-Rigby. It was one of the first programs of its kind! Rigby included reading, writing, and phonics. The reading program was designed around the comprehension strategies and leveled books were included for student use. Great, right? That first year I followed the program verbatim. Something was missing though. My kids weren’t using any of these comprehension strategies outside of Rigby.

Learn more about Rigby: http://rigby.hmhco.com/en/literacydesign_home.htm

Year 2- My feet were wet. Over the summer I read many professional books about the instruction of reading: Reading with Meaning, Strategies that Work, and Mosaic of Thought and I realized I was doing all the thinking. I wasn’t requiring my kids to do much thinking outside of my mini-lesson. Not quite ready to completely change the structure of my Reader’s Workshop I still used Rigby, now only as a resource. I slowly began implementing mini-lessons of my own. Some of the lessons came from my professional books while others came from great online resources. I was noticing a slightly difference in my students. They were beginning to share with me more about what they were thinking while they were reading. Lots of, “Did you know…?” and “I can’t believe…”

Online mini-lessons: http://www.readinglady.com/

http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/index.html

Year 3- This year I had an entirely new team to work with. We all made our goal to develop Reader’s Workshop lessons that would fit the needs of our students and help them read to learn. We followed the scope and sequence of our previous reading program, Rigby, and designed ten mini-lessons to go with each strategy. We also developed assessments that simply showed the thinking students were doing while they read. I was truly following a workshop approach for the first time! My Reader’s Workshop began with a 10 minute mini-lesson, 30 minutes of independent but focused reading time (books self selected) and ending with a 5 minute share. My students were no longer just sharing, they were inferring, questioning, and synthesizing.

What Do You Know About Reading Comprehension Strategies That Others Might Not Know?

Engaging students in reading comprehension requires a dedicated amount of time each day. However after students have been introduced to the strategies, had lots of practice using these strategies, they can be integrated into other subjects and activities for the day.


I have found that the best resource for understanding the importance and complexity of reading comprehension strategies has been the book, Mosaic of Thought, the Power of Reading Comprehension Instruction by Keene, E. and Zimmerman S. It gives a great break down of the 7 reading comprehension strategies. Reading this book gave me the insight of the importance of creating an environment in your classroom, regardless of age, ability level, or experiences, that fosters ongoing discussion about reading and thinking about reading. I also found that Making Meaning, a reading curriculum supplement is a good starting resource for creating that environment in your classroom. It comes with books, lessons, and ideas for teaching students from the beginning of the year how to think and share about books they are reading.

According to Mosaic of Thought each strategy should be taught in isolation and should be taught for several weeks. This gives students a chance to be introduced, exposed, and lots of practice before moving on to another strategy.

Reading Comprehension Resources for Teachers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehensionia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension
This Wiki is all about reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is defined at length. Vocabulary and reading strategies are also discussed. This is a great first stop for beginning teachers or anyone wanting to know about the basics of reading comprehension.

http://reading.ecb.org/
This website, Into the Book, is a comprehension resource for teachers and students in grades K-4. They focus on eight research-based strategies: using prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating and synthesizing. Behind the Lesson provides information and teaching resources for each strategy. The website also features professional development videos, lesson plans, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.

http://www.marin.edu/~don/Study/7read.html
This is an article for teachers featuring 7 ways to improve reading comprehension.

http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/pressley/index.html
This is a great article on comprehension instruction for teachers.

http://www.keystoliteracy.com/adolescent/literacy/research-based-comprehension-strategy-instruction.pdf
This is another great article for teachers on comprehension strategy instruction. The article includes discussion on research-based effective comprehension instruction and strategy instruction for adolescent readers.

http://www.resourceroom.net/Comprehension/index.asp
The Resource Room has lessons and articles on comprehension for teachers.

http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2&MMN_position=4:4
This website has wonderful comprehension resources for teachers from the Reading Lady. Resources include strategy instruction and *free comprehension worksheets for students.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2983
This Scholastic website features many *free graphic organizers from Venn Diagrams to Character Comparison worksheets. These graphic organizers are a great supplement to any reading series to improve student comprehension.

http://esl.about.com/od/readinglessonplans/Reading_Lesson_Plans_for_English_Learners_at_All_Levels.htm
This website features reading comprehension lesson plans for English Learners at all levels.

http://www.freereading.net/index.php?title=Comprehension_Activities
This website features many comprehension lessons for teachers including comprehension monitoring, visualization maps, and prediction charts.

Assessment Stories

In our corporation we have very high test scores on ISTEP. This is usually corporation wide. However over the last few years, I feel like we have been tampering with a variety of assessments especially at the primary level. We began with giving a standardized test just in the spring. We found this to be unnecessary. We were not using the information for anything, but to give parents an idea of how they left K, 1st and second grade. We then moved to using it twice a year, first in the fall and then in the spring. This particular year the corporation ordered the wrong test. In the spring they ordered the Kindergarten version for first graders. Well of course students seemed to have made huge gains and therefore miss information was sent home. We were directed to just send the scores home. Needless to say we did not do that test again. We since have gone to the NWEA assessment as our formal assessment for all students. We do these 2 times a year. Sounds great, we can use the information to see growth and we can use it to guide instruction. However because it is done in grades 1-4, and ISTEP is done we had to move back the second test to February. So we now do it in October and February. Yes we can see growth and we can look for information to guide instruction, but there is not end of the year information to see the growth from that instruction in May. What does it really tell parents?

Along with this we got rid of doing a writing assessment each quarter. We now do one the second week of school and the second to last week of school. This is fine to show growth from start to finish. However there is not a common assessment that gives the teacher more direction in writing instruction. I think this would be helpful when taking our students to our intervention teams, if we did it quarterly.

For more information on NWEA testing visit the following website.

http://www.nwea.org/

Literacy Intervention Strategies

There are many great literacy intervention strategies available for teachers to implement in their classrooms. Early intervention is crucial in being able to help all students become better readers! The following is a list of some effective strategies that teachers can use to reach out to all learners:

1. Give explicit and systematic instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness.

2. Provide frequent monitoring of struggling readers.

3. Provide accelerated instruction...not decelerated instruction.

4. Provide one-on-one, differentiated instruction as often as possible or in small groups.

5. Give high-quality, research-based instruction in comprehension and decoding (fluency).

6. Administer valid assessments.

7. Increase intensity of instruction in both time and quality.

8. Provide as many opportunities for reteaching, review, and supervised practice.

9. Help families provide strong parental support (home-school connection).

10. Provide adequate repetitions for long-term memory storage and automaticity in the attainment of reading and writing proficiency.

Using Portfolios as Assessment

Using portfolios is a great way to assess students. Teachers might wonder if portfolios are worth the extra effort. Teachers might also wonder what a portfolio would show them that they did not already know about their students. I started using the portfolio process for the first time this past year to see if they were worth the effort. Each student in my classroom completed a writing portfolio. Every few weeks, my students would complete a writing topic for their portfolio. Each student had a folder that they kept their writing pages in. Students could look at this portfolio and assess their own writing progress. I would also take a look at their pages from time to time and comment on their progress. At the end of the year, I bound the each student’s portfolio into a book for them to take home. My first grade students were very proud of themselves with the progress they had made-especially when comparing the first day of school’s writing to the last day of school’s writing! The portfolio made a great visual for parents too. The best part for me as a teacher is I was able to see that all my students made many gains in their writing from when they came to me in the beginning of the year! The 6+1 trait lessons we were required to teach really worked!

Allington’s chapter on portfolios gives some good suggestions on how to use portfolios. I will use these suggestions to improve upon the portfolio method. One suggestion Allington had was to have students choose or negotiate what to put in their portfolios. This is a great suggestion because I think students would really have to self-assess their pages to figure out what their best work is. It would also give them empowerment in their own work. Another strategy Allington had was to invite parents to be partners in the portfolio process. This is also a great suggestion because parents know their children better than anyone. Parent involvement has been proven to increase student achievement

Yes, using portfolios in a classroom is extra work in an already busy day. If a teacher organizes the use of portfolios into her lesson plans before the year begins and uses proven strategies, portfolios do not have to take a lot of extra time in anyone’s day. After using portfolios the first time, a teacher will no doubt have to adjust accordingly to what worked and what did not. But a portfolio sure shows better progress than some multiple choice tests and writing prompts given out four times/year. Portfolios are worth the effort and will be the best assessment a teacher, student, and parent can have.

Literacy Resources

http://www.literacy.uconn.edu/evalit.htm

This website offers many different links to other literacy assessment websites. Some of the external links explain the current literacy assessments used while others provide links for online student literacy practice by grade level.

http://www.rti4success.org/

Confused about all the new RTI lingo and what is all means? This website explains all the different components of RTI. It also provides training links for progressing monitoring. Finally, it offers webinars on very specific literacy elements.

http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/rti/rti_wire.php

Step-by-step explanation of RTI along with many websites to support you along the way.

http://www.fcrr.org/

Great resource for all elementary school teachers! This website allows you to select your grade level and the literacy area that you would like to work with (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary or comprehension) and searches for premade activities to reinforce the specific skill you selected.

http://www.rtitools.com/

This website offers RTI websites for all areas (literacy, behavior, math, and communication). Each category breaks down into several subcategories that offer many different website options. Some of the linked websites offer information, others offer lessons, and finally some even provide students practice.

http://www.wirelessgeneration.com/solutions/indiana-k-2.html

Information regarding mCLASS, a hand held electronic device being piloted in the state of Indiana. This device allows teachers to quickly administer and score math and literacy assessments.

http://elemliteracy.wikispaces.com/

Great beginner website! New to balanced literacy, this is the website for you. This wiki contains many different balanced literacy resources. It explains all of the components of whole, small, and independent work in a reader’s or writer’s workshop.

Literacy Interview

Assessment and evaluation are integral components of the teaching-learning cycle. The main purposes are to guide and improve instruction and student learning. Effectively planned assessment and evaluation can promote learning, build confidence and develop students’ understanding of themselves as active learners.

Assessment is the act of gathering information on a daily basis in order to understand an individual student's learning and needs. Assessment data assists teachers in planning and adapting for further instruction.

Evaluation is the culminating act of interpreting the information gathered during daily assessment for the purpose of making decisions or judgments about students’ learning and progress. Evaluation often occurs at the end of an activity, a unit or a reporting period, and provides information to students, teachers, parents and others about students’ progress to date.

The following are five Indiana elementary teachers thoughts on assessment, instruction, and evaluation.

Literacy Assessment, Instruction & Evaluation

What do you need to know? Every school and district has certain expectations for how their students are assessed in literacy. I think that some essential things to know regardless of where you teach are: how to give a running record and how to evaluate a DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment).

What do you teach them? Many schools, districts, and states are following the trend of the workshop approach. It is imperative to know the seven comprehension strategies traditionally taught within the workshop approach: making connections, creating images, monitoring comprehension, asking questions, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing.

How do I know when they need additional support? There are many different assessments out there to determine if a student falls below grade level expectations: running records, DRA and RCBM are a few of the common ones. Once students are identified they may receive one of many interventions: Read Naturally or Lexia are the two programs we use at my school.

Kelly- Fishers, IN

What do you need to know? The most important thing to know is not only how to give the assessments but what to do with the data after the assessments are given. For example, at our school we give DIBELS assessments three times/year. Afterwards, we come together as a grade level and analyze our scores. We use these scores to guide our instruction and make flexible small remedial, on-level, and enrichment reading groups. We progress monitor our students and continually look at these scores to adjust our groups. There is no benefit to giving assessments if the data is not used to guide instruction.

How do I know when they need additional support? We use DIBELS ( Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). On DIBELS, our students are tested on phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency. We have also begun to use TRCs (Total Reading Comprehension). We use this data to determine if our students need additional support.
What do you teach them? We use the Scott Foresman basal and the Debbie Diller method of literacy stations. We teach guided reading instruction in small flexible reading groups based on assessment scores. We use our assessments to teach targeted literacy skills, from phonics to comprehension.

Shalini, Indianapolis, IN

I think the most important thing to know about assessment is using assessments that are meaningful and will help you drive instruction. Assessment includes testing, evaluation and measurement. It uses both summative and formative evaluation to monitor student progress and structure future assignments that may be beneficial to the student. Generally it is used to make a particular educational decision. The objective and learning targets should match, and the selected assessment techniques should accommodate the specific needs of the learner to whom it is applied.

Rachel, Osceola, IN

The most important component of literacy assessment is that it should be the driving force in your instruction. How you assess your students should depend on which route you will take with teaching your lessons and how you differentiate your instruction. Any assessment that you decide to give your students needs to be worthwhile, effective, and helpful! Think: Don't just test to test...What do I want to know and learn about my students from this assessment? If the assessment is not important, don't give it!

Every teacher should be giving their students high-quality instruction using best practices and teachers need to try and reach out to all learners. If a teacher notices that her student(s) are not understanding the material, early intervention is key! Teachers need to find out the "root" of the child's reading difficulties and plan appropriate interventions to fit that child's needs. I find that one-on-one or small group instruction seems to be very effective when implementing interventions.

Sarah, Columbus, IN

I think no matter what or where you teach, it is important to ensure you are using assessments that are valid and reliable. You need to understand how to administer them and review them in detail in order to let the assessments guide your instruction and your interventions. I think the most important component is that the information is being used to help determine what each child needs.

Shelley, Wolcottville, IN

How does your school handle intervention?

It seems our corporation is just starting to use the RTI model. There really hasn't been too much talk at our school but I know the school who use palm pilots (scores are sent directly to state I believe) use this model. This school is actually the first year I have heard of it. While reading the chapters assigned, it made me think about our school. Our curriculum leader at our school takes all the low students in first grade and keeps them for the entire morning. The tests that she uses are guided reading levels from kindergarten and a test called ERSY (sp?). There are about 4-5 from each class, about 10-15 kids she has. She teaches them reading, writing, and spelling. She also takes the bubble kids for 3 rd grade to help them pass the ISTEP. I believe she takes them for an hour or two daily.

Rachel, Osceola, IN

My school has a few ways of handling interventions. If the child's reading struggles are not too severe, the classroom teacher can decide how he/she wants to give instruction to that child. If a child's difficulties progressively get worse, the classroom teacher has to refer the child to TAT (Teacher Assistance Team) for help with interventions to be tried in the classroom. Then, a follow-up meeting is scheduled to see how well the child has progressed. If no progress has been made, the child could be referred for testing if applicable.

We technically do not do RTI, but we are in the beginning stages of ICT, which will eventually replace the TAT process and the process will not take as long to see results with the students. It should be a great program once it gets fully implemented. Also, we have SRA/Corrective Reading and Book Buddies which are reading programs for struggling readers. In SRA, students work in small groups and are progress monitored on a monthly basis and they have goals that they try to meet. Once the child meets his/her goal, they graduate from the program.

Sarah, Columbus, IN

I will be completely honest, I do not agree completely with the way we handle our interventions for literacy. After reading both books, I feel we have a long way to go. We are beginning to work with the RTI model in more depth and as a staff we are all learning more about how to implement it. We usually begin any of our interventions with our STAT team meeting. This is when teachers have tried strategies in the classroom, but a child is still showing a regression or is not working at grade level. We do this also with behavioral concerns. STAT team consists of the principal, teacher, title 1 teacher, school psychologist, speech therapist, and special education teacher. We review data from previous assessments ranging from kindergarten screening, Metropolitan scores, and NWEA scores.(1-4th grade) We then take information that the title teacher gathers from administering a DRA, Dibbles, and K-Bit.(Kauffman Brief Intelligence test) The school psychologist takes information from KTEA2. (Kauffman Test of Educational Achievement) We then develop the intervention strategies based on the information. Many times this includes giving them 1 to 1 title support first if they are not already receiving this.

Shelley, Wolcottville, IN

My school is unique in my district because it is one of the only Title I schools. Therefore, we have two additional staff members to help us provide interventions. My school is using the 3 tier model of RTI. At the beginning of the school year all students are tested using the RCBM (oral fluency) and the MAZE (comprehension). Students that fall below the cutoff score were those that we considered for tier 2 interventions. Due to the fact that I teach at a Title I school these interventions were usually given by the Title I teachers. The interventions consisted of Read Naturally (fluency, some comprehension, and writing) as well as Lexia (computerized phonics program). We have a daily intervention time of thirty minutes. All students in that grade level participate in RTI at that time which limits the amount of pull out throughout the day. Classroom teachers keep the remainder of their students and provide other meaningful remedial or enrichment literacy activities.

Kelly, Fishers, IN

If a student is not on grade-level, our first step is to try some interventions on our own. If no progress is made, we have a grade-level meeting where the other teachers on our team help us come up with strategies. If there is still no progress, we take our student to our school's SOS team. The SOS team consists of our school counselor, school psychologist, and teachers from every grade level who try to come up with more strategies. If there is still no progress, the student could be referred for testing. Our district's goal is to implement the RTI process in 2-3 years. In the meantime, we use the IQ-Discrepancy Model.

Shalini, Indianapolis, IN

Does your school have an intervention classroom?

Yes, we have a literacy intervention classroom. It's called Explorers. At our school it's for 2/3 graders who are considered bubble kids. Although next year, our school will only have it for 3 rd graders. The teacher is trained in Lips/Wilson and goes to workshops throughout the year. The training they receive is the latest in research. They have a full time aide in the room. The students can rotate out of the classroom and into a regular 2/3 class but usually they are in there for the whole year. The students who are with our curriculum leader, they can also rotate out of intervention and be placed back into their classroom for the whole morning to work on reading, spelling, and writing.

Rachel, Osceola, IN

No, we do not have a specific literacy intervention classroom, other than SRA which is for only first graders and they receive instruction 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. It would be awesome to have intervention classrooms like the fourth and fifth grade classrooms in our reading. How effective! We have a special education classroom, but most of that instruction is done in the classroom since we do inclusion. Wouldn't it make more sense to have intervention classrooms for first and second grade? Try to catch those struggling readers early...

Sarah, Columbus, IN

I am not currently in a Literacy Intervention classroom. This sounds like a wonderful idea and at the building I started out in, parts of this were being used. However I think the missing component was that the child is not pulled out for any interventions. We were still pulling out for counseling, speech, etc... This really disrupts the child's schedule and therefore almost all blocks of time are interrupted.

Shelley, Wolcottville, IN

Due to the fact that my school has additional support from Title I we do not have any literacy intervention classrooms. All of our students who are being progress monitored in literacy are receiving services through Title I.

Kelly, Fishers, IN

We do not have any literacy intervention classrooms at our school. In fact, we are the only elementary school in our district that does not have a literacy coach at this time, due to our standardized testing scores.

Shalini, Indianapolis, IN