LitHubAZ
Effective Literacy Practices

Interventions

In all effective intervention and remediation programs, struggling readers should receive instruction from a trained reading teacher who has knowledge across grade levels and who effectively uses data to inform instruction and monitor student progress. That reading teacher can oversee a trained instructor who assists in helping a student build their essential literacy and language skills.

In grades K-3, evidence-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions are part of daily reading instructional time based on students’ individual needs (as identified by data from Tier 1 assessments). Struggling readers in grades 4-12 benefit from intense, individualized invention by an English Language Arts teacher or trained reading specialist.

Along with the following suggested reading intervention practices, intended for English Language Arts teachers, it is important for schools to utilize evidence-based intervention programs and high-quality instructional materials to supplement their existing core curriculum.



Instructional Strategy 

Provide purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly.

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, with appropriate pace, and with expression. It is important to provide struggling readers with instruction that will improve their ability to read fluently. When students can read fluently, they can focus on making sense of what they are reading instead of focusing on sounding out the individual words of the text.

Source: Vaughn et. al, 2022


Effective Practices

  • Utilize the repeat reading fluency-building activity and provide a purpose for each repeated reading.
  • Focus some instructional time on reading with prosody.
    • Teach students to pause at commas, stop at periods, raise or lower their voice when encountering a question mark, and show emotion when encountering an exclamation point.
  • Provide regular opportunities for students to read a wide range of texts. When students read a wide range of texts, they are exposed to different sentence structures, unfamiliar words, and syntax which improves students’ reading fluency.
    • Choose texts at the higher end of students’ instructional reading level and, when possible, choose texts that align to grade-level content or other topics of high interest to the group of students.

Source: Vaughn et. al, 2022


Tools and Activities

Prosody Activities

  • Teachers read aloud 1-2 sentences with prosody and ask students to read the same sentences with the same prosody.
  • Students can read in unison with the teacher.
  • Teach students where to pause when they are reading by marking slashes in the reading passage where sentences and phrases end. The slashes indicate where students should pause briefly while reading. Teachers can read the passage aloud and allow students to practice rereading the passage with a partner or individually.

Source: Vaughn et. al, 2022

Repeat Reading Activities

Teachers should require students to read the same passage a total of 3-4 times and provide a different purpose for each reading of the same passage.

Learn More from What Works Clearinghouse

Reading a Wide Range of Texts

Each passage is read only once, which distinguishes this activity from the type of partner activity that would be done for repeated reading.

Learn More from What Works Clearinghouse

Related

Find recommended instructional strategies and practices aligned with the science of reading by age/grade level and foundational literacy skill.

Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.

Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.

While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.