Being an interventionist can be incredibly rewarding when done right. When everything aligns and intervention works like it was designed to, everyone grows. Everyone succeeds and everyone can see their own unique purpose = students and teachers alike.

Structured Literacy is an approach to reading instruction that is explicit and systematic, with a focus on the structure of the English language.

Being an interventionist can be incredibly rewarding when done right. When everything aligns and intervention works like it was designed to, everyone grows. Everyone succeeds and everyone can see their own unique purpose = students and teachers alike.

It can be a challenge keeping students engaged in distance learning sessions. There are ways to keep them children with attention difficulties engaged.

Frustrated with setting and implementing goals? Learn how to write SMART goals, with examples and templates.

First Grade Smiles: An elementary teaching blog by Melissa Machan. K-2 teaching ideas, resources, freebies, classroom tips, and more.

Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

A LOOK AT LEXILES and Text Complexity While delivering PD yesterday, a teacher asked me, "What's a Lexile?" I wanted to say, "where have you been?" But the reality is--I commend her for not being afraid to ask what we think is such a basic question. We forget that some people have been so busy working in the trenches that they haven't been able to keep up. (They've been too busy administering tests, Student Learning Objective assessments, state exams and more.) So, listed below are the basics of LEXILES 101. Essential understandings: The Common Core has defined where "college and career ready" (CCR) students should be reading and it's a 1450 Lexile. Therefore, they scaffolded in reverse levels to graduate students at the appropriate level. These Lexile levels are more difficult than where typical students are reading. Lexile is an algorithm. It is a mathematical assessment of a linguistic product. Lexiles (and other readability statistics) are fallible. (For instance, it is not valid for prose or drama and is less valid for fiction in 1000+ Lexile range.) The parent organization to the CCSS, (CCSSO formally called the Governor’s convention) recently released a white paper verifying the validity of text complexity. Therefore, we have to pay attention to this essential shift to embrace "rigor" in reading. To read the recent white paper from the Council of Chief State School Officers click here. This article compares a number of algorithms and the summarizes text complexity for the CCSS. Text complexity formulas were meant for instructional purposes. Pleasure reading should be allowed at any level and this is validated in the Common Core, Appendix A, page 9, paragraph 1: It is very interesting, to compare the variables used among the six different "approved" complexity measures. Metametrics (Lexile) uses the simplest measure of only word count and sentence length. (Lexile.com provides a search tool for books, but many are missing.) Other companies including Accelerated Reader (ATOS) and Pearson, DRP, etc... add additional measures of review such as punctuation, a 100,000-word vocabulary match, and more. Therefore, we would conclude that the ratings of the latter companies would be more accurate picture of complexity and appropriateness. This quote from page 17 of the white paper puts it diplomatically: "There is no clear "gold standard" measure of text difficulty against which to compare the various metrics. Instead, we compared each metric against various reference measures based on grade level and student comprehension data for five sets of passages gathered for the study. These are defined and discussed in the sections following. Although there are limitations in the validity of these indicators as measures of text difficulty, the variety in their construction allows us to observe the robustness of the metrics and consider how different reference measures might affect their performance." Be sure to note that Microsoft Word's Flesch-Kincaid measure has also been proven valid. This picture shows how to "turn on" readability statistics within Word: Readability statistics, is only one characteristic to examine for instructional materials. Please see the charts below to identify correct grade levels and Lexiles - or level of complexity. The Common Core has asked teachers to evaluate classroom materials for quality as well as quantity. Complexity is only one piece of the puzzle. In addition, a teacher, librarian, or educator, has to pay attention to: • Complexity - Lexile, vocabulary • Qualitative measures -value • Reader and the task -is there enough in the text to foster good discussion, value -added assignments, and begin a knowledge exploration. How can I use this novel or passage to foster critical thinking skills? Every reading program (F and P, AR, Reading Counts, etc.) uses as its baseline, some metric to measure difficulty or "readability". Here is a chart by Perma-bound, which correlates the different reading measures:

A blog about reading and writing, and sharing ideas about literacy and RTI for your classroom/ reading, writing, & RTI resources

This year, many of us are faced with the challenge of offering online reading interventions for our students! Oh my gosh! How do I do that? The ideas that make for effective intervention don’t change based

How many parents and professionals have experienced the following scenario? The child in question is reading very fluently (Landi & Ryherd, 2017) but comprehending very little of what s/he is reading. Attempts at remediation follow (oftentimes without the administration of a comprehensive assessment) with a focus on reading texts and answering text-related questions. However, much

Here are 40 ideas for using Flipgrid in the classroom, separated by pre-K through 8, High School, and College/University.

Encourage independent reading in your classroom with book interviews. You will love hearing your students respond to text in a meaningful and authentic way.

Lexiles & Achieve3000 A Guide for Parents

In addition to guided reading passages, I now have Digital Fluency Passages available! Today, I want to share with you the parts of my digital fluency sets, and how they can help you in your socially distanced, or totally virtual classroom!

Discover the truth about multisensory instruction in reading intervention! Learn how to implement structured multisensory teaching effectively without the mess. Grab free multisensory anchor cards to engage students in visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning. Enhance letter recognition and phonic

This Letter Name and Sound Assessment is designed for teachers, interventionists, tutors, and homeschoolers. Use this assessment on little learners to collect data, track progress, and guide instruction for individual students, small group, or whole class. Ideal for virtual or in-person teaching. I use this product to easily share data with a team of teachers, to conveniently store information in one place, and as a quick reference to a single student or a group of students while planning lessons. The DIGITAL Recording Sheet is the easiest, fastest, way to monitor learning and track student progress over spans of time! Included in this Product: DIGITAL Google Slideshow Assessment of uppercase and lowercase letters DIGITAL Google Sheets Teacher Recording Sheet PRINTABLE Recording Sheet PRINTABLE uppercase and lowercase student assessment sheet Ways to use: Benchmark Assessments: Use at the beginning, middle, and end of a school year to collect baseline data of students. (Best for Pre-k and K) Small Group intervention: Use periodically through small group intervention or guided reading groups to mark student progress. Can also be used to guide lessons and small group reading instruction. Individual Tutors: Use as a quick screener to keep learning on track virtually or in person. Interventionists and Special Education: Use to develop goals and quantify progress, or share with other members of your educational team. Leave a review to earn credit on more TPT products! Have questions or comments? I'd love to hear from you! Email me at [email protected]

Do you have an interventionist in your classroom? Do you struggle with how to use him/her? Do you forget about them all together and then either send them away or give them something not very meaningful to do? If so, this post is for you! You'll pick up some great tips and a free set of Small Group Planning Sheets!

Learn the essentials of research-based reading instruction! Understand its components, structure, and how it differs from traditional approaches. Share crucial insights with stakeholders to support student success effectively. Explore how to implement this approach for optimal literacy growth!

Structured Literacy is an approach to reading instruction that is explicit and systematic, with a focus on the structure of the English language.

In these language building activities, your students will practice identifying and conveying the meaning of synonyms, antonyms and homophones. BUY ON TPT

In an effort to support my fellow English teachers during this crazy time, I've collected some helpful freebies for you to use during your digital learning. Jus

Use the FREE literacy manipulatives to create a literacy toolbox for kinder, first, & second grade for small groups, centers, or at home.

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Where has Google Drive been all my life???!!! In an effort to become more organized, I began a Counseling Notebook to house all of my important documentation and information. You can read about this notebook in a previous post. I love this notebook and am very happy with the way it has kept me organized. I will still use my Notebook for certain things but I was able to convert a few of my forms to Google Drive, thanks to the brilliant work of Andrea J Burston at JYJ Counselor Blog and Traci at Elementary School Counselor's Blog. You can click on their blog names to check out the forms they created. They use Google Drive for Minutes Meetings (stay tuned as I explore this during this school year) and the students that have been seen for the year. I recreated these same documents and I am so excited to use them this year. I was thinking of other ways I document throughout my program to see how else I could incorporate this wonderful bit of technology. I created a Parent Communication Log form on Google Drive. I currently keep this in my notebook and it ends up taking up so much space. Google Drive automatically keeps a spreadsheet for all of my parent communications eliminating the need for paper copies. I'm all about saving the trees.....and my time! I added all of the links right to my iPad for easy access (they look just like apps). I am still thinking about other ways I can use Google Drive in my program and will post others that I come up with. How do you use Google Drive in your counseling program?

This research-based reading intervention program is AMAZING. Over 10,000 teachers are using The Reading Intervention Program and seeing incredible results.

Conducting fluency interventions during remote learning has not been as challenging as I thought. With the use of a great document camera, leveled text, Google Jamboard, and a few other techie things, my students have

Reading is one thing that many students struggle with. Some students get the underlying messages right away, while others need a little extra help. By the time students reach the high school level, we hope their reading levels have improved from their elementary years. While the majority of students' understanding have improved by the time they reach high school, there are still many students who get frustrated and struggle to read. Below, I will explain and discuss five important and helpful strategies that teachers can incorporate into their lessons, in any class that they teach. 1. Inference: As we read, we can use inference to further reading comprehension. When we infer while reading, we use knowledge that we already have and combine that with evidence from the text passages to come to conclusions with what we are reading. Students can formulate a question they may come upon while reading. In order to answer that question, they need to first determine what they already know about the subject in the text and then look for evidence in the text that supports their question. This information will help to lead them to their answer. If you're in the neighborhood of trying something different, I have created these FREE Reading Strategies Bookmarks. I thought that these bookmarks would be a great addition to an existing novel study and an opportunity for students to try something new. Simply, give each student a bookmark during various sections of a novel. The bookmarks will give students an opportunity to look at specific elements in the section of the book they are reading one at a time so that students are not overwhelmed by having to examine more than one thing at a time. Students need a bookmark anyway, so this bookmark is a win-win for both students (as they will learn more reading strategies), teachers (as they can use these bookmarks over and over) and the book itself (no more corner-page creases!) 😄 Tip: Consider printing the bookmarks on cardstock paper for more durability! 2. Questioning: While students are reading their text, they can start to create questions as they go along. They need to actively question what they are reading. Questions they have may be about the text, or about what the author means by a specific sentence or paragraph. By questioning, students are now thinking about what they are actually reading and can analyze passages more deeply and thoroughly. There comes a connection between the reader and the text, which also helps to increase comprehension. Due to the fact that many of my students were struggling to come up with effective questions during their lit circle discussion, I created this Reading Response Interactive Notebook Flipbook, as a guide to help their discussions. This flipbook provides students with sentence starters, before, during and after reading questions. It's a handy tool that can be referenced over and over. 3. Summarizing: One of the more difficult types of reading strategies is summarizing, mainly because students don't know what they are supposed to do. Some students end up providing too many details, while others not enough. By doing either, they may miss the main point and end up making no sense at all. With proper and frequent practice, summarizing will help students to write down the main ideas of a longer passage, help them to focus on key points and ideas that the author wants the reader to understand, and be able to use keywords and phrases properly. 4. Main Idea: Finding the main idea of a text is sometimes difficult for students to understand. Students need to first understand the focus of the text, then they can figure out what is so important about that focus. Combining the two creates the main idea of a passage. Students can do this with any text by finding supporting evidence in the text that describes the focus. 5. Synthesizing: Synthesizing is another difficult strategy for students, so frequent practice and modeling is essential for students. Synthesizing works as a reading strategy by breaking down all of the parts of a text into pieces, such as the characters, the plot, the climax, and the setting, while discussing or thinking about how they all come together to create one whole text. As the students read the text, they will begin to think differently about the text. They will learn more information about characters that will promote them think differently. Their opinions will change, as their comprehension increases. I hope one, if not more of these strategies will work with your struggling students. These strategies require repeated practice, so if students are able to continue to use them regularly, they will have a much better understanding of them, as well as the fact that they might be encouraged to read more and challenge themselves with different books! Looking for more reading strategy ideas? Check out these ideas from the other Secondary English Coffee Shop bloggers! Getting Your Teens to Actually Read from Room 213 Editable Reading Guide for Novels from Nouvelle ELA During Reading Bookmarks from Secondary Sara

Use this idea of giving students a clear explanation of the structure needed for their writing, by sticking a strip of information alongside their work!

Love or hate it, virtual learning has become our new reality. As a reading interventionist and kindergarten teacher, we've enhanced virtual learning for our students in 4 key ways.