Reading Comprehension Interventions

The ultimate goal in reading is for students to understand what they have read. Basic reading and fluency skills are essential in forming a strong reading foundation. But if your students can already identify words correctly and read at an appropriate speed, but cannot understand what they are reading, they likely need reading comprehension interventions. It is important that students understand important vocabulary words within texts as well as derive meaning from text as a whole. Below you will find intervention strategies to address reading vocabulary and reading comprehension skills.

Vocabulary Intervention

It is important that the student has the understanding of what the words they are reading mean. Reading vocabulary interventions focus on learning word meaning, word analysis, and understanding words in context.

Morphology

Students can often look at a word’s structure to give them clues about what it means. Students should be taught the meanings of prefixes, basewords, and suffixes to gain insight about what a word may mean.

Word Meaning Sorts

Students are asked to sort words into like categories. For example, this can include words that are synonyms that would be grouped together. Teachers can also integrate morpheme units into meaning sorts.

Comprehension Intervention

Finally, we want students to understand the concepts that have been presented to them in their reading. Reading comprehension interventions may include generating questions; graphic organizers; passage retell; Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, Review (PQ4R); or others.

Question Generation

Student generate their own questions about what they are going to read and use them as a monitoring tool once they begin reading.

Graphic Organizers

The teacher can make a graphic organizer to organize important information about a story such as characters, setting, the main problem, important events that happened in the story, the resolution, the main theme, etc. Graphic organizers can be customized to best fit the type of text the student is reading.

Passage Retell

Students read a passage and then retell what happened in the passage. Afterwards, they can re-read the passage to determine if the retell was complete and accurate.

Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, Review (PQ4R)

The student previews the text by reading the title and subheadings. Then they will create questions based on the information that they previewed. The student reflects while they read and pause to make connections and create mental images. After reading, the student will provide a retell of what they read. Finally, the student reviews the text, answers the questions that were previously made, and find any necessary clarifying information in the text.

Over the past several weeks, we have been sharing instructional strategies to address different skills associated with reading: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. You may hear instructional strategies referred to as interventions, direct instruction, or individualized instruction, among other terms. Next week we will post about accommodations that may address your student’s reading needs, and explain how they differ from intervention services.

The Wilson Reading System

Now that we have discussed what structured literacy is, this week we are going to focus on a specific program, the Wilson Reading System. This program is commonly used in northeast Ohio, and it is the program our school psychology practice uses.

The Wilson Reading System

The Wilson Reading System is an intensive reading intervention that is based on Orton-Gillingham principles. It can be used with individuals who are in the 2nd grade or higher who have significant basic reading skill deficits and are not making appropriate progress with reading decoding and/or spelling skills. This often includes students who have been identified as having a specific learning disability in reading and those diagnosed with dyslexia. This program uses a systematic approach to directly teach students the structure of the English language, including syllable types, morphology, sight words, vocabulary, and reading and listening comprehension skills. As students work their way through a highly structured program, they become better able to fluently decode and spell words. It is recommended that students receive hour-long tutoring sessions at least twice a week.

To teach the structure of the English language to students who are not making adequate progress with their current reading intervention, need more intensive literacy instruction, and/or have a language-based learning disability (like dyslexia), every lesson includes instruction in:

• Phonemic Awareness

• Decoding and Word Study

• Sight Word Recognition

• Spelling

• Fluency

• Vocabulary

• Oral Expressive Language Development

• Comprehension

Level I Wilson Reading System Certification

Wilson certification is a very rigorous process. Tutors with Level I Certification have successfully completed training for the first half of the Wilson Reading System program (Steps 1-6). Training includes attending workshops, in-person and on-line classes, and a practicum. Through all of this theoretical and practical training, instructors learn about phonology, orthography, morphology, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in great detail. Wilson refers to professionals who have completed this level of certification as Wilson Dyslexia Practitioners.

Level II Wilson Reading System Certification

Those who have completed the Level I Certification may choose to continue their education by getting Level II certified. Educators with Level II Certification successfully complete workshops, on-line courses, a practicum with an individual student working on steps 7-12, and a practicum with a group of students. This training provides a greater understanding of the Wilson Reading System. Wilson refers to professionals who have completed this level of certification as Wilson Dyslexia Therapists.

How to Choose a Provider

When looking for a provider, it is important to work with someone who has been certified in the Wilson Reading System to ensure that they are following the program as intended (with fidelity). They should also have availability to meet with your student for hour-long sessions at least twice per week. While some individuals may have some familiarity with the program, the certification process is very rigorous, so you can be sure that the professional you are working with has both the theoretical understanding and practical experience to provide Wilson Reading System intervention effectively.

Join us next week as we move from basic reading skills to reading fluency interventions.

Structured Literacy Programs: Teaching Principles

Last week, we talked about interventions that address phonological awareness and phonics needs. While these types of interventions are helpful to many students, the majority of students with a specific learning disability in basic reading and students with dyslexia need a very specific form of intervention to remediate deficits in the areas of word identification and decoding/encoding. This comes in the form of structured literacy. Although there are many structured literacy programs that research has proven to be effective, they all share the same teaching principles which are discussed below.

Systematic and Cumulative Direct Instruction

Structured literacy uses a systematic approach to explicitly teach students how to decode words using a specific scope of material that is covered in a specific sequence to ensure that concepts build on each other in a meaningful way. A systematic approach ensures that the concepts are taught following the logical order of language with the easiest and most basic concepts being taught first before progressing to more difficult concepts. Cumulative instruction means that each portion of the program reviews and builds on the concepts taught previously. With this type of intervention, a child practices a wide range of reading skills that build on each other over time, helping students read more effectively. This means that students work on skills like phonological awareness, sound to symbol association, syllables, and morphology. Each skill is broken down and each component is directly taught to the student with frequent repetition and opportunities to practice the skill to the point of mastery.

Diagnostic Teaching

Diagnostic teaching means that both the informal and formal data that is collected during instruction is utilized to drive subsequent lessons for the students. Both observation and more formalized assessment measures are used to determine which skills the student has mastered to the point of automaticity and which skills should be targeted for further instruction.

Immediate Feedback

Feedback is another important component of structured literacy programs. Because students are working individually with an instructor or in a small group, they are provided immediate feedback throughout the program. This allows the instructor to ensure that students are correctly applying skills and that errors are immediately corrected.

Multisensory Approach

Structured literacy programs use a multi-sensory approach to help students grasp reading skills. This means that the students use of all their senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile) to reinforce the systematic sequence of skills that they are learning. Some examples of this are writing letters or words in the air, in sand, or in shaving cream.

The teaching principles outlined above are key elements to what makes structured literacy effective. Next week, we will discuss the instructional elements that are integral to structured literacy programs.

Interventions for Basic Reading Skills

In our last post, we discussed the components of an evaluation to determine the presence of a reading disability. This week, we will cover how to match appropriate instructional strategies to the results of an evaluation.

The National Reading Panel determined that there are five main skill areas that are necessary for reading: Phonemic/Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. Interventions should be developed to align with these main areas and the strengths and weaknesses identified within a student’s evaluation. The most foundational skills should be remediated first or in conjunction with other skill areas because students need to form a strong foundation before we can expect them to complete more complex reading skills.

The five areas identified by the National Reading Panel fall within the different eligibility categories for specific learning disabilities on the Evaluation Team Report (ETR). The ETR indicates that a student with a reading disorder may fall within the following special education categories: Basic Reading Skills, Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension.

This week we will focus on instructional strategies that will address the Basic Reading Skills category.

Phonological Awareness Intervention

Phonological Awareness is the most foundational skill related to reading, but it often gets overlooked. It refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound structure of oral language. Depending on the individual’s age and needs, intervention might include rhyming, sound matching, sound blending, and sound segmenting activities.

Phonics Intervention

Phonics is the next skill related to basic reading. It refers to correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters. Phonics intervention might include teaching letter to sound correspondence, high frequency sight words, syllable patterns, etc.

There are several resources that provide fun, engaging research-based activities to address these areas. For example, the Florida Center for Reading Research provides free printable activities based on grade level. Additionally, the University of Oregon also provides information about underlying reading theory and instructional strategies. Understanding, Assessing, and Intervening on Reading Problems by Dr. Laurice Joseph also provides helpful information about strategies that educators can use to address basic reading needs.

Providing these types of intervention in a small-group within a classroom setting can help remediate basic reading skills deficits, especially for those students who may have a mild reading disorder or simply need to fill in some skill gaps. However, many students with more significant reading concerns need a more intensive intervention program.

Next week, we will discuss structured literacy programs, which take a multisensory approach to systematically teach reading skills that students. These types of intensive intervention programs often work well for students with dyslexia and other basic reading skills deficits.