Interventions

Many teachers have been in a frenzy trying to reconstruct their guided reading groups or establish interventions that meet the diverse needs of their students. The "Show Down" will occur at the end of April when students begin taking the new State Assessment STAAR. The new assessment is geared towards higher order thinking and more rigorous questions along with content. -----I recently had a teacher ask "what interventions were taking place within the classroom to ensure success?"  I thought since it was a pretty important question, I would blog about the interventions.

Everyone should know that I started guided reading groups the second week of school. I sought out my low babies and the rest is history. I had a parent volunteer that came on Tuesday/Thursday mornings to work with my low students. I also had an Ace Teacher come and volunteer her time on Tuesday/Thursday in the afternoon.While these ladies were doing guided reading, phonics review, or comprehension strategies. I was busy in small group with another low group.  Another intervention that was implemented at the beginning of the year was "Success Maker" which students receive three times a week in the morning in the computer lab. My students have now graduated to "Study Island" We decided as a team if they were performing above third grade level on "Success Maker" it was time to advance to "Study Island".

So you ask--"What interventions am I implementing currently?" Well my volunteer schedule remains the same and research based programs are still three times a week. The adjustments that I have made recently with my low groups have been reviewing  weak objectives gathered from data on the benchmarks & practice assessments completed each Friday. I take the data and develop small reading passages and questions geared towards the skills they are lacking. I notice that constantly reviewing these objectives helps them immensely. I developed an "Intervention Sheet" that has the names of the passages, objectives covered, and student's names for each volunteer including myself. This helps keep everything organized. Very Simple!

Another intervention tool is recognizing when it's time to go back and reteach. We still have those moments when I wonder where they have been during the school year--like recently not knowing the characteristics of various periodicals. That hit a nerve with me! So guess what---this week we are reviewing the concepts again. Below are some pix of my intervention folders. It's very simple because that is how I like it!

Here is a copy of the Intervention Sheet.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/83108915/Intervention-1