How to Design and Deliver Small Group Reading Instruction and Intervention: Part 2 of 2
Dr. Stephanie Stollar is founder of Stephanie Stollar Consulting LLC and the creator of The Reading Science Academy. Dr. Stollar is a part-time assistant professor in the online reading science program at Mount St. Joseph University, and a founding member of a national alliance for supporting reading science in higher education. As a board member for the Innovations in Education Consortium, she collaboratively plans the annual MTSS Innovations in Education Conference. Dr. Stollar has worked as a school psychologist, an educational consultant, and as vice president for professional learning for Acadience® Learning Inc. She has provided professional development, conducted research and published in the areas of assessment, early intervention, and collaborative problem-solving. She is passionate about aligning practice to research and designing school systems to prevent reading failure.
Now that you are ready to take on small-group reading instruction and intervention, here is what you need to know to make it effective.
Find Out What They Know
The first step is assessment. Universal screening, reading diagnostic assessments, and program placement tests tell you what students know and need to learn next. The percentage of students who score below expectation on universal screening determines if small groups are warranted for classroom reading instruction and intervention or only for intervention.
Form the Groups
Once you know what each student needs to learn, put them into skill-alike groups. As much as possible, group students based on the lowest skill deficit. Try to place the lowest-performing students in the smallest groups. Consider grouping across a grade level, with students coming together from various classrooms. In schools with one class per grade, consider grouping students across two adjacent grade levels.
Align Instruction
Next, select the best available program to use for each group. For struggling and at-risk readers, an intervention program may be a better choice than a core reading program for Tier 1 and will definitely be required for Tier 2 or 3. Instruction aligned across the school day supports students to make faster progress.
Deploy Resources
Rather than being constrained by titles, funding sources, or past practices, try to think creatively about the best staff member to work with each group. Consider pairing the most skilled instructor with the most struggling students.
Find the Time
Be sure to allot enough time to implement the chosen programs as designed. Staggering small-group time across grades allows support staff to push into multiple grades.
Support Implementation
Successful implementation of small-group intervention includes attention to topics such as time for grade-level meetings, staff training and coaching, parent communication, guidelines for decisions about changing groups, allocating funding, and administrative leadership.
Delivering reading instruction and intervention in targeted, flexible, skill-based small groups is one of the concrete actions educators can take to improve reading outcomes. Use these steps to ensure successful implementation in your school.