1. Describe how leadership, teachers, families and students will be involved in this process. What role will each play?
Some of the most productive planning meetings I have participated in have been those that involve multidisciplinary teams. Developing interventions plans is a task best tackled by a group of people who know the children and their needs best. This may include families, teachers, administrators, support staff, and at some point in the process the students need to be involved as well. Its important for families to be involved for several reasons. First, they can provide insight to possible root causes for the student’s area(s) of concern. This is also an opportunity to develop supports at home that will compliment the interventions that will be done at school, possibly bridging the sphere of concern and influence. Teachers and administrators are the key connect between families and the school. It is our job to communicate clearly with families about our concerns and explain all available intervention options and to regularly update families on their students’ progress. A team of teachers is responsible for developing, implementing, and reviewing the intervention plan.
Specifically for my intervention plan, teachers will be responsible for analyzing data to determine the target students with data that indicates they are in the target group. The teachers will also look at instruction to ensure that high quality initial instruction is taking place and to identify additional support they may need. For example, the team may determine there is a need for guided reading instruction support in order to increase reading comprehension. At this point our leadership may be able to assist us in securing this professional development. We will also work with parents to ensure their student has access to appropriately leveled books for reading at home.
2. What are the interventions that you plan to implement based on your goals and objectives? Indicate interventions for students, faculty/staff, and families/communities and indicate whether they are focused on individual students, groups, grade levels, or whole school.
To review, I’ve posted my goals below. There is a connection between reading fluency and reading comprehension. In 3rd grade, students are both still developing their phonics skills and beginning to read with the purpose of learning. Their fluency can greatly hinder or help their comprehension. Therefore, I’ve selected the goal of improving reading comprehension through improving their reading fluency and comprehension skills simultaneously. If students are struggling to sound out words or do not have sight words memorized it becomes more difficult for them to understand what they are reading. I also noticed that during comprehension assessments students are not demonstrating the same level of comprehension as they do during reading groups or during one-on-one assessments. It will be important to determine if this gap is due to lack of experience taking online tests, which is how the weekly reading assessment is administered, or due to their present ability level.
Goal:
Students will demonstrate an improvement in reading comprehension.
Objectives:
- Students will increase their reading fluency by 20 words per minute (wpm) or 110 wpm (whichever reached first), as measured by DIBELS Next Generation Oral Reading Fluency assessment
- Students will develop their independent reading comprehension as shown by their Lexile score with a gain of 50-100 points over the school year.
- Students’ class work will reflect their present levels and ability in reading comprehension to more closely align with the Instructional Reading Level (IRI) scores.
The following chart details the interventions and roles I have developed.
3. What type of support will be needed to carry this out? For example, time, professional development, materials, etc.
The most critical support needed to carry out these interventions is time. Our teachers need time to meet and plan. Our students also need uninterrupted, consistent learning blocks of time. This may mean school-wide we need to agree that during this time period other activities will not be scheduled. Teachers will also need access to appropriate leveled readers to use during guided reading groups. Presently the readers that go with our LA curriculum are not at the right level for many of our students. For example, in third grade, the lowest level reader starts at a Lexile of 350. This is too high for many of my struggling readers, yet the 2nd grade books are out of context with the rest of our instruction in the 3rd grade curriculum. It would also be very wise to invest in teachers time to attend a reading conference that provides strong support in guided reading.
The most critical support needed to carry out these interventions is time. Our teachers need time to meet and plan. Our students also need uninterrupted, consistent learning blocks of time. This may mean school-wide we need to agree that during this time period other activities will not be scheduled. Teachers will also need access to appropriate leveled readers to use during guided reading groups. Presently the readers that go with our LA curriculum are not at the right level for many of our students. For example, in third grade, the lowest level reader starts at a Lexile of 350. This is too high for many of my struggling readers, yet the 2nd grade books are out of context with the rest of our instruction in the 3rd grade curriculum. It would also be very wise to invest in teachers time to attend a reading conference that provides strong support in guided reading.