Guidelines for Aligning Core Programs with Supplemental and Intervention Programs and Materials

 

Reading First requires that states, districts, and schools have an integrated reading curriculum that includes three kinds of programs, or materials. The core program is the most comprehensive. It contains systematic and explicit instruction on all reading skills (phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) and is useful for all students. Supplemental programs help to fill gaps in the core program (e.g., too little practice on sounding out) or to provide extra instruction to certain students, as indicated by assessment data. Intervention programs provide more intensive instruction—generally to students who enter beginning reading way behind their peers, whose learning needs are not adequately met by the core program, or who (for example, in grades 3 and up) are way behind as a result of inadequate instruction in past years. “Intensive” means that a program teaches reading skills in smaller chunks (to ensure that students have learned every step in a comprehension strategy, for example), gives more initial instruction (to ensure mastery before going on), corrects every error (to prevent the development of chronic error patterns), gives more practice (to ensure retention), and overall provides a higher density of instruction (more learning opportunities per minute) to teach more in less time—to accelerate learning. This three-tiered overall curriculum makes it possible to serve virtually all students. [See the following websites.]

http://texasreading.tea.state.tx.us/readingfirst/3tiemodreainsint.pdf

http://www.utsystem.edu/EveryChild/Presentations/SVaughnPDF9-9-02.pdf

http://readingserver.edb.utexas.edu/downloads/primary/booklets/Essential_Strategies.pdf

http://readingserver.edb.utexas.edu/downloads/primary/booklets/supplementTutoringGr3-5.pdf

http://www.fcrr.org/science/science.htm

 

A potential problem with the three-tiered curriculum is coordination among the programs. Surely, we do not want teachers to do three times the work as they try to use all three programs. Nor do we want teachers to stack the supplemental or intervention materials in the closet because they are not sure how to use them along with the core materials. To avoid these problems, teachers and schools planning or revising their Reading First implementations may benefit from the guidelines below.

1.     You do NOT want merely to provide more instruction on the KINDS of reading skills with which students need supplemental or intervention instruction. You want to target exactly what level of skill and related reading tasks need extra instruction. For example, if progress monitoring shows that a student (by mid first grade) is weak on decoding words that have digraphs (sh, wh, th) and paired vowels (ai, oo, ae, ea, ie), you do NOT want to provide the student with a general program on decoding. Instead, you want to begin supplemental or intervention instruction on exactly which letter-sound relationships and decodable words the student is struggling with, and go from there.

Therefore, supplemental and intervention materials must be capable of precise, targeted use and not merely provide general instruction on a skill. In other words, you don’t want to give students (what boils down to) double lessons on the same thing taught the same (inadequate) way.

For example, if a student’s difficulties begin at the X (in the strands on phonics, below), that is where supplemental and intervention instruction should begin. Supplemental and intervention curricula must be capable of that level of targeted precision.

Phonics Strands:

Letter-sound: m a s t r d i th c o n f u l e w g I sh a(l) h k o v p ar ch e(l) b ing i(l)

X

Sounding out: am sam ram this sod fan was

ma sat rat rod fast said

tam mad rods mast led

rim that

rid thin

reed, read

lead, lied

met, meet, meat

shoe, show

l = long

2. Supplemental materials should fill gaps in skill strands in the core.

For example, phonemic awareness sub-skills, in order of increasing difficulty, include:

·       distinguishing same/different sounding words

·       counting words in sentences

·       counting sounds in words

·       identifying first, last, and medial sounds

·       onset-rime

·       phoneme deletion

·       phoneme substitution.

 

Supplemental materials should NOT be another version of the core but should provide what the core does not. The core strand on phonemic awareness might focus mostly on onset-rime and identifying first, last, and medial sounds. This is not enough: Supplemental and intervention materials should teach the remaining skills.

 

3. Note that instruction in the core and supplemental materials should be coordinated. You would not do ALL of the phonemic awareness activities in the core and THEN do the activities in the supplemental materials. Instead, you would introduce supplemental materials at the precise GAP in the phonemic awareness strand in the core. Use the supplements at the right time.

 

This means that teachers must analyze strands in the core, as well as in possible supplementary and intervention curricula, to determine which skills and related tasks in a core strand are not fully covered (or are absent), and which supplemental and intervention materials fill these gaps. Naturally, it makes sense to select the curricula that do the best job of filling gaps.

 

Teachers should also examine core materials to see if lessons provide instruction that is sufficiently systematic and explicit. They should then examine possible supplemental and intervention materials to see if they are MORE systematic and explicit (intensive). Supplemental and intervention materials are that not more systematic and explicit than the core obviously will not provide useful supplemental and intervention instruction.

 

Systematic means that:

a. Instruction is given in a planned, logically progressive sequence of things to be taught. For example, certain letter-sounds (a, s, i, m, r) are taught before other letter-sounds (b, n, y, sh) because they are easier to learn and are used more often.

b. Instruction is guided and assessed with clearly defined objectives for everything taught. Objectives are stated in terms of what students will do.

Imprecise (Poor) objective. Students read story books quickly and get most words right.

Precise (Good) objective. Students are given two minutes to read the assigned passage from “The bear and the hare.” They read the passage at a rate of at least 100 words correct per minute.”

c. Instruction is focused precisely on the thing (knowledge unit) to be learned, as specified by the objective. For example, if students are to read a passage at 100 wcpm, then that is exactly what the teacher focuses on during the ten minute fluency exercise during lessons. She does not work on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension at the same time. [Of course, sometimes the teacher WILL work on several skills at once, but that is when the objective is STRATEGIC INTEGRATION of these skills.]

d. Instruction provides planned practice to strengthen all of the skills worked on.

e. Instruction provides planned work on new examples (e.g., words, text) to foster application or generalization of previously taught knowledge.

f. Instruction includes assessments designed and used in a timely fashion to monitor the different phases of instruction, or mastery--acquisition, fluency, generalization, retention, and independence.

 

Explicit means that:

a. The teacher reveals in an obvious and clear way to students the knowledge she is trying to communicate. She does this through demonstrations (modeling) and running commentary to students.

For example, “I’ll show you how to sound out this word. [man is written on the board.] Listen. I do NOT stop between the sounds. [Teacher touches under each letter as she says the sound.] mmmmaaaannn. Now, I’ll say it fast. [Teacher slides her finger under the word.] man.”

b. The teacher ensures student attention to important features of an example or demonstration. “Look [points to the word ate] here is a vowel, then a consonant, and then an e at the end [name]. So, we do NOT say the e at the end.”

 

4. Supplemental and intervention programs must NOT contradict rules and strategies taught in the core. For example, if the core teaches students to use sounding out as the first and most important decoding strategy, and to use context and meaning cues only to CHECK the sounding out, any supplemental and intervention materials must teach the same thing, and must NOT teach students that the two strategies are of equal importance.

 

5. Supplemental and intervention programs must teach skills and related tasks in smaller chunks and provide more prompts, more ways for students to respond, and a higher rate of learning opportunities than is done in the core. For example, the core might teach letter-sound correspondence by having the teacher point to a letter and say its sound (“This sound is rrr.”); then having students look at the letter and say its sound; and then having students write and say the letter sound 10 times.

If this is not sufficient for some students, supplemental and intervention materials on letter-sound correspondence must:

a. Break down letter-sound instruction into smaller parts for teaching and immediate assessment.

“Look at my finger.”

“This sound is rrrr.”

“When I touch under the sound, you say it with me.”

“Now, when I touch under the sound, you say it. Get ready…”

“Again, what sound?”

b. Also have students use the new letter-sounds to spell words, using, for example, plastic letters.

“Boys and girls. Take the letters a and m and spell am.” (check and correct)

“Now I want you to spell rrrraaaaammm. Pick up the letter that says rrr.” (check and correct)

“Now put the letter that says rrrr in front of the a and m.” (check and correct)

“Now let’s sound it out. You touch under each of YOUR letters as I touch under the letters on the board. Here we go. rrrrr….” (check and correct)

This provides students with additional sensory and action modes for “getting” and using knowledge of letter-sound correspondence.

c. Move faster—more student-teacher interactions per minute—to provide more learning opportunities and to sustain attention.

 

If supplemental and intervention materials do not do the above (beyond what the core does), then they are not more intensive and are not likely to have any more effect than repeating core lessons.