Catching Them Early

Schools use early intervention to identify, help students at risk of reading failure

Experts agree that early intervention is key in helping at-risk young students avoid potential problems in learning to read. Here is a brief overview of how two of the winners of the International Reading Association's 2002 Exemplary Reading Program Awards deal with this issue.

Early Literacy Initiative
McDermid Community School in Regina, Saskatchewan, serves about 250 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The school is in a low socioeconomic community, with roughly one fourth of the students of First Nations descent.

The school's reading program exemplifies the 10 principles outlined in the IRA position statement "Making a Difference Means Making It Different." A key part of the school's program is its Early Literacy Initiative, which is designed to provide students with the foundation they need to achieve success in school and in life.

The Early Literacy Initiative involves classroom teachers, the learning assistance teacher, the speech-language pathologist, the teacher-librarian, the principal, and one or more paraprofessionals in a team approach to early literacy instruction. Through the Early Literacy Initiative, students participate in reading groups three times a week for 60 minutes. Each group consists of no more than six students, all at the same reading level.

During each reading group meeting, the students cycle through three literacy sessions, each conducted by a teacher or teacher assistant. Over the course of a week, students participate in all components of the program. Some of the program components include the following:

Phonemic awareness/word work. Activities include rhyming, syllabication, segmenting, blending, and sound manipulation. Students who have developed satisfactory phonemic awareness receive instruction in other oral language skills such as story structure and retelling.

Shared reading. Various comprehension and decoding strategies are taught and reinforced through poetry and big books.

Spelling through phonics. Using the McCracken Spelling Through Phonics program and Visual Phonics, students learn rhymes and onsets, word building, and letter-sound correspondences.

Guided, shared, and interactive writing. The teacher uses various levels of coaching, depending on the proficiency of the students.

Guided reading. Students receive direct instruction in decoding and comprehension strategies, using texts at their instructional reading levels.

High-frequency word work. Sight words are taught and reinforced using take-home "minibooks."

Literature experiences. Students enjoy a read-aloud story and learn elements of literature, language, and inference.

The team meets weekly to assess student progress and adjust groupings. As a result of this program, supported by exemplary classroom instruction, grade 1 students in this inner-city school scored higher than the district average on the grade 1 benchmarks assessment.

Toy Box Friends
The literacy team at Mount Daniel Elementary School, a K-1 school in Falls Church, Virginia, has as its overarching goal to prevent literacy problems by providing balanced, flexible literacy instruction and early intervention support for all high-risk students. This goal was based on the premise that providing early, organized diagnostic and prescriptive intervention and flexible staffing is the soundest way to maximize student learning.

Recognizing and addressing the early signs of reading problems through frequent assessment and then using that information to guide the instructional program was considered the cornerstone of the reading program. Mount Daniel faced the challenge of helping all readers by establishing a preventive program, which not only identified struggling readers early but also found ways to challenge the school's most capable students.

In the fall of 2000, Mount Daniel opened its first preschool class for eight students with special needs and four typical peers. The following fall, an additional classroom was opened. The preschool special needs teachers provide phonemic awareness activities, nursery rhymes, traditional stories, shared reading, and interactive storytelling with the young children to support their literacy learning.

At the same time, Mount Daniel initiated Toy Box Friends, an outreach program to serve preschool children who may be at risk for learning difficulties, as well as their families. Toy Box Friends was designed to encourage a collaborative partnership between home, school, and the community.

Once each week the principal, ESOL teacher, literacy coordinator, teachers, and paraprofessionals from Mount Daniel plan activities for preschoolers and their families that engage children in the literacy learning process. Parents are supported through information on child development, language learning, English as a second language, and cultural outreach activities.

Toy Box Friends is also supported by several local community agencies, which helped to create the activities planned. The Mary Riley Styles Public Library and Mount Daniel were awarded a reading incentive grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which was designed to encourage early literacy development and read-aloud activities for young children.

Story tapes and books in Spanish and English were given to each family, along with child-friendly tape recorders. The local Business in Education Partnership donated funds for the purchase of videos about early language growth in children, which were shown to parents at several meetings to facilitate discussions.

School personnel believe that continued research and data collection within these programs will help them know what works well to meet the needs of students who are at risk for learning difficulties, as well as the needs of their families.

Catching them early (2003, April/May). Reading Today