Effective Intervention Practices

Reading Plus is a flexible program that works for diverse student needs and new unprecedented learning environments. Because the program allows students to stop at any point and return to that same place at another time, Reading Plus is uniquely designed to allow for students to seamlessly move from home to school without disrupting their place in the lessons.

Small Group Instruction

The Reading Plus program is implemented successfully within a variety of intervention models. Here are some practices utilized by elementary classroom teachers for use with Tier 2/Tier 3 students.

Intervention/Pull-Out Class Schools create an intervention/pull-out class for students whose reading skills are not yet at grade level. Tier 2/3 students are scheduled for ~50 minutes of intervention 3-5 days/week. In addition to supporting students in working within Reading Plus, intervention teachers draw on Reading Plus data in order to provide supplemental differentiated instruction based on need. Having a dedicated class with a teacher knowledgeable in Reading Plus typically leads to outstanding results.

Differentiated Small-Group Instruction

Intervention teachers spend a portion of time at the beginning of the class providing the group with explicit instruction in relevant comprehension skills and strategies. Information from the Class Skill Support Report or the Class Skills Summary Report helps identify areas of focus. Following instruction, students have time to apply new learning while they work in Reading Plus.

Workstation Rotation

The teacher divides students into groups. One group works in Reading Plus while the teacher delivers instruction to another group. Then the groups switch. In this model, it is important that the class period allows for students to be in Reading Plus for at least 15 to 20 minutes.

For secondary students identified as Tier 2 or Tier 3, similar intervention practices can be implemented:

Intervention Class

Schools create an intervention class for students whose reading skills are not yet at grade level. In addition to supporting students in working within Reading Plus, teachers draw on Reading Plus data in order to provide supplemental differentiated instruction based on need. Having a dedicated class with a teacher knowledgeable in Reading Plus typically leads to outstanding results.

Full-Class Instruction

With Reading Plus Time Teachers spend a portion of time at the beginning of the class providing the whole group with explicit instruction in relevant comprehension skills and strategies. Information from the Class Skill Support Report or the Class Skills Summary Report helps identify areas of need. Following whole-group instruction, students have time to apply new learning while they work in Reading Plus.

Classroom Rotation

The teacher divides students into two groups. One group works in Reading Plus while the teacher delivers instruction to the second group. Then the groups switch. In this model, it is important that the class period allows for students to be on Reading Plus for at least 15 to 20 minutes.

Closely Monitored Progress

Administrator and teacher dashboards enable close monitoring of student program use and progress, including summary data reports on the student, classroom, school, and district level. Summary data include each student’s lessons completed, and current reading comprehension level, vocabulary level, and comprehension-based reading rate (words/minute). This makes it simple to track fidelity of use and rates of improvement (e.g., for RTI documentation). The dashboard also alerts teachers when a student is struggling, has earned performance awards, or has submitted writing assignments. There is also an embedded texting system to facilitate teacher-student communications. A series of reports are available from the dashboard that enable student and classroom tracking on multiple levels.