The Thing You Have Been Told is the Best for Your Students is Actually Hurting Your Literacy Intervention!
In literacy intervention, we are faced with many challenges.
One of the biggest conflicts, however, is the dichotomy between individualizing lessons for every single student, and following programs with fidelity.
The reality is - neither of these approaches works.
The idea that individualizing lessons based on the student’s specific learning profile will get them better results is true and is crucial to having effective intervention. The reality though, is that people take the idea of “individualization” and take it to mean that you need to create (from scratch) a new lesson for every child, every time you introduce a new concept. This is not only unrealistic, but it is burning out our best interventionists/SLPs and that is hurting our students!
You Actually DO NOT Need to Create a New Lesson for Every child.
When we think about effective instruction, we need to differentiate materials based on our students. We know this, we support this. However, we don’t need to start from scratch every time.
Instead, we need to individualize and differentiate our lessons within a framework. When we find a structure to a lesson that works, we can - in fact, we SHOULD keep the blueprint the same. Our scope and sequence don’t change for every child. We don’t recreate new lesson plans for each new student. Instead, we keep the lesson structure the same but tweak the activities based on our students.
Each lesson has…
Phonological Awareness
A Sound Drill
Review Decoding
New Decoding & New Lesson Introduction
A Variety of Skill Development Activities (more on this later)
Sentence Reading & Coding
Reading Fluency and Comprehension
An Auditory Drill
Review Spelling
New Pattern Spelling
Word Sorting/Vocabulary
Sentence Writing
Paragraph Writing (when appropriate)
Within these components, we differentiate based on the student sitting in front of us.
If our skill development section has three activities (rhyming, word sorting, and nonsense words) we may not pull each activity for every child. Maybe Jessica needs work on rhyming, but she has no issues sorting words while Johnny rhymes with 100% accuracy every week but cannot differentiate between nonsense and regular words.
The magic also comes from using one activity in multiple ways. If we ask our students to read us a sentence, at face value this is a fluency task. However, you can use that sentence to support orthography, executive functioning, sentence structure/syntax, writing and grammar mechanics, and more. This means that you can use one activity and target different needs for different students, or multiple needs for one student.
For students who struggle with orthography, have them identify the key phonogram. For students who struggle with vocabulary, have them define a word in context. For students who struggle with grammar and mechanics, have them find the subject and predicate. Students who struggle with metacognition and executive functioning should identify words they don’t know. There are so many ways to adapt the simple task of reading a sentence to meet the needs of the student(s) in front of you.
This is what we mean when we say to keep a solid framework and differentiate within it. All of our students will read this sentence, but we can differentiate the activity to fit their needs.
On the other hand, some programs and instructors will tell you…
…that you need to follow a program with “fidelity” and leave no room for differentiation. This isn’t the answer either.
Each of our students needs different things. We are teaching kids, not just a curriculum. If we don’t allow ourselves the flexibility to meet students where they are at and differentiate (as mentioned above), we are and will continue to miss so many students.
So what is the answer?
We need to stop pitting these ideas against each other. Both have value but both also create barriers.
The best thing that we can do is follow or create a framework that works. This means having a really clear scope and sequence and lesson structure. Then, within the framework, differentiate and individualize to meet the student in front of you. Not only does this make your intervention more effective for them, but it saves you so much time in the long run. With a predetermined framework, you can prep and plan for your lessons ahead of time AND STOP pulling resources from seventeen different places for every single child.
As more and more barriers are put up in education, it makes it harder for our kids to get the help that they need. We want to encourage you to make reading intervention simple. If we overcomplicate things it is only making it harder for our students to access, for us to deliver, and for students to get what they need. It doesn’t have to be hard. Let it be easy!
For more information and next steps, check out our FREE workshop: How to Create Systematic, SOR-Aligned Lesson Plans. This workshop will help you determine what actually needs to be included in a Science of Reading-based lesson, how to build a lesson plan based on the Science of Reading, and how to optimize your lesson plans. Plus, we’ll share our lesson planning guides!