Last month the focus was on Practice 2. Design and Use of an Evidence-based Intervention Platform as the Foundation for Effective Intervention.

This month our focus will be on Practice 4: Adaptations to Increase the Instructional Intensity of the Intervention

Teachers and interventionists primarily need to understand and act upon this practice. When students are not progressing as expected or closing the gap between their performance and grade-level expectations, it is critical to increase the instructional intensity of the intervention or instruction. To intensify instruction, problem-solving teams carefully examine each of the dimensions of intervention intensity (except strength) to design evidence-based intervention adaptations. Each dimension, as applied to increasingly intensive instructional adaptations, is briefly defined below and examples are provided:

Alignment

The teacher determines the ways in which the intervention currently being used matches the student’s needs and how the intervention could be adjusted (either supplemented or modified) to address unmet needs as indicated by data. For example, the content focus of the intervention currently being used could still match the student’s primary needs; however, additional data may have emerged that suggests more opportunities to practice word level and fluency level activities are needed. The teacher adapts the intervention to provide additional practice opportunities documenting student’s responses and continuing to refine and adapt using progress monitoring data to guide decision-making. With another student, comprehension has been the primary need; however, the student’s fluency scores have plateaued over the last six to seven weeks of instruction. The teacher adapts the intervention, so it also includes a fluency-building component, monitors student progress, and adjusts instruction as needed.

Dosage

The teacher looks for increased opportunities for the student to respond and receive affirmative and informative feedback (information to students about their responses). Increasing opportunities for students to respond and to receive feedback can be accomplished by adapting the intervention in two ways: (1) lesson design dosage adaptations; (2) structural dosage adaptations.

Comprehensiveness (elements of explicit instruction)

The teacher incorporates additional elements of explicit instruction that would help address the reasons for the student’s non-responsiveness to the intervention.

Attention to transfer

The teacher embeds opportunities for the student to make connections between mastered and related skills and apply the strategies taught in the intervention to additional contexts. For example, additional interventionist teacher observation data and classroom teacher data indicate the student is not applying the strategies that are successfully used during intervention to other contexts. The interventionist will adapt the intervention to incorporate the types of words, text, etc. that are being used in the student’s classroom(s) into the lessons. The interventionist will also provide the classroom teacher(s) with ways to model and/or prompt the use of the intervention strategy, so the student sees the applicability of the strategy in the classroom settings.

Behavioral support

The teacher incorporates additional behavioral supports into the intervention program and addresses things like the organization and physical layout of the classroom environment to increase student's motivation, engagement, and overall success in the intervention instruction.

To learn more or engage in the self-paced module as an educator or PLC, click here:

At the end of the training participants will be able to:

• Define the dimensions of the Taxonomy of Intervention Intensity and explain how they support the DBI process.

• Use the taxonomy to evaluate or select a validated reading intervention program.​

• Use the taxonomy to intensify a reading intervention for a student who is not responsive.​

• Access existing resources to support the evaluation and intensification of reading intervention.

The Oregon Response to Intervention Virtual Conference was held this spring and consisted of four days of professional learning. One of the sessions highlighted six instructional practices to enhance universal Instruction in Grades K and 1 for students with dyslexia. The title of this presentation was Supporting Students with Dyslexia in Core Instruction: Instruction That Works by Carrie Thomas Beck. Dr. Beck was the Dyslexia Specialist for the state of Oregon for four year and now works for CORE (Consortium for Reaching Excellence in Education) as the Director of Literacy. These practices are informed by the latest research and Dr. Beck shares both the strategies and the research to support the precision and refinement in these practices. These six practices include:

• Target student mastery of phoneme awareness

• Introduce sound-symbol cards organized from speech to print

• Set up a Sound Wall

• Implement the connected phonation procedure

• Include guided spelling to help students transfer growing reading skills to writing

• Select decodable texts to accelerate mastery of phonics skills

Watch her presentation by clicking on the Oregon Response to Intervention Virtual Conference link above - it is very engaging and practical! Her recording is on Day 2. Her slide deck is available for download.

In this self-paced course from Achieve the Core, you will work on how to improve literacy outcomes for older students who are reading below grade level. Participants in this course will have the opportunity to learn the research behind literacy accelerators that can propel reading progress, consider how to support students in rebuilding their academic confidence, and gain practical skills for how to implement these ideas to support students in regular classroom settings. Registration will open on May 23.

COURSE DETAILS

Course Opens: 06/01/2021

Last Day to Register: 06/01/2021 (or until registration reaches capacity) End Date: 07/13/2021

Cost:

· Individuals: $20 (+ sales tax)

· Teams of 4+: $10 (+ sales tax)/per person

Primary Audience: 4-12 ELA/Literacy teachers and anyone who supports their work

Certificate: A certificate showing 12 hours of professional learning is available upon course completion. Please reach out to your school district to ensure they will accept it.

Dyslexia Overview Module - all Iowa teachers must complete by 2024

Understanding and Observing the Literacy Skills Associated With Dyslexia Module - For those whose teaching involves early reading development

Effective Literacy Instruction Module - Covers practices identified in research that support the learning of all students

Small-Group Skill Based Instruction Module - Learn how to use the literacy block to explicitly teach using differentiation to target the skills that each student needs to improve, variation of instructional format, and a systematic approach to developing foundational literacy skills

Interactive Reading Module - Covers the systematic progression of narrative development skills, how to apply the PEER (prompt, evaluate, expand, and repeat) sequence of questioning during an interactive reading session, and how to use a graphic organizer and Clue Cards to guide and scaffold an interactive reading session

Teaching Students to Map Phonemes to Graphemes Module - learn about grapheme-phoneme mapping and its importance for literacy development, a strategy for teaching grapheme-phoneme mapping, how to support English learners developing these skills, and how to prepare students for peer-mediated and independent practice

Varied Practice Reading Module - Shows teachers how to use the Varied Practice Reading instructional approach for teaching reading fluency