Week 6: Instructional Intervention for Mary

Based on Mary’s QRI-5 assessments, the instructional focus for the remainder of her third grade school year should build upon her strength in word identification to improve reading comprehension and recall.  While she demonstrated proficiency in reading accuracy at the second grade level, Mary was unable to achieve nearly the same levels in recall of supporting details of the expository passage titled “Whales and Fish”.  The resulting “frustration level” assessment score of her recall and comprehension abilities indicates a strong need for intervention.

The constraints of time of this last quarter of the school year will be a large determining factor in the intervention provided to Mary.  Without the benefit of several months to administer intervention, assess the student’s progress and adjust the instruction, the intervention will be structured daily for four weeks.  We will use a team approach to provide varied instructional technique while adhering to a common objective of helping Mary achieve proficiency in recall and comprehension at the second grade level.  The classroom teacher or a reading resource specialist will work with the student individually for twenty minutes each day.  

These sessions can be scheduled in the student’s school day and/or before the school day starts.  Her parents should be informed of the assessment results and the desired objective.  With their support, the intense, short term intervention for the remainder of the school year can be accomplished.

The structure of the intervention will focus on short, second grade level narrative and expository passages of starting with familiar subjects before advancing to unfamiliar topics.  This strategy of using passages of familiar subjects will help Mary practice activating her prior knowledge to comprehend her reading.  By utilizing narrative and expository passages, Mary will have opportunities to develop skills in story structure, main idea, retell and recall from different forms of text.

At each twenty minute session, the teacher will ask Mary read a selected passage aloud to monitor her reading accuracy and frustration level.  This read-aloud will also allow the teacher to pause for instruction and emphasis to aid comprehension. After completing the passage, the student will be prompted to verbally recall the main idea and as many supporting details as she can remember utilizing a graphic organizer as a guideline to the discussion.  The teacher will ask additional questions to assess the student’s understanding of the passage.  After this unaided activity, the teacher will instruct Mary to apply the “look back” strategy to verbally share additional details from the passage.  To end each session, the teacher will repeat the main idea and supporting facts that Mary recalled about the passage to demonstrate her comprehension and recall skills and to reinforce her abilities to build confidence.

As the student makes adequate progress in comprehension and recall as determined through close monitoring by the team, Mary will be tasked with independently completing graphic organizers with and without using “look back” on paper.  Her written work will be then reviewed verbally by the teacher to ensure Mary was able to express her thoughts clearly to demonstrate understanding.  By scaffolding the task, the teacher can provide early support through verbal interaction and prompts before gradually reducing such supports as the student works more independently.  By keeping records of Mary’s recall and comprehension from each session, the team will be able to assess her daily results and chart her progress through the four week invention.