Currents in Literacy

Implementing a Reading Intervention Model

By Kathy Paul

This year, I have had the opportunity to pilot the Soar To Success Intermediate Intervention Program for designated third-grade children at the Thompson School. Funding for this program was sponsored by the Hood Children's Literacy Project of Lesley University. Students were selected for participation on the basis of certain assessment tools and teacher recommendations. This program, published by Houghton Mifflin, was designed for students reading below level in grades 3-6.

Literature Based

As I embarked on my adventure, I was impressed by the quality and variety of tradebooks comprising the third grade collection. Some of my favorites include The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza, an ALA Notable Book and winner of the Kentucky Bluegrass Award; and The Paper Crane by Molly Bang, an ALA Notable and winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Illustration. The books contain topics applicable to different themes and curricular areas in addition to providing both narrative and expository reading experiences.

The books are sequenced on a continuum, from simple to complex, which gradually allows students to accelerate their reading ability with scaffolded support from the teacher. The sequencing of texts is based on the following factors: amount of print on the page, picture support, complexity of storylines, and/or complexity of facts presented.

As the students progressed to each level, I was able to observe the effectiveness of the scaffolding technique. The core of the program consists of guided reading instruction related to four major reading strategies. Starting with easy texts and gradually moving to more complex material, I was able to provide a hierarchical approach to teaching.

Guided Reading Instruction

I have found that some children need to be taught how to organize the text in order for them to be able to fully comprehend what they are reading. The methodology of the Soar To Success Program provides a systematic approach to accomplish this goal. Each lesson includes a guided preview in which the teacher calls attention to specific vocabulary, key concepts, or text structure. The system teaches four strategies: predict, clarify, question, and summarize. The strategies are taught through a technique called Reciprocal Teaching. First the teacher explicitly models the strategy and then the children are given an opportunity to do so. Strategies must be modeled and discussed enough times to help students gain independence in their use.

As I introduced our next book, The Wolf's Chicken Stew, I noticed every child's hand was waving wildly in the air. When I called on Kevin, he eagerly announced he could predict what was going to happen in the story. "I read the title and then I noticed the picture on the cover. The wolf is holding a cookbook and he has a sneaky look on his face. That must mean he plans to kill the chicken and put her in a stew," he proudly informed us. Reciprocal Teaching seemed to be working.

Predicting helps students hypothesize what will happen in the text. In order to do this successfully, students must activate relevant background information and use clues from the title, pictures, or what has already been read to figure out what will happen next. Students are asked to silently or orally read a meaningful chunk of text to verify predictions. I've noticed the children are motivated during this part of the process because they want to find out whether their predictions are accurate.

Through the clarifying strategy, students are taught how to monitor their comprehension and become aware of when something doesn't make sense. They may need clarification of an idea, word meaning, or word pronunciation. Clarifying teaches students to ask themselves questions when they don't understand a word or idea and then to reread. The following is an example of a clarification think aloud model: "On page seven, I didn't understand the difference between garbage and trash. When I reread the page and looked at the pictures, I see that garbage is food waste, and trash is everything else. Now the page makes sense."

Clarifying also helps students learn to apply their decoding skills and figure out unknown words. The instructional process teaches students how to locate sounds and spelling patterns, segment words into chunks (syllables, prefixes, suffixes) and blend the parts together. I have found The Making Words Strategy (Cunningham, 1992) useful for students who need additional practice.

The questioning strategy teaches students to formulate questions that can be answered by referring to a part of the text. At the beginning of the program, I modeled questions which focused on literal comprehension. The children learned how to locate answers by using specific text information. It was interesting to observe the children progress in their ability to generate and model their own questions. At this point in the year, I am teaching both groups how to form inferential and evaluative questions. It is exciting to watch some of my students create higher order questions which require them to search for implicit meaning.

In order to use the summarizing strategy, the students must learn how to determine what is important in the text. As they read, students are taught to look for main ideas or themes. I found that the children needed a lot of teacher modeling and discussion in order to understand how to separate important from unimportant details. Finally, the students must learn how to synthesize relevant information to form their summary.

Graphic Organizers

The program uses graphic organizers which are included in a series of posters as well as in the student response booklet. By using visual symbols to represent the meaning they construct from reading, students improve their ability to comprehend. Each book uses one graphic organizer which then becomes a prompt to help students retell and summarize what they have read.

The nonfiction book, Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft and Richard G. Van Gelder explains how animals prepare for winter. During one of our group lessons, the children helped to create a semantic map. Later, I asked the children to write their own summaries. Almost everyone was able to compose a first draft without any help because the visual map provided the structure to guide them. Graphic organizers are a great springboard for writing activities.

Assessment

The assessment component contains an informal reading inventory which includes a silent and oral reading tool. Pre and post test forms are included. I found the Miscue Diagnostic Checklist to be well designed. The Silent Reading Test evaluates the student's ability to give an organized summary consisting of the main idea and details.

There are also individual inventories which accompany each book. This resource helps determine overall student progress over time and ongoing student growth throughout the instructional program.

In September, I administered the Houghton Mifflin IRI, Form A as a pre test to eleven third grade students. I used this information and the scores from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised- Form H to group the students.

I plan to administer the Houghton Mifflin IRI, Form B and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests- Revised Form G as a post test. The comparison data from the pre and post tests will be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of the program.

The Home Connection

Communicating to parents about their children's reading program and asking them to participate in the process are significant ingredients to the success of this model. A Home Connection Sheet, requesting that a parent listen to his/her child read or retell the book just completed, is sent home. Having children reread a familiar book to a family member is a great way to improve fluency. I have also included a "Parent Comments" section which has been very popular. The children often request to share parent responses to the book.

Final Thoughts

This project has been a very worthwhile endeavor for me. The students are enthusiastic about reading and the level of parent participation has been impressive. Currently, I am working on an additional component to the program. Using excerpts from the books, I have developed both multiple choice and open response questions which are designed to improve test taking strategies.

Kathy Paul is a former classroom teacher. She has had a year of clinical experience at the Boston University Reading Clinic and earned her M.Ed from Boston University. She has been a Reading Specialist in the Arlington Public Schools since 1974 and at Thompson School since 1983.