Last fall I wrote about our district's early reading intervention review committee that I am co-chairing. This is an update of the work we have done so far. The committee watched Linda Dorn's presentation on the Arkansas model and RTI that is available from the Reading Recovery website. Thank you to the person on this listserve that recommended it. We found it helpful.
The committee also participated in a webinar on the Kennewick, Washington school district, which was also a recommendation from this listserve. We also briefly review other intervention programs such as Fountas and Pinnell's new Leveled Literacy Intervention and the Triumphs intervention program from McMillan/McGraw-Hill. Our next step is to make some site visits, three visits to schools in Wyoming. One is working on implementing the Arkansas model. The other two consistently out perform our district on the state test. We are also visiting Kennewick because we have numerous questions for them. Kennewick is the district that made the reading goal that 90% of their students would reach state standards in reading by the end of the fourth grade. They did this by providing extensive time for direct instruction to students reading below grade level. My question for this group is what extra time do you give to your struggling readers during the school day. How have you handled staffing and scheduling? Kennewick says the struggling reader may need at least 100 extra minutes of direct instruction beyond the core reading instruction each day. Finally, I have a successful intervention to share with you. One of our elementary schools piloted the program Tune-In to Reading. This is an online fluency program that has students singing. It claims to make at least one year's growth in reading in 10 weeks of interventions. Nine out of the ten students that participated in Tune-In to Reading for 10 weeks, 5 days a week for 45 minutes at a time showed significant growth. This growth also transferred to the winter DIBELS benchmark test and the winter MAP test. The principal was amazed and very pleased at the results! You can go to the website (google tunein to reading) and check it out. The sales rep will also set up a web preview for you. These students future progress will be followed to see if the positive results continue without having the intervention. Thank you to the members of the listserve for being a consistent source of great information on teaching reading! Barb Parry _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
