It may only be the third full week of the school year, but targeted reading interventions are up and running.  How did we get here so quickly?  A Decision Tree. Data. Team Work. WIN.

Our Literacy Coaches have created a decision tree to help us determine which students will receive Academic Intervention Support (AIS) in reading. Using this tree ensures that we follow the same procedure for each student, grades 3-5.

All of our classroom teachers (grades K-5) administer the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) benchmark assessment to their students three times a year. DIBELS offers all of us-–teachers and literacy coaches—a quick and objective snapshot of each child’s reading ability and progress. For example, here are the results for a 3rd grade student: 

As you can see, this 3rd grader’s reading fluency and accuracy are well below the grade level benchmark (Summary of Benchmark Goals and Cut Points for Risk). However, this student demonstrated solid comprehension and can read words in isolation,  based on her word reading score. These comprehension strengths show up in class, where this student participates actively, contributes to discussions, and completes all assignments. In other words, based on subjective teacher observations, they’re not obviously at risk or in need of extra intervention. But based on the DIBELS data, we need to intervene now! 

Next, relying on this data and the decision tree, we administered the Informal Decoding Inventory (IDI)  to determine the student’s strengths and weaknesses in decoding. This incredible resource can be found here How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction By Walpole and McKenna. It is a game-changer. 

Sure enough, the IDI found that this student was only able to read 5/10 of the tested read words correctly. 

Based on the IDI results, we determined that we needed to explicitly teach this student how to decode words with the vowel-consonant-e pattern. We think it’s possible that these weak decoding skills are responsible for the student's low accuracy and fluency rate. And finally, based on the decision tree, we determined that this student needs to be in a Tier 3 AIS group: 

What materials and strategies will we use in this AIS group? We will use lessons from the book linked above. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. Here are two:

1. A lesson, where students are asked to listen to words and determine if they hear a short or long vowel sound. Watch the video here.

2. A sample of words that we will practice reading and spelling and a sample passage. The passage will be whisper read, partner read, and chorally read. 

Back to the student. This is the first year this student has received any AIS support. And without the DIBELS data AND our decision tree, this student likely would have moved through 3rd grade without addressing any of their decoding challenges.

Every student in the building (K-5) goes through the decision tree. The three interventionists in the building work together to create appropriate groups. We focus on decoding skills in our Tier 3 groups and support Tier 2 fluency groups when possible.  Keep in mind that we will not provide Tier 3 support in Kindergarten until January because our students need Tier 1 instruction first. 

How are we able to meet the needs of so many students? Because every classroom has a 30-minute block called WIN (What I Need) each day. During WIN time, reading interventionists pull out students to provide reading interventions without them missing the Tier 1 core instruction. 

So back to the student again. Where do they go from here? They’ll keep attending AIS for at least eight weeks, and we’ll use DIBELS progress monitoring every two weeks to ensure that they are making progress. Then, we will review all the data at the end of the eight weeks and make changes accordingly. 

And I’m happy to report that this third grade student has already made significant progress. Their words per minute rate has grown from 45 words to 66 words (target is 73) in just a few weeks!

A lot of work goes into data decision-making. However, when procedures, assessments, and curriculums are in place these decisions are made quickly and with confidence.