This guide offers five specific recommendations to help educators identify struggling readers and implement evidence-based strategies to promote their reading achievement. Teachers and reading specialists can utilize these strategies to implement RtI and multi-tier intervention methods and frameworks at the classroom or school level. Recommendations cover how to screen students for reading problems, design a multi-tier intervention program, adjust instruction to help struggling readers, and monitor student progress.
1
Screen all students for potential reading problems at the beginning of
the year and again in the middle of the year.
Provide intensive, systematic instruction on up to three foundational reading skills in small groups to students who score below the benchmark score on universal screening.
Provide intensive instruction on a daily basis that promotes the development
of the various components of reading proficiency to students
who show minimal progress after reasonable time in tier 2 small group
instruction (tier 3).
Use these
data to determine whether students still require intervention. For those
students still making insufficient progress, schoolwide teams should
design a tier 3 intervention plan.
This practice guide was prepared for the WWC by Mathematica under contract ED-07-CO-0062.
The following research staff contributed to the guide:
Kristin Hallgren, Scott Cody, and Cassie Pickens Jewell.
These videos were prepared by WestEd under the Doing What Works Contract (ED-PEP-11-C-0068).
All videos are based on recommendations from the WWC practice guides and are designed to complement the guides.
Russell Gersten (Chair)
Instructional Research Group
Play an interview of Panel Chair, Russell Gersten, and Sharon Vaughn: Evolution of Response to Intervention (7:04 minutes)
This video from Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest (REL Midwest) discusses the most effective evidence-based practices for identifying and assisting struggling readers.
This review protocol guided the review of research that informed the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Intervention in Grades 4–9 practice guide, expected to be published in early 2022.