Let's Travel in a Group

A common question heard by middle school interventionists is, “Why is this student missing my class for a reading intervention?” Let me attempt to give you the long and short of it and lay out how it fits here at Wilson.  

The last two years have brought a great deal of hard work and change to Wilson Middle School.  Anytime there are changes in routine or practice, there are growing pains. This particular pain is being felt by everyone.  I’m confident that with time, we will embrace it as a part of our culture.    As we travel together in that direction, here’s what you need to know. Comprehension Focus is a small-group reading intervention offered to our most striving readers.  Its name gives away its purpose, but there is more to know about the role it plays in middle school.  Students identified in Language Arts as below basic across multiple data points need layered interventions in order to close the achievement gap and ultimately accelerate.

Dr. Linda Dorn and Carla Soffos designed this intervention to look very similar to classroom instruction, “organized around units of study that require readers to apply higher-level comprehension strategies to analyze relationships within and across texts.”  The groups follow the themes and standards, just like the classroom. What looks different is that the instruction is centered around strategic processing. This intervention works best when it can be applied daily for 30 minutes.  

The next question that usually follows is, “So,why not take students out of reading, since that’s where the struggle lies?” Great question! We know that best practice tells us that we need to have spiraling or tiered intervention on top of strong core instruction.  So the first line of defense cannot be pulled away.  Picture two cups stacked on top of one another and set atop a table.  If you pull the table away, the cups cannot stand alone.  They would come crashing to the floor without the support of the table.  For our striving readers, the core is an integral component to closing the gap. We also have to have additional lines of defense, or interventions. The goal is that these interventions are temporary. This line of defense is intended to be intense and focused to accelerate the learning. In addition to your strong core and guided instruction in the classroom,  Comprehension Focus groups are a beneficial intervention.

We need to also consider the Common Core State Standards and how they are calling for students to be able to read to learn in all content areas in order to be successful, which indicates to us that we must all support our students in their reading development.  Our team at Wilson decided that the best way to do that was to stagger the schedule of the intervention so that students were being pulled out of something different each day with as little overlap as possible. As we continue to grow and change, there will no doubt be additional discomfort to be experienced, but please keep in mind it is for the greater good of our students and we are helping them to be successful in all classrooms.

I want to thank everyone for their flexibility in making this work here at Wilson, providing strong core and guided instruction to support our students, and helping them catch up when they are out of the classroom for this or any intervention.  It is a testament to our ability to work together and put the needs of our students first. As this practice becomes commonplace, the pain will ease.
As we move into the third trimester, consider how you might use your team time to reach out and have conversations about students needing a high degree of support and how we can all pitch in to support them.