Designing Interventions

Grouping
In designing reading interventions, it is important to determine which interventions are needed and which students will be receiving interventions.  The following is the process used for grouping students:

1)  Using the results of CBMs mentioned in the previous post, the teacher (you) can get a clear idea of which students are struggling and need further assistance in one or more areas of reading.

• The CBMs have levels that identify when a student is performing at grade level, is struggling, or is far behind where he or she needs to be -- the specific cutoffs will be different based on which CBM is used in the classroom/school. 

2) If there are two or more students on a similar level that may need similar assistance, it is appropriate to place them in a small group intervention targeting their particular reading difficulties.

• If the student is exhibiting global reading deficits, it may be beneficial to place him or her in an individual intervention to address these difficulties in a more effective manner.

3) If there is a more class-wide difficulty with a particular concept, it may be beneficial to implement a whole group intervention. 

4) If ELL students are having reading difficulties, CBMs are useful to see what additional reading services the students may need.  It is beneficial to work with ELLs in a small group setting in addition to whole group instruction in order to ensure understanding.  

Designing Interventions 

Once students who are struggling have been identified, it is easier to see which reading concepts they are struggling with the most.  The next post in the blog includes links for interventions and resources based on the five areas of reading instruction.  After you chose a suitable intervention, it is important to design to see if it is effective or if another approach may be more appropriate.  

The following are steps in designing an intervention in a single-subject design (Brown-Chidsey & Steege, 2010): 

1)  Establish a baseline measure of academic performance 

• Baseline -- current state of a student's performance 
• Provides a basis for predicting likely behavior or performance if no intervention is implemented 
• This can be CBM/benchmark assessment data that has already been obtained 
• with assessment data, three separate assessments of each skill will meet the requirement for establishing a baseline (i.e. letter-naming fluency, phonemic segmentation, and nonsense word fluency) 

2)  Introduce the intervention 

• The intervention is implemented consistently and with precision (based on the instructions of the particular intervention that is chosen)
• Keep track of the student's performance on the intervention and graph the progress.

3)  Document the effects of the intervention through repeated measurement 

• Compare the student's performance on the baseline to his or her performance during the intervention 
• If the baseline was benchmark assessment, continue progress monitoring 1x per week with the same assessments to see if the student is improving over time.  It is important to graph these results to see if the intervention is working and if the student is progressing.  
• This website has graphing resources for teachers and parents to help them graph RTI data 
• For certain interventions, graphing by hand is not very difficult and you can have the student graph their own progress -- this is helpful for the student to see his or her own progress and improvement.

4)  It is important to designate a "decision point" during the intervention (usually 4-5 weeks into the intervention).  This is to see if the student is making progress and understanding the concepts better than he or she did at the start of the intervention.  If this is not the case, it may be time to see if the intervention needs to be tweaked, or if a new approach is needed to the problem.  It may be that the student is having multiple reading difficulties, or needs to go at a slower pace.  Using the intervention data (that you will have in graph form) will help you determine this.  

5)  If after the decision point, another intervention is chosen that may be more effective, start the baseline/data collection/progress monitoring process once more with the new intervention. 

Brown-Chidsey, R. & Steege, M.W. (2010).  Response to intervention: Principles and strategies for effective practice.  New York: The Guildford Practical Intervention in the Schools Series.