Reading Intervention

I've written a little before about my work in Reading. When I first entered elementary school, teaching Reading was my weakest area. It's kind of ironic because my certification and interest was in middle school Language Arts, but teaching Reading is a whole different ball game. I know this is bad, but I had never observed someone teaching a Reading lesson in an intermediate elementary classroom, before I taught one.

Since that time, I have come a long way in teaching Reading. I actually only need one more graduate credit to have a Reading Specialist certification on my license because I took so many Reading courses in graduate school.

One of my responsibilities this year is to run the fluency reading intervention for our grade level. We use a store-bought program that intertwines the repeated reading strategy with a comprehension element. What I know about this program is that it works when it is followed correctly.

A new group will start the program tomorrow and this is my third group of students to come through the whole thing. With the past two groups, I felt that we used it, but we did not use it as effectively as we could. My goal this time is to really get it right. I know what I am doing with this program now, and I think I can do it, but there will be challenges.

I have 25 kids doing the program during a half hour block--this is by far the biggest group I've had for one session. During that block, I have to get them through all steps of the repeated reading, time them individually, and check comprehension. The only way it actually is possible is because I have a student teacher from a neighboring classroom helping me.

The kids are super excited, and I know I can do this to help them. I also know, it will not be easy.