Intervention and Fall Writing

I have completely neglected my blog posting this week. Things were so busy and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I know I am not alone in this department.

We started parent conferences this week and will continue into next week. We are wrapping up our first reading unit which means testing, testing, testing. This will be the first time this year the kids have seen a formal test booklet, which can be very intimidating to many of my kiddos. So I am breaking it down  and testing over 5 days so they just get a little bit at a time. This usually helps their anxiety level go down.

This brings me to the topic of intervention. I have always found it frustrating and difficult to find the time during the school day to do "proper" intervention. Pulling a couple of kids for 5 or 10 minutes, never seems to do the trick. Well, this year the "magic" is happening in second grade at my school. We only have 2 second grade classes. Usually between our two classes we might have 6 kids that really need intensive intervention. This year, however, the story is different. We have about a third of our kids that are not at grade level. We knew we HAD to figure out how to consistently implement intervention. My team partner and I have finally figured out how to make it work for our kids.

Our reading program is California Treasures. The fifth day each week is an assessment and review day. We decided to combine our two classes for this time. My team partner takes all the kids that need intensive intervention for one hour, while I take all the other kids and review difficult grade level concepts or work on enrichment. That means every five days the kids are getting an hour of quality intervention! Also, the kids that need higher level instruction get their needs met as well. Now to take this to the next level, the sixth week of each Unit is review and testing.  We are combining the kids each day that week for a total of 5 MORE hours of intervention! I am so excited about the possibility of huge progress for all these kids. We are progress monitoring all of them and hope to see some significant gains.

Here are some of the things I did with my group:
We reviewed main idea and details. The kids can never get enough exposure and practice with this concept,

We also wrote stories about Mr. Leaf from Amy Lemons Fall Literacy Centers. We are going to continue with the fall centers next week and I will post more pictures so you can see the kids at work. Have a great weekend everyone!

8 comments :

  1. This is the same graphic organizer I taught my kids to use when determining the main idea and detail. I just used a tree map (thinking map) but for real, 4th graders can never get enough practice with this skill as well! :)
    Antonia @ forkin4th

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  2. I absolutely love the way you are doing intervention. I am going to mention this to my team teachers and my principal to see if this is something that we could possibly do!! I agree that there never seems to be enough time to do the job that needs to be done with intervention. This sounds great!
    Thanks for sharing.

    Kelly
    Teaching Fourth

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    1. Thanks Kelly! I hope you can find a way to make it work at your school as well. We are thrilled that we finally figured out a way to make it work. Hopefully we will see lots of gains!
      Jaime

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  3. Our team creates a list of all the kids who need reading intervention. We then split them up and see them at the end of our literacy block for 20 minutes. Some kids get 3x weeks a week, some everyday. After a three week period we rotate the gropus (there are 5 of us when we are all tracked in), this way the kids get a different 'model'. We had great data last year to send some kids to get tested and/or data to pass along so the 3rd grade teachers could continue working on the same skills. It also helped us get to know each other kids and feel more accountable for all the second grade, not just our own.

    Tania
    My Second Sense

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  4. Great ways to meet their needs and finding the time. We have 5 first grade teachers this year and we are splitting them up by reading needs along with out literacy coach and speech pathologist. We meet the first 30 minutes of the day Monday through Thursdays. We take Friday off for testing. The 2 extra adults enables us to give the kids who need strategic intervention fewer kids in the group and the higher lever kids are getting enrichment with comprehension skills. We had such HUGE results last year out principal has implemented it for the entire school!

    Congratulations for finding the time:)
    Tammy
    The Resourceful Apple

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  5. Oh Jaime this is perfect! We are piloting Treasures right now and not exactly loving Day 5! We do all these assessments for our kiddos, and then what? Meeting with those kids in small groups is so what they need and certainly need more than a mere 10 minutes. This is so good!
    ~Christy & Tammy
    Fluttering Through First Grade

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  6. Starting a new reading program is always a challenge. We just started Treasures last year and I have to say I really like it. But it took a whole year to figure out how to meet all the kiddos needs. I hope you can use some of these ideas to make it work for you too.

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