In November, the second grade class I supported got a new student. Lupita was a sweet, kind, quiet child who was learning English as a second language, although she had been in English speaking schools since kindergarten. When Lupita arrived, we gave her a Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA2) to determine where she was in reading and what our next instructional steps would be. She tested at a level 3 – end of kindergarten level – and this was November of second grade. Yikes. She immediately became a concern for us and our literacy team put our heads together to see what our best approach might be to support the classroom teacher.  Our Reading Recovery teacher offered to eat lunch with her and do a modified Reading Recovery lesson with her for a few weeks, our ESOL teacher and classroom teacher each did guided reading lessons with her in the classroom, and I added her to one of my Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) groups.  All of this was in addition to the work she did daily in the classroom. She made remarkable progress and ended the year as a strong, strategic reader who loves to read and talk about books.  Her end of year DRA2 level was a 24 – very close to the second grade benchmark. I have no doubt that she will continue to thrive as a reader.

We all love to hear success stories such as these, and I know all of you have similar stories to share and celebrate. So what can we learn from Lupita? How can we be ready to greet the Lupitas that will be in our classrooms next fall?

1 – Continual monitoring of student progress (see entry on Progress Monitoring) is key.  When we are checking in on student progress with meaningful data (running records, anecdotal notes, etc.) we can adapt our instruction to best meet his or her needs. We make sure that no child falls between the cracks or is overlooked and that no time is lost in accelerating his or her learning.

2 – It takes a village. The task of teaching Lupita to read was a team effort, with frequent communication between all of the teachers working with her. Most classroom teachers are qualified to instruct children who struggle, however, they have 20 or even 30 other children to instruct as well.  They can do their part, but they need specialists to provide support as well. A double (or sometimes even triple) dip of quality instruction that complements each other is essential. If a child is being pulled for a small group or one-on-one intervention, they should also be receiving guided reading instruction or one-on-one conferencing in the classroom. Frequent communication between specialists and classroom teachers helps the intervention be much more effective.

3 – Never, ever, give up.  Our students who struggle need us. They need us to try everything we know and to not make excuses for why they aren’t learning. If something isn’t working – we need to put our heads together and come up with a new plan.  We can’t give up on any of our students.

What success stories do you have? Please share!

I’ve been tweeting on Twitter for over a year now. I find it’s an amazing place to go for professional growth, development and inspiration. I’ve learned so much from the people I tweet with. I’m amazed at how much my list of followers has grown – and how many outstanding teachers I’ve come to know simply by reading their 140 character tweets. Recently, Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, author of Math Exchanges (coming this fall through Stenhouse),  and I sat down to discuss how we use Twitter in our professional lives. You can listen to our short podcast on the Stenhouse blog or here. Please follow us on Twitter – and we will follow you back! I tweet from @bluskyz and @CatchingReaders, Kassia tweets from @kassiaowedekind and Pat tweets from @PatJ222. You can find an extensive list of people to follow on the Stenhouse blog.

How do you use Twitter in your teaching life?

As teachers, we are committed to making sure that all children succeed. For our children who struggle, we make sure many things are in place to catch them before they fall. One structure that my school has in place is Progress Monitoring Meetings. Every six weeks or so, we take two hours out of the school day for each grade level to meet about the students we are concerned about in the areas of literacy, mathematics and behavior or social issues. Everyone who works with this child is present at the meeting – classroom teachers, specialists, resource teachers, guidance counselor and administration.

We bring data in the form of running records, anecdotal notes, DRA assessments, portfolios, work samples, county benchmark tests and any other formative assessments given to support our observations, concerns and thinking. We use this time as a “meeting of the minds” to work together as a team to target strengths, weaknesses and decide what we can do to help each child succeed.

This time is not “just another meeting”, as many of us can relate to. It’s a focused, productive meeting that allows us to zoom in on every child who is struggling and make a plan for helping him or her. We create specific goals and a plan of action for each child, and work together to see that it is carried out. We come back together and share at our next meeting – refining goals, celebrating successes and deciding next steps. Intervention is a team effort. We view the students in our school as “our kids”, not “my kids”, and we all work together to make sure they are successful.

Reflecting back on the year, I am amazed at how much progress our most struggling students have made. I think approaching intervention for our children who need us the most through a collaborative, goal-oriented plan, based on ongoing assessments and quality data, has truly helped us catch many children before they fall.

How is intervention working at your school? We’d love to hear about it – please share!

Pat and I presented to a wonderful and (WOW!) very large group of teachers today at the International Reading Association’s conference in Orlando. We’d like to share the powerpoint with you here. If you would like to print the handouts, you can get them from the IRA’s website. Also, you can find an extended version of our presentation as a video Webcast on the Reading Recovery website. Enjoy!