When typical reading interventions don’t work

Traditional reading interventions have proven successful for many, but what happens when they aren’t? As resource teachers, that’s when all eyes turn towards us. Next to “resource teacher job description” is written, “We figure out why your students aren’t progressing.” So what do you do? What do you do when all the reading interventions that typically work don’t work for your student?

When we find that our reading interventions aren’t working or that a reading strategy for struggling readers is falling short, we have to remember it is data telling us that we are not actually addressing the student’s missing skill. We need to dive deeper. We must consider all the parts, learning characteristics, and factors of our students and their learning disabilities and meld them into the reading interventions. 

Keep reading for a list of critical reading intervention questions to ask about your student when they are not progressing!

 

Critical Questions to Ask During Your Student’s Reading Interventions

Is it a WILL, or is it a SKILL?

The first thing we recommend you address about your reading interventions is, “Is our student not progressing because of a missing skill or a struggle with will (think behavior and motivation)?” Implementing a more targeted reinforcement strategy can answer this question quickly. 

That might look like 

• reinforcing more often (maybe even every response to start)
• reinforcements more targeted to your student (perhaps they don’t want candy, maybe they want to draw for 2 minutes)
• shortened tasks (start really short to build that behavior momentum, then lengthen what you expect them to do over time)

Once you have ruled out the student’s progress due to a lack of will, we can start identifying what skills we need to address to help them succeed with their reading interventions. 

Is it receptive or expressive communication struggles?

The SLP at our school taught me two forms of communication, receptive and expressive. Receptive language is the ability to understand and comprehend language that you hear or read, so it is information that is coming “in.” Expressive language is the “out” language, so the ability to express your wants and needs or things you’ve learned (like naming a letter). 

Testing their receptive and expressive skills with that concept is a good idea when working with a new skill. For example – if I have a student who can’t remember their sounds, I might lay out three sounds and ask them to show me one (for example, l, m, n “hand me /n/”) before I begin my reading interventions. If the student can do this, I know that they understand that n makes the /n/ sound and that receptively, they can complete the task. Then, I would test their expressive skills with that concept (showing them the letter n and saying, “What sound?”). Typically, receptive language develops faster and easier for students, so that is where we recommend you start. 

Resource Teachers Guide for Receptive or Expressive Communication Struggles

You can do two things if you need help addressing this for the specific task you are working on.

First, download our free alphabet intervention for video models of working on isolated skills using receptive and expressive tasks. All you have to do is sign up for our Resource Teacher’s Guide weekly memo.

Second, talk to your speech and language pathologist. They will have valuable insights on specific ways you can help your student. 

Are Students retaining the information after reading interventions are over?

We always hear, “My student can not remember what they learned. They have it one second, and then in a few minutes, it’s gone.” If this is your student, you probably need to adjust your instruction to build in opportunities to remember what they’ve learned over time. This is called building in distractors. 

Maintenance and Elaborative Rehearsal in Reading Interventions

There are (arguably) two main ways to help a student remember things over time. The first is called maintenance rehearsal, and the second is elaborative rehearsal. Maintenance relies on constantly repeating information without actual application of why you are doing it (just memorizing sounds because we have to). Elaborative rehearsal is when we give information meaning (we memorize sounds because that is how we communicate, read, write, etc). 

Maintenance is still a powerful tool for our students because, as we know, they need to hear things around 7x more than the typical student for it to stick. However, there is only so much a student can remember at once, and (especially for students with learning disabilities) anything and everything can interrupt that learning (like getting distracted).

So you want to make sure that when you are working on a skill during your reading interventions, you are addressing both maintenance (I always classify this as a kill-and-drill situation) and elaboration (taking the skill and immediately applying it to show the student why it’s important and how they can use it). 

Our alphabet freebie (again) is an excellent example of maintenance rehearsal with intentional and systematic distractors. All you have to do is sign up using your email. Then check your email for our free alphabet intervention.

Our reading program for struggling readers is an excellent example of teaching sounds using elaboration rehearsal (applying it right away so they see why/how they need it). 

Am I addressing the learning characteristics of their disability?

The next thing we need to consider is the learning characteristics of our students’ disabilities and make sure our reading interventions are addressing those. We must look at characteristics besides “they struggle with reading” and get specific. 

For example, many disabilities are partnered with slow processing, inability to focus on a task, need for visuals, need for audio, need for explicit written steps, and need for micro steps (scaffolding). Not only is this differentiation but in the resource classroom, this is specially designed instruction (SDI), which is literally the job of a resource teacher. 

Take a minute to analyze your instruction and ask, “Am I designing this instruction to specifically meet the needs of my students’ learning disability?”

Am I providing opportunities to generalize the skill in and out of the reading interventions?

Are we applying the information in a way that teaches them how to generalize or provides opportunities to generalize the information they are learning? This means we provide opportunities for the student to learn the skill we are working on across multiple subjects and settings in and out of the reading intervention time. This can start within our resource classrooms and then move to help them generalize skills to other settings like gen ed, library, recess, etc. 

Provide Opportunities to Generalize the Reading Strategies

During your reading intervention, build in opportunities to apply what they learned outside of the group you taught them in (or, to start, within the group you taught them in).

Let’s take letter sounds again. This might look like:

• Having them identify the letter/sound on the math page they are working on
• Finding the sound they are working on on student work hanging in the halls
• Having their gen ed, principal, janitor, or other faculty member show them the sound and ask the student to say it.
• This might be practicing the sound in isolation and then, during that same group, asking the student to say the sound in between tasks (students answer a comprehension question, then the student says the sound you show them)

Is my reading intervention explicitly teaching the reading skill?

Explicitly teaching something means teaching it systematically, step-by-step, using an array of examples and non-examples, with data collection. Often, teachers will tell us they explicitly taught a skill, but what they did was give an overview. 

For example, if you teach the rule “be respectful,” you can’t just tell them what it is (being nice, kind, considerate, etc.). You need to make sure you are teaching them what it looks like, sounds like, examples and non-examples, and how it works in multiple situations/settings.

Look at your reading intervention, strategy, or skill. Does your instruction need to be more explicit (systematic and intentional)?

Am I utilizing accommodations before, after, and during my reading intervention?

Many teachers push back when we say we must provide accommodations. They want the students to learn it without any crutches. We totally understand this thought process. But let’s also remember that if someone has a broken leg and you take away their crutches, they will probably fall down… 

Eventually, yes, we want the student to be able to engage in a skill or task without any support. But until that student has been able to master the underlying issue (broken leg), the accommodation (or “crutch”) is the only thing that is going to help them continue to learn during your reading interventions. It IS important that if and when we provide accommodations/scaffolds/supports, we have a long-term plan to remove those accommodations to help the student be successful.

Think about your students’ learning characteristics, disabilities, and struggles. Is there a basic accommodation that can help them move forward with learning (sound chart, calculator, multiplication chart, pencil grip, etc.)?

Read all about how powerful accommodations can be HERE.

 

Have I collaborated with the students’ other service providers?

This is one we feel very passionate about. We can not be masters in all areas. If you have a student who is struggling and has other service providers, REACH OUT! You would be shocked at how much Occupational Therapy and Speech struggles (just to name a few) affect the student’s ability to learn. 

For example, did you know some students struggle with reading because they can not track appropriately? This is something that is addressed and worked on in OT. Your service providers are experts in their fields. USE THEM. 

Do the students understand WHY they are learning this?

Last but not least, you may need to look at your systems that you are using. One of the biggest things we see is that teachers teach too much in isolation and need more in application (or, as we mentioned above, spending too much time in maintenance rehearsal and not moving into elaborative rehearsal). 

Take a second and think about when you were asked to do a task that meant nothing to you. Did you take it seriously? Did you try? Or did you just go through the motions? 

Meaningful Applications Are Key Throughout Reading Interventions

It is common practice among resource teachers to focus on and teach a skill in isolation before moving the application. Teachers tell me all the time that their students aren’t reading yet because they have yet to learn all the sounds. I can tell you that for most of our students who struggle (especially those with behaviors), that will put them in a place of burnout very quickly. 

If you are telling your student over and over that they need to memorize the sounds, but you never show them how they are going to use them (and use them in a way that’s meaningful to them), 

Then your student is not going to put in the work to actually learn what you are teaching. 

Next Steps to Take to Ensure Success In Your Reading Interventions

So what next? First, subscribe to our email and social streams because we discuss ways to address these issues regularly.

Second, pick ONE student and go through each question. If you answer no to one of these questions, write down a plan to remediate it (here is a free editable template). If you need help answering these questions, sit down with your mentor, team lead, general education teacher, or a specialist in your school and discuss these questions together. 

Here’s our parting thought: Embrace YOUR OWN pace of progress. Instead of attempting to fix every reading intervention group in one swift go, consider focusing on a single student, tackling their challenges, gathering data, and making adjustments, perhaps monthly or bi-monthly. With each student, your skills will flourish, your knowledge will expand, and your toolkit will grow. Give yourself the time to evolve without the weight of teacher guilt.

You’ve got this!