A mini success story... let's hope he continues to find the help he needs!

Here are some strategies I employed in a literacy intervention with a Form 5 student named Shane. The intervention lasted four weeks and proved successful because his fluency, prosody and oral comprehension skills had improved thereafter. Unfortunately, this was not enough for him to be successful in his CSEC O’Level exams. I was amazed when his mum told me that no one ever tried to help him before. I have continued to work with him, although less frequently since he is no longer a student at my school, and he is now enrolled in an adult literacy class. Maybe the next time around his CSEC results will improve.

Perhaps you can share some strategies that you feel can work with students who are faced with reading challenges 


Strategies Employed in the Intervention:

Several strategies were employed for this intervention. These are:

1. Echo Reading and Modelling-

Echo reading and Modelling, where I first read the passage and he repeated it, were used to develop fluency and prosody. Here Running Records were taken to track his progression in fluency. This strategy proved to be effective when I worked with Shane, because the Running Records showed consistent improvement until he got to the level of Independent Reading.


2. Repeated Reading-

This occurs when the child reads a selected piece of material multiple times. This was also employed as a strategy to develop fluency and prosody. The Multidimensional Fluency Scale was also employed when a new passage was introduced and at the end of the repeated readings to track fluency progression. This too was an effective strategy, since, based on this scale, Shane’s fluency progression consistently improved from the first to the last reading of the selected passage.


3. Vocabulary Development-

At various points during the administering of the lessons, vocabulary was discussed. No assessment tools were used to test vocabulary. Instead for the purposes of this study, vocabulary was discussed in order to increase comprehension skills. Dictionary meanings were generated but I spent much time discussing the vocabulary in the context in which it was used. Shane created a portable word wall on my advice, and listed the words there. Based on his consistent improvement in the Reading Sample Scale, I believe that the discussion of difficult vocabulary words helped demystify some comprehension issues in the passages, so that his comprehension skills developed.


4. Developing Oral Comprehension Skills-

Shane’s fluency and his difficulty with vocabulary were negatively affecting his comprehension skills. Thus after various attempts at reading, and the discussion of vocabulary, he was asked questions that tested his comprehension skills. The Reading Sample Scale was employed at the end of the first attempt to read the selected passage and then after he mastered the passage. His consistent improvement in the Reading Sample Scale proves that this strategy was effective.


5. Reading Familiar material and then Unfamiliar Material-

For this type of intervention Clay (1985) advocates first reading familiar material and eventually progressing to reading unfamiliar material (p.275). While Clay intended this to be a gradual progression, spanning much more than four weeks, I still attempted these strategies because I felt that reading familiar material initially would help build Shane’s fluency and confidence, and once he was at a comfortable level we would then move on to unfamiliar material.

REFERENCE:
Clay, M. (1985). Reading: The patterning of complex behaviour. Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann