5-Step Procedure for How to Intervene or Reteach
My purpose for writing my upcoming book, Ready-To-Use Reading Assessments & Intervention Strategies for K-2 (available in the Teacher Store), had this question foremost in my mind. I think we have done a good job of having many types of assessments available but the real issue is now that we know what our students do not know, what do we do to intervene. Giving students more of the same is not necessarily the answer. For example, if the student cannot write a summary, we keep giving the student more summaries to write.
Here is my 5-step procedure for how to intervene:
- Itemize the task aspects of the assessment. For the summary writing, the task aspects are: understood story read; wrote what happened in the beginning, middle and end; and, generalized the story in student's own words.
- Analyze what aspects of the task the student did and which ones were not done. In the example of summary writing, the aspects to look for are: Did the student write what happened in the beginning, middle, and end? If so, where the events written, the main ideas in the beginning, middle, and end? Did the student write with too many details or too few details?
- Group the students who have similar needs so that re-teaching is efficient.
- Re-teach using a different approach from the one used in the previous instruction.
- Assess again with the same task but use different content (i.e. different book).
Brenda Weaver is the K-5 Language Arts/Social Studies Coordinator for Skaneateles Central Schools in Skaneateles, New York. She has been a classroom teacher, reading teacher, assistant principal, principal, curriculum coordinator, and college instructor. She has published articles and books on the topic of literacy and leveling books. The Skaneateles Language Arts Program, which was developed under her supervision, has won two International Reading Association Exemplary Reading Awards and is a top scorer on the new New York State Grade 4 English/Language Arts Test. Her first book for Scholastic, Ready-To-Use Reading Assessments & Intervention Strategies for K-2, is available in the Teacher Store.

