First up on the daily schedule is...
Our school uses the FIRST 30 minutes of each day for grade level intervention groups. When the first grade team piloted this 4 years ago, I have to say we were not so happy to give up this 30 minutes, never mind first thing in the morning when our firsties came in fresh and ready to learn! HOWEVER, as we progressed through the year and compared growth from the prior year, the students who made adequate yearly growth more than DOUBLED!
You can read more about how we group and structure our intervention groups HERE. A key part is being able to service the children who struggle and who are in RTI without compromising the instruction for the rest of our students. With the help of our literacy coach and speech therapist, we are able to structure our groups with lower numbers for those who struggle with phonemic awareness and phonics.
This year, my instruction focused on phonics for the first half of the year and then a fluency/comprehension at the mid-year switch. At times, we need to focus on more than one skill because a student may have several gaps. We even might need to have a blended group if there are several children with the same needs.
In our county, we use Wonders by McGraw Hill and they offer online resources for intervention in most areas. I have also created a few products to help out in these groups. TpT has been a life saver as well.
Wonders Unit 1 Includes short a, short o, l blends, short i and r & t blends. I use the games to play "BANG!", Quiz, Quiz Trade and have even printed 2 sets to use as a matching game. The sky is the limit:) If you do not use Wonders, there are still FIVE PHONICS GAMES in each unit so it is well worth the purchase. Click HERE if you would like to shop this or other phonics games over at TpT.
Building fluency takes time and lots of practice. Children need to be immersed in reading books on their level. During fluency intervention groups, we use a variety if resources. We use leveled books from prior reading series, printed books from A-Z Reading, the RAZ-Kids website, a fluency binder for partner reading and LEVELED fluency passages.
I love the Raz-Kids website as kids are able to listen to stories, read at their level and take comprehension quizzes. They earn points and are engages in a super fun game!
The fluency packs from Tamara Russell are the BEST I have seen. The passages are differentiated, seasonal, include comprehension questions and a home component! So many students lack the resources at home to practice at night with books on their level. My students and parents LOVE these passages. Click on the picture to read more about it over in her store.
I hope you have a window's view into our reading intervention groups. If you have hung around through this post, I am giving away Wonders Unit's 1 through 3 on Thursday morning! There are 5 weeks included in each unit (That's a total of 15 phonics games!). Each week contains a phonics game, a phonics/spelling list for the word work center, flashcards for spelling and sight words, vocabulary cards, a vocabulary worksheet and a home/school study guide.
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We use the Imagine Phonics series from Open Court
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