 Welcome to this webinar, Effective Reading Intervention Strategies with Kara Shores. Kara joins us from Wesley Educational Services and we're very happy to have her expertise with us today. Kara is an expert on RTI and Response to Intervention and authored many bestselling books. So thanks for joining us today, Kara. I'm going to pass it on over to you. And again, I'll just put in that link to the wiki space for the handouts into the chat window. So welcome, Kara. Thanks, Carla. Hello, everyone. I hope you're having a great afternoon and I'm glad to be with you here. If you will, just give me a smiley face if everyone can hear me okay. All right. All right, great. Well, we are going to begin looking at intervention strategies for literacy, specifically this afternoon. And as we go through the PowerPoint when you have questions, just feel free to let me know at that time and I will try to address your questions that you have been. We are looking today at the Response to Intervention process. And hopefully all of you are familiar with the process. When we are talking about RTI, we are talking about tiered instruction where we provide interventions to students when they are not being successful with our core instruction. But we're also talking about that core instruction and how to make it most beneficial for all students. So as we look at the RTI process, we have three essential components that I just want to talk about just very quickly because they do apply directly to our topic for today. And if you do want further information about RTI overall as a process, just an overview of it, the webinar that we had a couple weeks ago is available, I believe. It was recorded and so we can give you that link so that you can refer to that if you want some more specific information just on RTI as an overview. So as we look at our essential components, there are three things that we have to pay attention to as we begin to look at instruction for students. First off, we need to make sure that whatever we're using with students, whether it be core instruction or as an intervention, has a research base behind it and that we know that it has been proven to be successful with students who are typical learners and struggling learners. And so we look for that research base first and foremost. We also want to use data to drive our instructional decision making within the RTI process. So as we provide instruction to students and then we provide interventions to them, we are going to use various kinds of assessment tools to make sure that our instruction is appropriate and is working for that student, that the student is benefiting from that instruction. And finally, we have to pay attention to fidelity to make sure that we are providing instruction as it was designed, as it was researched and that we are providing instruction that is beneficial to students in that we are really doing what we said we were going to. So as we're looking at fidelity, we have to just have checkpoints in place that we are providing instruction as it was designed and as it is appropriate. So as we go through our topic this afternoon of looking at reading instruction and interventions for students, we want to keep these three things in mind that we always implement instruction and interventions with these three essential components in place. As we're looking at reading, the focus of our instruction for early childhood will be our five big areas of reading as is most often defined in reading instruction. And that is phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As students get older and move from learning to read to reading to learn and start to read more difficult text, we want to put that phonics and phonemic awareness into word study so that we're looking at an overall ability to decode and to understand read words, prefixes, suffixes, all those things going into that together. And then we have our focus on fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. And then we also usually add in motivation as a factor for older learners having that motivation to read and being able to read for enjoyment as well as reading for information. So that is often included in reading for adolescents. As we look through these, we know that when students are struggling in the area of reading, it impacts every area of instruction. And we need to be very specific and explicit in our instruction of reading, not only teaching students to read literary works, especially in the younger grades, but also looking at teaching students how to read informational text. And so as we're looking at our interventions this afternoon and we talk about how to look for interventions, we want to be able to focus on literary as well as informational text and how students learn to read those two types. Always our focus for reading is to ultimately comprehend. Many times when we talk about reading instruction, there's a big focus on fluency and making sure that students are fluent readers. And that is very important. We'll talk quite a bit about fluency, but the overall goal has to be looking for that reading comprehension and making sure that everything that we do with our interventions points toward that. So as we're looking at students who are struggling in reading, in any of the areas that specifically in the area of reading comprehension or leading to comprehension, we want to have that explicit, very systematic and direct instruction in our reading, leading to reading performance. So it needs to be that very explicit instruction that we give to them. It's everywhere from the Phonemic Awareness Explicit Instruction for young students to explicit instruction in comprehension. And many times that is what is lacking. We need to use much of verbal modeling, questioning, and demonstration. And when we talk about some strategies for fluency and comprehension, we'll talk a lot about verbal modeling. We also want to teach the students strategies that they can master those strategies and use independently. So as we're teaching these strategies, we're working toward that goal of independence. We'll put in place prompts for students, give them lots of reminders and mnemonics to be able to remember the strategies that we put in place. We need to see lots of teacher-student dialogue, always having those conversations, not just students answering short questions, but really discussing literature and text and learning to pull apart and analyze and work with text. And then assistance provided only when necessary because we are working toward independence. So we want students to master these strategies that we're teaching them at a level of independence. When we're looking at providing intervention in tiers two and three, we are focusing on very targeted areas specifically in tier two. So as we're looking at a student's reading ability and looking at our assessment tools, we might find that a student has difficulty or has deficits in reading fluency. And so in tier two specifically, we would provide a targeted intervention based on fluency. We would be very targeted. We usually do that three to five times per week with a 20 to 30 minute segment. We look a little bit later as we go into tier three, we're going to get more intense with our instruction and we might do that through increasing time. We also usually group students for tier two interventions into small groups. Optimally at the elementary level, we like to have three to five students in a group. This is ability grouping. It is designed to provide specific instruction in those targeted areas in order to do that. Then we put students in very focused ability groups. That should not be the only type of grouping that's used of course with students. But for this specific intervention time, we do want students in those small groups. As students get older, in middle school and high school, our group sizes usually get larger with anywhere from eight to 15 students in a group. Really depends on the skill, the type of instructional program or strategy that we're teaching. We just want to make sure that we maintain the intensity where the students can be successful. We want to make sure that whatever additional instruction that we provide aligns with the core program does not mean that we have to have a program that is derived from our core curriculum. What it means is that we want whatever we teach in our intervention tiers to be applicable and transferable back to the core instruction. So let's say in high school, I may not teach reading as a subject, but I have students who need reading instruction. So whatever tools and strategies that I teach them to use for reading has to be applicable in our core instruction. So we might need to make sure that teachers in the core classrooms are using those tools and strategies and giving students support in using those. As we're looking at another essential, we want to make sure the students get lots of feedback, ongoing feedback from the teacher on what they're doing well and setting goals and being able to self-monitor those goals. As we look at student growth, it is important for students to monitor their own growth and even with very young students, helping them see the goals that are set for them and their progress toward those goals can be very good, especially for motivating students. And we definitely see a positive impact from that. So as we're looking at interventions to use in this intervention time, we're looking at something that has a strong research base that is targeted to that specific area of need. We have to implement it with fidelity and we use our progress monitoring tools to determine if the students are making progress so that we can determine the next steps. We're talking about interventions specifically for our intervention tiers, but also some interventions that we can use in tier one when students are struggling and before we have done any specific provision of additional instruction but just as they are needing help in tier one. We really have two types of academic interventions that we talk about. The first being materials that you purchase and the second being research-based learning strategies. Now I'm going to give you information today about both, but we're really going to focus on those learning strategies and the types of strategies we're talking about and where you can go to find those strategies. In the limited amount of time that we have this afternoon, I can't go over a lot of strategies, but you do have the handout packet that's going to give you information and then we have lots of resources for you there. So when we're looking at these supplemental materials and research-based learning strategies, we're looking at something that is targeted for the specific deficit the student has. The research-based learning strategies are the tools that the supplemental programs and materials that you buy are based on. We look into the research. You can see the types of things that we know are research-based that help students to gain reading information. And then we simply, the publishers have developed materials based on those. We're looking at the learning strategies. A benefit is that we can use those without purchasing additional materials with materials that we already have that are appropriate across grade levels and across content areas, but we do have to make sure that we are using the strategies as they were designed by the research. So we will look at that today. We're looking at programs. This is some information out of the Florida Center for Reading Research. It's conducted by Sharon Vaughn and her colleagues in looking at what kinds of programs do we have out there for reading. And they basically divided it into your core programs that you would use into your one supplemental programs for students who need those targeted skills such as just working on fluency or just working on comprehension and then an intervention program, what I usually call a comprehensive program that is more complex that covers all five areas of reading or covers reading as a whole rather than just those targeted skills. Oftentimes, these programs are used in tier three and are much more comprehensive for students who have more significant needs. When we're looking at research-based programs, Carla has put together for us along with many colleagues in your area a listing of some programs that are available that are being used in the Alberta area. And I'll give you a link later to some more comprehensive charts. But this chart is being developed and is available at the web address that's listed there. And what we ask is that districts go in and add information, put feedback on there for programs that you're using. And we just want to build something that is Alberta-specific and that is very helpful to you to be able to look at what's being used in your area. So that is available to you. And then I will show you in a few minutes another set of resources that we will check out. So we're going to begin looking at research-based learning strategies. That will be our focus today, not programs, but just strategies that can be used with curriculum you already have and that are the basis for these programs that can be purchased. This is the resource list that I mentioned just a minute ago. Many of these websites have reviews of intervention tools. One of those being IES.ed.gov. That is the Fort Worth Clearinghouse that calls for reviews of programs from publishers. And you can go there and look at those reviews there and see the quality of research behind programs. Bestevidence.org is a similar type of program from the Johns Hopkins University. And then there are other sites that are on here that have actual strategies. And one of those is the first one listed there, the readingeducator.com, that has some excellent strategies for reading instruction. Some of the strategies we'll look at today are specifically highlighted there. So we'll only give you just about three to five minutes for you to be able to go to some of these sites and Carla will give you instruction on how to do that. And she's going to set a timer to allow you to look at some of these sites now. Thanks, Kara. So I have been putting in some of the links in the chat window right now. So you may have to scroll up or down depending on how your layout of the window is. But what you can do is any of those blue links are live links. So if you click on them in the chat window, it will open up your web browser to that web page. So you can go and explore the site. And then when you want to come back to the webinar, you can either just minimize your web browser or close it. Yes, this one is available, Debbie. And it is on the Wiki page. We'll ensure you get it as well so that you have all these links. But for the time being today, you can just use the ones here in the chat window. So say, for example, right now, if I just put in the readingeducator in the chat window and if you want to start with that web page, and I'll quickly put in some other ones as well, that will take you to a place where you can explore some of the strategies. So again, these are the free resources that some of the packaged materials are based on. So we'll put up the timer. And at the end of the timer, we'll ask you just to come back here. And if you have any questions, comments, please share those with us. And then we can go forward from there. OK, so I'll put up the timer now, and I'll put some more of those links in the chat window too. OK, so I've got all the links now in the chat window. So feel free to explore those. I know we don't have long, but this is just to give you an initial chance to have a look at those pages. Please do let us know if you have any questions. I know for my personal use, I've been using the readingeducator quite a bit. I find those strategies are really well laid out with the resources on there too. Hopefully that gave you some time to be able to look through very quickly those websites. Thereadingeducator.com is a very good site that has some great strategies. And as you look at that, in your handout packet from today, you will see many citations for Just Read Now. And that is the readingeducator site that has recently changed to a new web address. The IES.ED.gov is a website for the What Works Clearinghouse. And the bestevidence.org is through Johns Hopkins University. Those two review programs that are published programs and gives a lot of information about the research behind programs. The Center on Instruction gives a lot of information about what research says about teaching, reading, and teaching math. And the Promising Practices has some very good strategies on it. And then the cehs.unl, that is University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And that site also has some very good strategies. So after the webinar, take plenty of time to be able to review those and to see strategies as well as programs reviewed there. So we're going to move on now and look at the strategies that we're talking about. These are used across the content areas through all three tiers of the pyramid. They are designed for being incorporated into tier one core instruction and are also appropriate for our interventions into tier two. And also in tier three, although we'll talk about the level of intensity later on. So as we're looking at these strategies that we're going to talk about today, they are appropriate across grade levels and across content areas. And we have a slide or a bullet here that says Link to the Core Curriculum. What we mean by that is anything that we teach as a strategy needs to be able to be implemented in the core instruction or it needs to be appropriate for students to use in the core instruction. So it will be something that if I learn a comprehension strategy in my supplemental instruction, then I can go back and use it in the core. That's the purpose of everything that we're doing. So all the content area teachers, if you're in a secondary setting, would need to have access to whatever graphic organizers, other tools that you use in those strategies. These are steps that are recommended for strategy instruction for students. First of all, developing and activating that background knowledge so that students have something that they can relate the new instruction to. Going through explicit instruction of the strategy, discussing it, modeling it, memorizing that strategy, students to be able to have support to help them to be able to memorize using the monics. Giving them support for the strategy as they are learning it and helping them to move to independent performance. That is our goal with all the strategies is that they become independent in implementation of those strategies. We're going to look now at strategies specifically for reading. And as we look at these, we really need to think of reading as not just being taught in one class, not just in an English class, not just in a reading class. But we need to think of every class as being a reading class. When we think of math instruction and social studies instruction and science instruction, students need to be taught specifically how to read informational texts in those areas. And so as we're looking at teaching, reading, especially in the areas of vocabulary and comprehension, we need to think not only of using literary texts but also informational texts for students to learn from. So these strategies can be incorporated into any content area that we have. And especially at the secondary level should be included in our content area classes. We're going to begin with phonemic awareness phonics and word study. And if you'll remember, we said that word study is what sort of phonemic awareness and phonics evolves into for older students. We're looking at phonemic awareness. It is looking at hearing identifying and manipulating sounds in the spoken language. And we have five specific tasks here that students need to be able to do in order to be proficient with phonemic awareness. First off, isolating sounds, recognizing those individual sounds and words, identifying the same sounds in different words. Categorization of when we have an odd sound in a set of words, how is that different from what we heard before. And then blending and segmenting and blending words together and then pulling them back apart. All of those are very important skills. And a lot of these skills we learn through playing games with students, doing rhyming games. And that is just a very important instruction that we do not need to skip. As we're looking at the strategies that we put together for phonemic awareness, it takes those skills that we talked about and really works on them individually. And I'm giving you some examples here of what we are talking about. We're talking about blending, segmenting, deletion, and substitution. Our phonics instruction takes that spoken language and puts it into text. And we need to have a very explicit instruction in that. Now, as we're looking at phonics instruction, many times teachers have a program that they use for phonics instruction. And I do recommend that schools have a very strong core phonics program. We need to follow a continuum, such as one outlined here that sets a scope and sequence for teaching the phonics skills so that they are appropriate for students. I've given you here some information from Dr. Erica Lemke of recommendations for a continuum of that phonics instruction. Things to think about, such as teaching high utility letters first, teaching letters that are not visually or auditorily confusing together, such as lowercase h and n are visually confusing to students. When we look at teachers putting together their own phonics instructional package, most teachers don't have the time. And many teachers don't have the training to be able to do this. So I do recommend a strong instructional phonics program, phonemic awareness and phonics program in the core instruction. And then teaching these skills specifically in our intervention tiers with some strategies that I'm going to point out to you. This is a potential sequence for introducing letters again from Dr. Lemke and I just put that in for your perusal there. When we're looking at the purpose of this instruction, it is to get that rapid and accurate decoding so that students can move to comprehension. Fluent reading is not just reading words, it's putting those together and then getting meaning from it. So we need to have students to become fluent in phonemic awareness and phonics and move to fluency so that they are not using too much energy putting into decoding words and can focus on the comprehension. The strategies that I've highlighted for you this afternoon, I have two of them here. It's just a very small sampling of strategies for phonemic awareness and phonics. The first is word building. It is outlined on page five of your handout packet that is available on our website that Carla has put up for you there. And word building is taking those blending, segmenting skills and teaching this specifically to students. The other strategy that's there, peer assisted learning strategies based on class-wide peer tutoring. You have a description of that on page 12 in your handout packet. And you also have a website there. And that website is for Vanderbilt University. Peer assisted learning strategies was developed at Vanderbilt University and has materials that are for purchase but they're very reasonably priced for teaching not only phonics and phonemic awareness and reading but also for math. They have programs for that. And is based on a class-wide peer tutoring framework. And students basically work with each other. And there are videos there on that side that you can look at the materials and then you can order from there. And I put that in as a strategy because it is a strategy but the materials are there for you. We're going to look now at fluency. And fluency, again, is not just rapid reading. But it's reading for meaning. So as we're looking at recommendations for teaching fluency, the number one recommended strategy is repeated oral readings. We're going to look at specifically types of repeated readings. The one that we're really going to focus on is rereading the familiar text. And also involves listening to models of fluent reading. So having a teacher read appropriately to students and also choral or unison reading. When we are looking at repeated readings, it is specifically having a monitored oral reading of a passage and recording the number of words that a student reads per minute. When we are looking at fluency, it does directly impact comprehension. And when a student has to stop to decode words, if they misread more than 5% of the text, then it's going to impact their comprehension. So we do need to get students to be fluent readers. But again, that's not just how fast are they reading but how appropriately and how accurately. And with inflection and paying attention to punctuation, all those things going into it. So we are going to look at repeated reading. And I've given you a YouTube video link here that you can look at a demonstration of using repeated reading with a student. And after the webinar, I invite you to look at that. It is a good demonstration of that. We're looking specifically at repeated reading that I've highlighted on page 8 for you. We're looking at reading the same passage multiple times. Usually up to three or four times and timing the student on that reading. What we find from research is that when students read a passage and they increase their fluency rate, that transfers over to new passages that they learn. So in looking at that repeated reading doesn't just impact the fluency rate on the passage they're reading but on the other passages as well. And when we look at the choral reading, I've given you some specific directions for partner reading. And then again, the class-wide tutoring can be used for looking at fluency as well. Next, I want to focus on vocabulary. And this is one of the areas that we really need to look at in content areas as students get older. So when we look at vocabulary instruction, we know that students need to gain quite a large vocabulary. And that vocabulary doesn't need to be just taught in isolation. It needs to be linked to what students are learning on a daily basis. And that's when we come into our content area of vocabulary and making it very specific for students. So we need to look at indirect instruction of vocabulary as students are reading but also direct instruction. And that is a recommendation for students from preschool all the way through high school to have direct instruction in vocabulary. I've given you here some suggestions for vocabulary instruction. And I want to point out two very specific things that research tells us work best for teaching vocabulary. And the first one is creating a mental or visual image associated with that vocabulary. So the keyword, just getting some kind of representation for the words that they are learning. And then secondly, restating the dictionary definitions in their own words. So it's very, very important. Those two are two forms of vocabulary learning that Marzana says are the most important as we're teaching a vocabulary to students. So all of these important, the number one and number four, very specifically we need to focus on with vocabulary instruction. One of the ways that we can do that is by using a Frayer model. And in my onsite sessions in Alberta, many some teachers are very familiar with the Frayer model and use it in their classrooms. But it is a great way to teach vocabulary with those two things that we said, putting the vocabulary word and the definition into their own words. And also looking at making some kind of symbolic representation. So this is an example of a Frayer model and you have instructions for using it on page 15 in your handouts. And I also want to show you some variations and some examples that students have done. This is student work. This is a variation of a Frayer model that's used in an elementary school. And you can see that instead of characteristics in the top box on the right, the teacher changed that to say picture model. So that the student is making that pictorial representation. Another example, same thing, the teacher had them make a pictorial representation. This one was used in the science class. This is an example of a Frayer model being used in a math class. And you can see that the teacher has adapted this just a little bit, put the facts and characteristics back in. But then also had room for the pictures and then put the examples and non-examples in one box and divided those in half. In math especially, but really in all content areas sometimes, the non-examples tell us more about whether or not the student understands the word than any other part. And when I use the Frayer model, I usually have students do all the boxes first except for the definition in their own words. And then I have them do that last because after they've worked through the characteristics and the pictures and the examples and non-examples, they are usually able to do a better job of coming up with their own definition there. Now this is an example of a teacher who had multiple words that she wanted to teach. And this is from a unit on the American Civil Rights Movement. And so the student had four vocabulary words and so used that. And you can see that there was the definition, the definition of their own words, a picture, and then a sentence. So she adapted that somewhat. Okay, and our last area is comprehension. And as we're looking at teaching comprehension, again, this is something that needs to be done in all content areas. It also needs to be done in both literary text and informational text because the comprehension skills that we use are different in informational text and in literary text. And so we need to teach them in all content areas. When we look at students who struggle, especially in high school classes, we find that the most common problem that students are unsuccessful in content area classes is because of a lack of reading comprehension skills. We assess reading comprehension a lot, but we rarely teach reading comprehension. And so we need to move toward explicitly teaching those comprehension skills that students need to be successful with both literary and informational text. Here's a quick rundown of the best instructional strategies for teaching reading comprehension. And they incorporate many of the things that we're going to look at in our specific strategies here. So as we're looking at our strategies, we have three outlines here in your packet. You have question, answer, relationship, and I'll show you an example of that in just a minute. We have think-alouds, which is our own page 23 in your packet. And think-aloud is used for a multitude of things in reading and math. But it's really having students think-aloud their thought processes. And a teacher think-aloud their thought processes as they are reading through a text or answering or working a problem. It's making working very, very cognitive for students so that they hear those steps to go through. So I gave you an example on that on page 23. And then somebody wanted that. So we're going to look at an example of that as a summary strategy. Here is our question, answer, relationship example. And this is teaching students how to find information in text. And it basically teaches students that even if the words are not in bold print, the answer is still there and that sometimes it is right there and you can find it very quickly in your book. But then sometimes you have to think and search for answers and so you'll have to look through multiple paragraphs and be able to put information together to synthesize. The next one is the author and me. And basically that is saying that the author is giving me some information and then I have to put some information with it to be able to answer this question. And then the last type of question that I may have is an on my own. So this would be making a judgment, making a prediction, something that I just have to pull from my experience and come up with my own answer based on what this information is that the author has given me. Teaching kids that there are multiple ways to answer questions and that it's not always right there. This is very important in all types of literature. But I found that it is again very important in informational text. And then the last one that I gave you is somebody wanted but so. A lot of times we find that students have a very difficult time summarizing information. And this is a quick way to look at a summary. It is more complex than what I have here but you have the full information in your packet there. And this is basically outlining who are we talking about? What was it that they needed or wanted in the story? What happened to help that or to cause that not to happen? And then what was the outcome? So it's just a very quick way of being able to identify a summary. These are all strategies that we've looked at that are appropriate for core instruction as well as Tier 2 instruction. And they can be used in Tier 3 instruction. But as I mentioned in the beginning, many times students who need the level of intensity that needs to happen in Tier 3 need more comprehensive reading instruction. So when we're looking at that, then we need to look at, okay, the student doesn't just need fluency instruction. The student needs instruction in word study and fluency and comprehension all together. So these strategies can be used together. But we oftentimes do need a comprehensive reading program for this level of intensity for students. Now, one thing that I do want to mention, I did not talk today about assessment tools for reading. I did talk about that in the session that we had a couple weeks ago. And that is archived on the ERLC website. And you can find that there. So in looking at the assessment tools, DIBLS, Ames Web, those are highlighted there. And then on the chart that we showed you that the Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium and the other of local resources, there are assessment tools there as well. I'm going to turn it back over to Carla and let her give you some final information there. Thank you so much for that, Kara. That's right. We've just put in a few links into the chat window about different screening tools and also the ERLC chart, the tinyurl.com RTI chart where we're looking for feedback from different schools and school divisions on screening and assessment tools that they're using. So thanks very much, Kara, for sharing your expertise. And we look forward to hearing from you again. Thanks very much. Thank you, Carla.