Hi! As many of you know, I establish a rest time during my school day—which eventually morphs into kids on Chromebooks—so that I have a 30-minute block of time to work with students one-on-one. The administration supports me with this and provides me one intervention teacher during this time. Rather than have the intervention teacher do the interventions, I do them. Why? Because I am an expert on getting students to learn letter names, letter sounds, and how to read and write. The intervention teacher helps get students logged onto their Chromebooks and then supports them as they move through the online programs Lexia (literacy) and Dreambox (math); that frees me up to work with students one-on-one.
You can read all about this intervention time in this post.
Today’s video is about my first day of interventions with students. The focus of my interventions at the beginning of the school year is always naming letters. Naming letters really has nothing to do with the act of reading, but the biggest predictor of reading success is how quickly students can name letters. I take about nine students, the ones who come in knowing fewer than four letter names. I could tell you more about it here, but it’s probably easier to just watch the video. It might not look like much at this point, but keep in mind that it’s the fourth day of school and that I’ve been using this method to get almost all students where they need to be for many years now. Keep an eye on my intervention time—and my intervention students—and see the growth!
As always, AMA (ask me anything)!
Randee
Video: Starting Letter Name Interventions