Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

A few years ago, my four adult children were home for the holidays.   Every evening after the dinner table was cleared and the dishes were done, we’d get out a board game and play for at least an hour.  This was a great time to be together, to talk, to just have some shared fun.  Once the kids had left and my wife and I were putting the games back into the closet, she remarked, “Tim, do you realize every game we played last week was a word game?!”   We had played Scrabble, Boggle, Balderdash, Wheel of Fortune, and a few others.  

As a person who works on helping children learn words, I was stunned!  We had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as a family as we were examining, manipulating, and talking about words.  If adults enjoy playing games that involve words, why wouldn’t students?   Indeed, children love games and word games may be a wonderful approach for helping children learn words and develop a fascination with words.  Oh, and here’s one more thing about word games — have you ever noticed that if you play a game regularly you tend to get better at it?   We have a special name for it when you become better at something – it’s called learning!  Let’s make at least part of our phonics and vocabulary instruction game-like for students. 

What Games?

            I’d like to share two of my favorite word games with you – Wordo and Word Ladders.   Both are simple and easy to do with students of all ages.  Moreover, students of all ages seem to love playing both of these games.

            Wordo

            Wordo is simply a word study version of Bingo.  It is a great way for students to practice and deepen their understanding of words they may be learning.   In Wordo, every student is given a blank Wordo sheet or grid.   The sheet can consist of 3×3 boxes for younger children, 4×4 or 5×5 for older students, and can easily be made using the “insert table” feature on any word processing program.  See examples below

Of course, each Wordo sheet/grid should cover an entire 8 1/2 x 9 page of paper (Blank Wordo sheets are available at www.timrasinski.com > Resources).  Then, put on display words that you want students to learn or review.    Be sure to put 3-5 more words on display than there are boxes on the Wordo sheet.  Otherwise, multiple students are likely to win at the same time, especially with the 3×3 sheet.  Students choose words from the display to enter onto their Wordo sheet.  

Once all students’ Wordo sheets are filled with words, it’s time to play.   As the teacher you randomly call out words from the display, definitions of the words, or other clues to the words (e.g., “a two-syllable word that begins with a consonant blend”).   If students have the word on their sheet they place a mark or marker on the box containing the word.  Once a student has a row, column, diagonal, or four corners filled with marks they call out “Wordo.”  The student’s sheet is checked for accuracy and the sheets are then cleared for another game. Simple prizes can be awarded to students who win.   

Wordo is a great way to review words from different content areas.   It is also a good way to motivate students to analyze the internal structure of words as well as their meaning.   

            Word Ladders

            Word Ladders are a word-building game in which students are guided to build a series of words where each new word requires some manipulation of the previously made word.  What makes it a game-like activity is that the first word and last word of the ladder are somehow connected.  Here’s an example of a word ladder that starts with the word “Storm” and words down.  Students can either write the words or slide letter tiles around as they move down the ladder.  As the teacher, you guide students in going from one word to the next by providing them with clues for each new word.

1.  Storm          Change 1 letter in “Storm” to make a place to shop.

2.  Store            Change 1 letter in “Store” to make a word that means to look intently at someone or something. 

3.  Stare            Change 1 letter in “Stare” to make a word that means ‘to frighten.”

4.  Scare           Change 1 letter in “Scare” to make a word that is the total number of points in a game. 

5.  Score           Change 1 letter in “Score” to make the land beside an ocean, sea, or lake.

6.  Shore           Take away 1 letter from “Shore” to make something you wear on your foot.

7.  Shoe            Change 1 letter in “Shoe” to make a word that means to display, expose, or uncover.

8.  Show           Change 1 letter in “Show” to make a word that when combined with the first word describes a winter weather event.

9.  Snow

            Students find word ladders fun to engage in as they try to determine what the final word in the ladder will be.   Equally important, as students move down the ladder from one word to the next they must coordinate the structural clues (Change 1 letter) with the meaning clue to write each new word.  In essence, the activity requires students to engage in orthographic analyses or mapping as they make their words.  Yet, because students are only asked to manipulate one or a few letters at a time, the activity is one that allows them to experience success.   Research has demonstrated that this sort of guided word building can lead to significant improvements in students’ phonemic awareness among younger students, word decoding, AND comprehension (McCandliss., Beck, Sandak, & Perfetti, 2003).  If students are able to decode the words they encounter in their reading they are more likely to understand what it is they are reading.  

Word study and wordplay can take a variety of forms.  My hope in this blog is not to suggest to you that any one word study game is the answer to students’ word learning challenges, but to suggest to all of you creative and artful teachers that when we make word study feel like a game we are much more likely to engage students in word learning and analysis and much more likely to develop in students a love for the study of words.  Isn’t that what teaching and learning are all about – not just teaching a set of literacy skills but encouraging students to love our language to be willing and able to engage in the study of our language. 

Sources

Rasinski, T. (2005). Daily Word Ladders-Grades 2-4.  New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2005). Daily Word Ladders- Grades 4-6   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2008). Daily Word Ladders- Grades 1-2.  New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2012). Daily Word Ladders – Phonics- Grades K-1   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2019). Daily Word Ladders- Content Areas, Grades 2-4   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2019). Daily Word Ladders- Content Areas, Grades 4-6.   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2020). Daily Word Ladders- Idioms. Grades 4+.   New York:  Scholastic.

Reference

McCandliss, B., Beck, I., Sandak, R., & Perfetti, C. (2003).  Focusing attention on decoding for children with poor reading skills: Design and preliminary tests of the word building intervention.  Scientific Studies in Reading, 7, 75-104. 

Young Literacy Learners Take Center Stage

By Mary Jo Fresch

            I began my teaching career as a third-grade teacher in 1974. The district reading program was a synthetic phonics series. I regularly had students required to repeat the second-grade reader because they had failed to keep pace with their peers. These students needed constant support to progress and hopefully “graduate” to the third-grade reader. By the end of my first year, I knew the series was not creating successful readers. The focus seemed to be exposure instead of mastery.

I faced an equity issue for my students. I needed to hone my ability to recognize proficiency differences and address individual “bottlenecks” in literacy learning. And I needed to bring the joy of reading to my students.

Unlocking what students can and cannot yet do

My undergraduate program included one course in teaching reading, just enough to skim the surface of what a primary teacher needed to know.  I realized a reading specialist master’s degree would benefit my students and me. That coursework turned the tables…instead of focusing on materials, flashcards, and games, I focused on students. I discovered ways to peek into the head of a learner struggling to read words, read fluently, comprehend, and build vocabulary. Years later, a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture solidified my belief that teachers must focus on what the student can successfully do and plan engaging, joyful activities to nudge new learning along. While teachers need to address the scope and sequence of reading skills, they must “keep an eye on the child” to strike a balance between teaching and assessing. What are students telling us they almost understand but not yet? The answer to that question is the sweet spot for planning lessons that challenge but do not frustrate them.

From: Fresch, M.J. & Wheaton, A. (2002). Teaching and Assessing Spelling: Striking the Balance Between Whole-class and Individualized Spelling.

Language learning for young readers

            Literacy development in reading, writing, and word knowledge occurs in sync – that is, they are parallel processes. Each informs the other and addressing all of them as students learn is critical. When you think about it, writing is easier than reading. Let’s say a student is trying to write elephant. Knowledge of letter/sound relationships will help students predict the spelling. (My personal campaign is for teachers to not refer to students’ unconventional spellings as invented – rather they are predicting the spelling based on their current operating knowledge of the language. These predictions will change as students experience more print.). So, the student may write lefan or elufint – allowing us to observe current understandings and plan instruction. But, if that same student comes across elephant in text, the work is much harder to lift the print from the page. They need to know something about short vowels, the ph sound, the nasal nt, and multi-syllabic words – and which of these might be the stumbling block is up to the teacher to assess.

Giving students strategies to decode is essential to make them independent readers. They need knowledge in letter/sound relationships and how to consider what might make sense both contextually and semantically. Thus, my work over the years has turned to helping students understand how English works. Power over the language provides independence in reading and writing. “Immediate” word identification aids in fluent reading and allows the reader to focus on comprehension. The need to “mediate,” or pause and consider what a word might be, distracts the reader from understanding the text. Accurate and automatic decoding are fundamental to comprehension. When we assess (by the way, the Latin origin of assess means “to sit by” – exactly what we do when we are “keeping an eye on the child”), we can observe the strategies students can rely on and which they need scaffolded.

Recently David L. Harrison, Tim Rasinski, and I partnered (in press) to write a two-book series for Scholastic. By combining Edward Fry’s list of 38 common, high-frequency phonograms with Wylie and Durrell’s list of 37 we created a powerful list of 52 rime families. David wrote poems, Tim created word ladders (one focused on phonics; one on vocabulary), and I wrote a wide range of language arts lessons. Students can learn hundreds of words through examination of word families and have a powerful strategy to decode words. David and I also partnered (2020) to create a book that focused on fun and engaging aspects of the English language (six types of “nyms” such as acronyms, eponyms, synonyms, retronyms; similes; metaphors; idioms; shades of meaning; and word origins). In all of this, the heart of my work is to make language memorable, rather than memorized.

We pique students’ interest in language when we are curious about words. That interest will have them looking at words in new and memorable ways. This also means they will take what they know into writing. When students ask why the “silent/magic e” doesn’t make the vowel long in words such as love, I often hear teachers say, “that’s an exception.” But there really is a rule…English words do not end in “v.” Over time, the “e” was added to those words, but the pronunciation did not change. Once you tell your students that story they will not only remember to add the “e” but will be digging through print to see if they can prove you are wrong. What a fun way to solidify the “rule” and get them engaged in self-selected print to build confidence!

In sum, you can be assured that I say, systematically follow a scope and sequence, but do it in fun and engaging ways that take the individual learner into consideration.  Give students independence in unlocking the language. We can never memorize every word, so let’s find ways to make language memorable. Texts that play with words and make students want to read and reread builds skills and confidence. Writing self-initiated texts puts their operating knowledge to work (and on display for your formative assessment). Discussing about what we read makes students understand we are about “word recalling” and not “word calling.” And all of these put our young learners at center stage…exactly where they should be in our classrooms.

https://maryjofresch.com

fresch.1@osu.edu

References

Fresch, M.J. & Harrison, D.L. (2020). Empowering Students’ Knowledge of Vocabulary: Learning How Language Works (Grades 3-5). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Fresch, M.J. & Wheaton, A. (2002). Teaching and Assessing Spelling: Striking the Balance Between Whole-class and Individualized Spelling. New York: Scholastic.

Harrison, D.L., Rasinski, T. & Fresch, M.J. (in press) Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Fluency, Phonics, Phonograms, Spelling, Vocabulary, Writing, and More (Book 1 – Grades K-2). New York: Scholastic.

Harrison, D.L., Rasinski, T. & Fresch, M.J. (in press) Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Fluency, Phonics, Phonograms, Spelling, Vocabulary, Writing, and More (Book 2 – Grades1-32). New York: Scholastic.

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D. Kent State University

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

Albert Einstein

“I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.”

Plato

“Art has the means of keeping alive the sense of purposes that outrun evidence and of meanings that transcend habit.”

John Dewey

            The impetus for this blog comes from something I have been thinking about for a number of years. I hope that this may be the impetus for more of us sharing our thoughts about the importance of the art as well as the science of teaching reading.

I have a confession to make.  My undergraduate degree is in economics. In my mid-twenties, after encouragement from many of my friends, I decided to become a teacher. To be honest, I thought becoming a teacher would be rather easy.  After all, I went through school and was reasonably successful.  I should know how it’s done.

            Well, I was in for a bit of a shock. Teaching is not easy at all. It is essential for a democratic and productive society, it is enormously satisfying and joyful, but it is definitely not easy.   My respect for teaching and teachers grew exponentially during my first few years of teaching (and it continues to grow). Teaching is one of the most challenging professions into which a person can enter. And, I think a major reason for the challenge of teaching in general, and the teaching of reading in particular, is that effective reading instruction requires teachers to apply what has been learned through scientific study of reading and reading instruction.    However, effective instruction in reading also requires teachers to be artists. Teachers have to be both – artists and scientists.

            Currently, there is a growing recognition of the importance of the science of reading (SOR) for reading instruction. The science of reading directs that successful instruction in reading includes systematic and explicit instruction in the key scientifically determined reading competencies – phonics and phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading fluency, and comprehension.  

            Publishers and curricula developers have used these scientific competencies to develop reading curricula and materials that are, in many cases, largely scripted.  That is, teachers are directed to implement the program nearly word for word as is stated in the teacher’s guide.   It’s called fidelity. Among the problems that come with such programs are that they do not necessarily meet the individual needs of many students, and teachers can become alienated from their reading instruction and removed from important instructional decision-making in their classrooms.  Moreover, there is a lack of compelling scientific evidence that such scripted and scientific program lead to generalized improvements in reading for students. Note that reading achievement in the United States has barely budged since the report of the National Reading Panel, nearly 20 years ago,  that gave credence to the science of reading. Reading First, a national program for bringing scientific approaches into primary grade reading instruction, had little impact on student reading achievement.  

            Why have we not seen the progress that was anticipated by the science of reading?   I think that a significant concern is that we have not embraced the idea that effective teaching reading is an art as well as a science, and that teachers need to be artists as well as scientists. We need to allow teachers the creative freedom to develop and implement scientifically based reading curriculum that is engaging, playful, authentic, esthetic, and effective. In effect, I propose that we provide teachers with scientifically validated end-of-year benchmarks in phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension and then give teachers the creative license and professional support to achieve those benchmarks.   

Teachers will still teach phonics, but instead of exclusive use of highly scripted and monotonous tasks, drills, and worksheets that often accompany such instruction, students might be regularly engaged in guided word play and not realize that although they are having fun with words, they are also developing mastery over words. For example, have you noticed all the games we play for fun as adults that are, in essence, word games?  And have you noticed that if you are a regular player of Scrabble or Words with Friends or Boggle you generally improve in your playing over time? Improving your game is evidence of learning.   If adults love word games wouldn’t children?   And yet, in many classrooms, games and play are often locked away or reserved only for when the “work” is done.   

Several years ago, I developed a game-like word activity (based on the work of Pat Cunningham and Isabel Beck) called word ladders. In a word ladder students make a series of words by manipulating each previous word (e.g. start with “cat” and change one letter to make a large mouse or rodent – “rat”;  change one letter in ‘rat” to make something a baseball player uses when at the plate – “bat,” and so on). To make it into a game the first and last words in each word ladder are related in some way – base to ball, dog to cat. Although children are playing a game in which they try to determine each new word on the ladder from the clues given, the activity itself requires students to consider deeply how words are encoded, decoded, and have meaning.

For another example, consider reading fluency, also a scientifically validated reading competency. Scientific research tells us that through rereadings (repeated readings) of texts students develop fluency over the passage practiced but also greater fluency (and comprehension) over new passages they have never before seen. That’s the science of fluency.  The art of fluency take this scientific notion and asks, “how do we get students to read a text repeatedly in authentic and meaningful ways?”   One artful answer to that question is found in the notion of theater and performance.   If students know that they will be asked to perform a poem, or a song, or a script for an audience they have an authentic and motivating reason for rereadings, or as they say in the theater – rehearsal. Moreover, not only does rehearsal of this sort lead to automatic recognition of the words in the passage, it also encourages students to read with an expression that reflects the meaning of the text – both are part of the science of reading fluency.

Art and science are not mutually exclusive endeavors.   Indeed, scientists generally have a great appreciation for art; and artists often take inspiration from concepts of science.  The great challenge is for teachers of reading, much like practitioners of medicine, to find ways to make the science of reading come to life in artful and authentic ways in their classrooms.   And the challenge for us who support teachers is to grant permission and provide professional support and encouragement that allows teachers to become the instructional scientists and artists that will create a revolution in literacy achievement.

You can find resources for teaching accurate and automatic word recognition (i.e. fluency) at Tim’s own website – www.timrasinski.com

Daily Word Ladders by Timothy Rasinski

Create positive change with TeamMakers by Laura Robb and Evan Robb

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimRasinski1

Written by Mary Howard

     In 1972, I began a passionate professional journey in small town Missouri as a special education teacher. That year, and each year that followed, children became my teachers. Since my entry into education, understanding student-centered intervention approaches has continued to inspire my professional curiosity. When a global pandemic isolated us at home over the past year, I enthusiastically launched a deep dive into my own learning to reinforce and extend my current understandings while also supporting teachers behind the scenes. I have never been prouder of the courageous educators who remained selflessly dedicated to the emotional and learning needs of their students in the middle of the most challenging time any of us have ever experienced.  

Yet, as I perch my fingers on the keyboard imagining post-pandemic interventions, I am filled with a sense of dread. I ponder educational pitfalls that have existed for far too many years; exacerbated by but not caused by this pandemic. I reflect on the shoulders of giants in the field I have stood upon for five decades as Richard Allington, Marie Clay and others continue to fill my head and heart with intervention hope. I worry about the educational ignorance and political pulls of those who have turned a blind eye to this gift of knowledge and equity-minded possibility, as quick fix mandates dishonor teachers who desperately want to use that gift with children who need them to have the freedom to do so.

      I wrote about this concern in 2009 in RTI from All Sides: What Every Teacher Needs to Know (Heinemann). The term “intervention” was popularized by IDEA 2004 which gave rise to Response to Intervention (RTI). But popularity without understanding has moved us further from a responsive student-centered perspective that could elevate the intervention process. What should have motivated an intervention design worthy of our children has been guided by knee-jerk homage to a three-letter acronym, resulting in a warped view of intervention opportunities our children need and deserve.

     In this post, I’ll share shifts that can awaken a research-based intervention spirit and address misconceptions that deter our efforts. As we find ourselves standing at an intervention crossroads, we can choose the meandering path that brought us here or move in an alternative direction toward an intervention design guided by thoughtful intent. The loss of financial, time and energy resources has been catastrophic; wasted on mindless experimentation at the expense of children. As we look ahead to a post-pandemic world, we are afforded an opportunity to envision a renewed intervention perspective within a sense of professional urgency. This will require us to refute the ‘learning loss’ narrative perpetuating a myth driven by standardized tests and out-of-the-box programs that demean the impact of professional agency when our knowledgeable teachers are at the decision-making helm.

I want to emphasize that there are many teachers, schools, and even districts who are doing remarkable things in the name of interventions. They choose to break down the barriers that thwart the way forward so that they may craft a renewed intervention journey. Both children and their teachers are fortunate to be a part of these admirable efforts. But until every district, every school, and every classroom makes these things a priority, our children will be subjected to the luck of the proverbial intervention draw. What if instead, every school launched this renewed vision using Six Essential Shifts?

SHIFT #1: Maintain a Schoolwide Spirit Grounded in Collective Ownership

I begin with this shift since it reflects one of the ultimate failures of our intervention efforts. RTI, wrongly seen as an identification process, led to a referral frenzy with an open-door invitation to shuffle children off to the ‘fix it room’ without even considering options. This has given rise to flawed models like “Walk to Intervention” where teachers within a grade level label and exchange students they don’t really know as learners. Any system that uses students as bargaining chips or limits interventions to what happens in thirty-minute sessions is doomed to fail since the other six hours matters deeply. We have an obligation to view interventions as supplementary in addition to support rather than the instead of mentality that merely supplants the first line of defense – classroom instruction. Our first instinct should not be to initiate the referral process but to consider how to build a collective intervention bridge across the learning day. Some teachers may not have the knowledge base to support an intervention all-day perspective, but we could address this by offering ongoing professional learning with expert coaching. Yes, some children may need support beyond the classroom setting, but relegating support rather than embracing both our individual and collective responsibility is ill-conceived.

SHIFT #2: Embrace Increasing Volume as the Intervention Heart and Soul

Education is slow to learn from the lessons of the past and even slower to apply those lessons in practice, particularly in the case of interventions. In spite of decades of research to support the critical role volume plays in the success of striving learners, we continue to minimize the potential impact of extensive authentic opportunities for children to engage with texts in teacher-supported, peer-supported and independent experiences both in and beyond the intervention process. Oddly, the very children who would benefit most by substantially increasing daily reading minutes often get more isolated skill and drill as we further widen the volume divide that already exists. In fact, many children leave their classroom during joyful volume-enhancing experiences like read-aloud, independent reading and book-centered peer collaborations only to be subjected to computerized or boxed interventions with isolated activities devoid of authentic text experiences. I wrote about the intervention impact of volume here while Stephanie Harvey and co-authors highlight volume in Intervention Reinvention cited below. After forty-plus years, we have yet to answer the wise question Dr. Richard Allington posed: “If they Don’t Read Much, How they Ever Gonna Get Good?”

SHIFT #3: Design a Flexible Comprehensive Framework of Balanced Support

While schools continue to pull from an intervention pool of suspect practices largely limited to pullout settings, we ignore the vast intervention possibilities that exist within a balanced literacy comprehensive framework of options. We have narrowed our view to a We Do model where guided reading has become the star of the intervention show. If we could broaden our intervention view, we would acknowledge I Do and You Do as equally influential intervention opportunities. When this broader thinking guides our efforts, the range of what counts as interventions would also be substantially broader. The bottom line? Read-aloud is an intervention. Independent reading is an intervention. Conferring is an intervention. If we viewed the daily schedule from a framework lens where interventions can coexist, the intervention possibilities would be limitless. As long as we narrowly define what constitutes an intervention, we ignore rich support options at our fingertips that offer in-the-moment opportunities that do not require children to leave their own classroom where they could thrive within a community of learners.

SHIFT #4: Marry Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum

We have long-time research support for the intervention impact of celebrating the reciprocal nature of reading and writing. Too often, reading interventions are viewed solely from a reading perspective without acknowledging that we could dramatically elevate the reading process if writing was considered integral to the intervention mix. When our interventions merge reading and writing, we could use one to support and enhance the other. In doing so, a by-product would be to increase the volume of reading and writing through reading inspired writing and writing that inspires reading within a circular reading/writing intervention design. Through this focus on reciprocity, we can multiply our intervention efforts as reading and writing work in a two-way proposition that moves in both directions and apply this in any instructional setting across all grades and content areas. We would heed Peter Elbow’s caution that some children struggle with reading because writing has been neglected and thus use writing as a pathway to reading. And we would have the flexibility to consider this reciprocal benefit of writing Peter Elbow describes: “Students invariably read better if they write first–if they start by writing their own thoughts about a topic that the class will tackle in a text” (2004).

SHIFT #5: Make the Invisible Visible by Amplifying Student-Centered Talk

When misguided schools use computerized programs and scripts in a box as the intervention focus, we ignore the influential success contributor of talk that places students squarely at the center of the teaching/learning process. Talk has become the sacrificial lamb of rigid programs by default due to the sheer number of instructional minutes devoted to controlled approaches under the guise of a fidelity battle cry. Talk is the instructional glue when dialogue-centered collaborations allow students to make sense of their own thinking publicly in ways that reinforce, extend, and enrich their thinking in the company of others. If we were to emphasize child-centered invitational collaborations over basal-driven question interrogation, we could dramatically enhance learning. And in the process, by making invisible in-the-head student thinking public, we are afforded on-the-spot assessment that can inform our instructional decision-making. Interventions devoid of talk are an act of doing while talk-fueled shared experiences can offer a stepping-stone that breathes new life into thinking as learners grow together.

SHIFT #6: Step Back to Engage in Wide-Eyed Professional Wonder Often

One of the most important aspects of any intervention design is often the missing ingredient. Interventions offer teachers an invitation to transform into curiosity-inspired kid watchers willing to become dedicated observers of learning in action across the day. Intentional observation of students engaged as active participants in their own learning allows our children to take the lead as we assume our role as enthusiastic professional wonderers. These precious opportunities to zoom in to learning in action supports new understandings about children in the heat of learning moments. In an era of hyper-fixation on data collection and color-coded numerical spreadsheets often riddled with suspect assessment, we could take back the assessment reins. These learner-focused noticings can counteract the potential flaw of relying on numbers that dictate rather than inform next step actions. When assessment is embedded within the learning process, the instructional decisions we make using varied sources of information acknowledges that assessment and instruction are inseparably intertwined.

As I pause to ponder these six intervention shifts, I am reminded how far we have yet to go to create an intervention approach that would be a force of good for children and celebrate teachers as knowledgeable decision-makers. This pandemic should inspire us all to embrace the opportunity we have been given to refute past missteps and re-envision the intervention process through new and wiser eyes. The source of our ills is not an intervention issue but one of common sense that has pushed us deeper into the intervention black hole. If we stop the forward march of interventions driven by misconceptions and flawed premises, we would be motivated to meet our responsibility to teachers by offering professional learning with support over time. This ongoing time for teaching embedded professional support demonstrates our belief in our teachers as professionals who are deserving of trust. If we kept these six shifts in view, we could alter the trajectory of our efforts with a responsive intervention design guided by our unwavering commitment to children who would reap the benefits of that commitment. Because in the end, our success will forever be measured by theirs…

And that would be a giant step forward worth taking!

Tackling a Serious Equity Issue: Voluminous Joyful Literacy Opportunities by Mary Howard

Tackling a Serious Equity Issue: Voluminous Joyful Literacy Opportunities

Intervention Reinvention: A Volume-Based Approach to Reading Success by Stephanie Harvey, Annie Ward, Maggie Hoddinott and Suzanne Carroll (Scholastic 2021)

Richard Alllington (1977) If They Don’t Read Much, How They Ever Gonna Get Good? https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a5e0/7e60068f63d5c391b7541bc46faf153b1ba5.pdf

Peter Elbow: Writing First! Educational Leadership Oct 2004. Vol 62 No. 2, page 9-13

http://www.educationalleader.com/subtopicintro/read/ASCD/ASCD_382_1.pdf