SOME BACKGROUND
This section includes some background on the students, instructors, and intervention models.
Students All students were identified as striving readers according to benchmark assessment data gathered from Next Step Guided Reading Assessment (Richardson & Walther, 2013) or Benchmark Assessment System (Fountas & Pinnell, 2016). The following table shows the distribution of students by grade level. Students received RISE or RISE Up depending on the text level at which they were reading and their processing needs as determined by the abovementioned assessments. The majority of students reading below level N received RISE, and those reading at level N or higher received RISE Up. Some started with RISE because they needed instruction in decoding and word study. Once those students’ decoding and word study skills improved, the instructors shifted them to RISE Up and targeted comprehension. To determine whether students had adequate decoding and fluency skills to make that shift, instructors took running records daily.
Instructors Instructors who carried out the interventions were existing personnel at the schools: reading interventionists, reading teachers, guided reading specialists, special education teachers, English language teachers, retired teachers, teacher interns, and teaching assistants. They received training before the intervention was implemented, and thereafter continued their professional learning through daily collegial conversations (and, in one district, monthly training sessions). Indeed, the RISE framework is, itself, a tool for professional learning. As teachers implement it, they learn about the high-quality support needed to help striving readers overcome their reading challenges. Intervention Models Each school selected either the 45-minute or 60-minute model. Specifically, 18 schools chose the 45-minute, three-instructor RISE model, and two chose the 60-minute, four- instructor model. (See The Next Step Forward in Reading Intervention , pages 20–21 and page 79, for details on those models.) The schools that implemented RISE Up used the 45-minute, three-instructor model. (See pages 82–83 for details on that model.) Due to scheduling challenges and the time and intensity of the interventions, the RISE and RISE Up lessons usually replaced the students’ classroom guided reading instruction.
The Next Step Forward in Reading Intervention by Jan Richardson and Ellen Lewis. Copyright © 2018 by Jan Richardson and Ellen Lewis. Published by Scholastic Inc. 3
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