Interventions – Grade Bands 2-5

Interventions for Foundational Reading and Spelling

The Wilson Reading System® (WRS) is a structured literacy program based on phonological coding research and Orton-Gillingham principles. The WRS directly and systematically teaches the structure of the English language. Through the program, students learn fluent reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding) skills to the level of mastery. Students in second and third grades receive 57 minutes of WRS instruction daily and students in grades four and five receive 41-45 minutes of WRS instruction.

The Sonday Reading System® is an explicit, systematic, and multimodal intervention that is designed to remediate students who are beginning stages of decoding and encoding. The intentional combination of multiple modes of instruction allows students to become more proficient at decoding and encoding. Sonday System Level I® provides a review of pre-reading skills while focusing on the rules of language structure. Explicit instruction in vowels, vowel pairs, blends, and digraphs builds student’s decoding ability of single-syllable and compound words.

The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum is an explicit, systematic, multisensory approach to building phonemic awareness skills in students struggling to decode. The different programs focus on eight phonemic awareness skills ranging from the early skills of rhyming and onset fluency to the advanced skills of phoneme manipulation. Students in grades 2-3 receive advanced phonemic awareness training using the Primary Heggerty PA curriculum. Students in grades 4-5 demonstrating deficits in phonemic awareness receive the Heggerty Bridge the Gap Phonemic Awareness Intervention program.

Repeated Oral Reading is an instructional routine designed to remediate students who demonstrate deficits in oral reading fluency. Students are provided passages at their independent reading level (90-95% accuracy) and guided through a structured routine of guided repeated oral reading. The structured routine consists of a combination of teacher-modeled fluent reading, explicit feedback on elements of fluency such as prosody and expression, as well as goal-setting and progress monitoring by the student.

Six Minute Solutions is an instructional routine designed to remediate students who demonstrate deficits in oral reading fluency. Students are paired with peers at similar skill levels to read nonfiction passages at their independent reading level (90-95% accuracy) and record each other’s progress with fluency and accuracy.

Interventions for Foundational Math Concepts and Number Sense

The goal of using Concrete-Representational-Abstract in math intervention is to ensure students have a deep understanding of mathematical concepts, increasing proficiency and overall math skills. CRA is a three-stage learning process where students progress from physical manipulation of objects to pictorial representations, and finally to abstract notation. Students in the concrete phase work with manipulatives to explore and understand new mathematical concepts and develop a sense of numbers and operations before moving on to more abstract representations. By the abstract stage, students apply their strong conceptual understanding to solve mathematical problems. The needs of individual students are assessed during WIN and are provided support at the stage where they are struggling the most. Some students may require more time in the concrete or representational stages before they can successfully work in the abstract stage. This method provides a structured and gradual way to build a deeper understanding of math concepts.

Number sense refers to a person’s understanding and familiarity with numbers, their magnitude, relationships, and the ability to use them flexibly and effectively. It involves an intuitive grasp of numbers, estimation skills, an understanding of place value, the ability to decompose and compose numbers, and a general sense of mathematical reasoning.

Math fluency is the ability to perform mathematical operations quickly and accurately and involves a combination of speed, accuracy, and flexibility in using mathematical procedures. It encompasses basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and extends to more complex mathematical concepts as students progress in their education.

Number sense provides the foundation for developing fluency in math. A strong number sense allows individuals to understand the relationships between numbers, which is essential for efficiently performing mathematical operations. Number sense enables individuals to use mental math strategies effectively. A person with a well-developed number sense is more likely to choose efficient strategies when faced with mathematical problems, leading to quicker and more accurate solutions.