It's difficult to tend to the needs of our classrooms when our focus is on standardized test scores. Additionally, many educators misunderstand intervention and use intervention programs as primary curriculum. The fact is intervention needs to be part of the program along with grade level curriculum. This chase to close the educational gap may keep students gaps from widening but often do not close the gap and result in keeping children from reaching their potential. Plant a seed of belief while you use both intervention programs and grade level curriculum. Tending to a child's self esteem and building confidence is the greatest ingredient into closing the achievement gap which can be seen in the following story:
This was my first year teaching 4th grade and after teaching 1st for the past nine years. I knew many of the students that were in my classroom. They were familiar faces from a prior year's 1st grade class, ELD class, yard duty, or a combination of any of these. Many of the students who were struggling as first graders were still struggling and made very little progress over the prior two years of formal education. Our school spends much of its time and resources training teachers in a variety of intervention programs then uses the programs as primary curriculum which give the students to have very little, if any exposure to grade level curriculum. This was definitely the case with "E".
"E" was far behind in academics, especially reading. He arrived in my classroom reading at a beginning of the year 1st grade level. He was shocked to hear me say that much of his independent reading time would not be spent on centers or teacher directed activities. Instead we were spending it reading with a 40 book challenge including specific genres to be reading. Our first interview, he admitted that he didn't read well and was worried about his ability to read. I assured him that although I spent much time and resources on accumulating a 4th grade classroom library I still had the books from my 1st grade classroom library and I knew he would find something that interested him and he did. Starting first with picture books and easy readers. Then with gentle encouragement he started to read longer books.
He did qualify for intervention and we worked together every day in small group. During our small group time we used an intervention program, Fountas & Pinnell's LLI system. During whole group we started the year with a whole-class book club using "Stone Fox" by John Reynolds. As the months went by he continued to read books of his choice independently, kept up to the best of his abilities with "Stone Fox" and continued meeting with me in small group and individual conferences. He really enjoyed "Stone Fox" because it was about animals so I encouraged him to try more realistic fiction books about animals independently.
The class moved from a whole-class book clubs to independent book clubs using The Boxcar Children series. This series is written at a higher level than "E" was reading but he was so excited to read the books that he kept up. Because The Boxcar Children books are all written about the same level, I offered more varied levels with our science fiction series. Because "E" was part of my LLI intervention group I gave those students absolute free choice on the science fiction books. "E" was so excited he looked at every book jacket of the 5 different title choices and settled upon "Eager" by Helen Fox. Now "Eager" is a book written at 4th grade level and I knew it would be a stretch for him so during our individual conference I asked him to convince me on how it was the right choice. I'll never forget what happened next because he so eloquently stated his three reasons why when he said, "I want to read this book because it's about robots and I like robots, I know the book is a push for me but I'm ready to push myself, and most of all because I want to improve my reading." I was sold! He did a beautiful job keeping up with the reading and being prepared for the club "meetings".
I'd love to say that his standardized testing score brought him to grade level but I'm a realist and I know that statistically that is very difficult. He did grow 1.5 grade levels in his reading ability and was so proud of himself at the end of the year. He began to purchase books from Scholastic book orders and book fairs. During our end of the year conference I showed him his testing scores and told him that the real win was that he found out he LOVED reading and had accumulated many books to read over summer vacation. On the last day of school this boy who entered the classroom feeling insecure and unable to read left confident and was looking forward to seeing me after his first day of 5th grade and that is the harvest that comes from planting a seed of belief.
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