Colleen Mulcahy

Intervention Plan
For the past four weeks, I have been implementing a reading intervention with a third
grade student. As there is only one special education teacher for grades 2-4, Ava typically
receives reading support for 30 minutes, five days a week, with one other third grade student. My
being in special education for my practicum has been a great opportunity to provide Ava with 1:1
support and to implement this reading intervention.
In this intervention I used a program called Read Naturally. Read Naturally is a program
that combines three, research-proven strategies: teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress
monitoring. This read naturally strategy is used to build fluency, increase accuracy, promote
comprehension, reinforce sight words, and much more. For this specific student, the purpose of
this intervention was to assess her reading fluency and accuracy, and then by exposing Ava to
this program for 30 minutes, five days a week, increase her reading fluency and accuracy.
As I started my special education practicum seven weeks ago, Avas IEP reading goal
was: to read grade level with a fluency of 80 words per minute, and with 95% accuracy. This
students annual review IEP meeting was held two weeks ago, therefore her reading goal has
changed a bit; for the purpose of this intervention we felt it appropriate to focus on the goal of 80
WPM with 95% accuracy. Throughout the intervention, the student read stories specifically from
the Read Naturally Program; all of the stories were a level 2.7 (which is still below grade level
for this student).

Below is an example of a standard lesson plan used during the intervention:

Springfield College
Lesson Plan
Teacher: Colleen Mulcahy

Date: November 12, 2014

Subject: ELA

Grade Level: 3

Title of Lesson: (Reading Intervention)

Lesson Length: 30-minute periods

Reading Naturally Solar: An Important Energy Source

Overview of the Lesson

Lesson Summary: During this lesson, the student will focus on a short story (from Read Naturally
program); Solar An Important Energy Source. She will practice identifying long vowel patterns. The
student will work on her fluency by practicing reading the text multiple times. After reading the
passage, this student will use evidence in the text to answer questions.
Lesson Objectives: The student will identify long O vowel patterns in a list of practice words. She
will read 80 WPM with 95% accuracy. This student will use evidence in the text to correctly answer
comprehension questions.
Materials/Equipment to be Used in Teaching the Lesson:

Solar An Important Energy Source sheet (Reading Naturally)

timer
red and blue colored pencils
highlighters (4-5 colors)
laptop/iPad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUs4oA1RIMQ)
Massachusetts Framework Standards:

Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as
the basis for the answers.
Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Enduring Understandings:

Big Ideas: The student will use the title and key words to make a prediction about the
passage. After reading the passage 2-3 times, the student will use
Concepts: Students will become familiar with the characteristics of folktales.

Essential Questions:
Highlight long O vowel patterns in the practice word list.
What is solar energy?
What are other sources of energy?
Content

Vocabulary:
Tier 1:
sun, wood, gas, oil, stone, store, suns rays
Tier 2:
sole, solar energy, soak, coal, sources
Tier 3:
Critical Thinking Skills (Reading, Writing, Speech, Listening)
Reading Identify long O vowel patterns in practice words; read the passage with 95% accuracy (80
WPM)
Writing Make a prediction about the passage; use evidence from the text to answer questions
Assessments (Performance Tasks/Tests/Quizzes Formative/Summative, Informal/Formal)

Graph WPM as student practices reading the passage (students first time ever
reading the passage is graphed in blue, every time after that is graphed in red)
Five comprehension questions
Action/Instructional Procedures

Procedures: For each procedure, list the teacher or student actions (with accommodations and
modifications) as well as the anticipated amount of time it will take to accomplish each task.

Anticipatory Set (hook):Watch short video on renewable energy

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUs4oA1RIMQ). Discuss ways we can
save/conserve energy.

Step One: Have the student read the title and the provided key words: solar energy, sole,
sources, coal. Teacher should correct students pronunciation of these key words at this
time, if needed.

Step Two: Student will be timed for one minute as she reads the story; this is considered
her cold read for this story (graphed in blue on data sheets).

Step Three: After completion of her cold read, the student will then refer to the practice
word list for the story. The student will practice reading the word list which has 10-20
different words (in this case, all words have a long O vowel), which are repeated multiple
times throughout the practice list to provide the student with repetition.

Step Five: Discussion of long O vowel patterns: o, o-e, oa, ow; student will use
highlighters to highlight the vowel pattern in each word on the practice list. The student
should then use her knowledge of the vowel patterns to practice rereading the words.

Step Six: Read the passage three times: teacher reads aloud to student, teacher reads one
sentence and student reads same sentence, student reads to herself

Step Seven: Hot Read While being timed for one minute, student will read the
passage out loud. Teacher keeps track of errors. After one minute, the student will stop
reading and she will graph how many words per minute she read accurately (on her Read
Naturally graph).

Step Eight: Student will then read the comprehension questions to herself. She will be
given time to highlight evidence from the text to answer each question.
**Use this as an opportunity to remind student to use: complete sentences, capitals,
punctuation, and refer to the text for spelling when possible

Step Nine: Teacher will read the passage again to the student.

Step Ten: Hot Read Student will read the passage aloud again and graph WPM.
** This should continue until the student has read the entire passage within one minute.

Data Sheet 1: This data sheet was used to keep track of the students words per minute (WPM).

Data Sheet 2:
Graph 1 was used to keep track of errors as the student read each story. For the purpose of this
intervention, errors are: substitutions, eliminations, addition of incorrect word endings, and
words read incorrectly. Self-corrections do not count as an error.
Graph 2 was used to graph the students accuracy. To calculate accuracy: the amount of errors
was subtracted from the total amount of WPM the student read this gives you the amount of
correct words per minute (CWPM) the student read; you then divide the total WPM by CWPM
to calculate the students accuracy (%).

Data Analysis:
Referring to data sheet 1, you can see that the student did make a slight increase in WPM
during cold reads (graphed in blue). The student jumped from 57 WPM to 72-74 WPM during
cold read, but because we only had then chance to complete a total of three stories over the
course of the intervention, it is difficult to say whether the students fluency has increased due to
the intervention, or if the increase in WPM is due to the difficulty of the stories. All of the stories
used in the intervention were a 2.7 level, but it was evident that some stories were easier than
others for the student.
Despite the students satisfactory accuracy during hot reads (refer to data sheet 2, graph
2; graphed in red) the purpose of the intervention was to increase accuracy on cold reads which
you can see did not increase any significant amount, and still does not meet the students IEP
goal of 95% accuracy. The purpose of the Read Naturally Program is to increase fluency and
accuracy, and this has not necessarily been the case for this student.

Next Steps:
As this student read the practice words on the word lists of each story, I noticed she often
had difficulty. However when she reads the stories, Ava is almost always able to correctly read
these words within the text; therefore I began thinking that she has strong context skills but lacks
decoding skills when it comes to words in isolation. I discussed this concern with my supervising
practitioner, and we decided to take a step back from the Read Naturally Program. It became
clear that this student has not grasped vowel patterns, therefore is having continued difficulty
decoding words, and is unable to read grade level text with acceptable accuracy and fluency.

It is not possible to increase a students fluency and accuracy if she or he is unable to

efficiently recognize sight words and decode unfamiliar words. Therefore, after discussion with
my supervising practitioner, we have decided it would be valuable for this student to review
vowel patterns (both long and short). To do so, I have started to have the student complete word
sorts, each with a specific vowel pattern, from Words Their Way. These word sorts provide the
student the opportunity to focus on one vowel (long, short, and/or both) or multiple vowels. The
student first reads the words, they are then encouraged to highlight the long vowel patterns (ex: ie, igh, y) she/he then cuts the words out, sorts them and glues them in the correct column.

Below are two examples of Words Their Way word sorts:

To gather more information on Avas phonological awareness, I will be having her

complete a Phonological Awareness Profile. This assessment provides information on an
individuals knowledge of: rhyming (discrimination, production), segmentation (sentences,
compound words, syllables, phonemes), isolation (initial, final, medial sounds), deletion
(compounds/syllables, phonemes), substitution (with and without manipulatives), and blending
(compounds/syllables, phonemes).

As was suspected, results from the Phonological Assessment show that this student has
significant limitations in the following: segmentation (specifically with syllables and individual
sounds), isolation of middle sounds, ability to delete medial phonemes, and substitution of
individual sounds. All of these limitations are evident in the students spelling and reading
isolated words. Although this student as mentioned, is able to read grade-level text with
accuracy, her difficulty with these skills can interfere with her reading fluency and
comprehension. These weaknesses as expected, also drastically inhibit Avas writing.
For the last few days of my practicum, I plan to use resources from the Florida Center for
Reading Research. I will begin this process by using activities from FCRR related to phoneme
isolating and phoneme segmenting, which my supervising practitioner plans to continue using, to
provide the student with the phonemic support that is needed.