8/5/2024

Five Early Reading Intervention Activities for the Classroom

During the past decade, there has been increasing pressure on students and teachers to show early reading progress. With each student having a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, teaching literacy in a way that works for every student can be difficult—especially when educators don’t have enough time or resources readily available. Many students require early intervention as they work toward literacy. This support typically includes lessons about phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. 

For many students, especially those with reading disabilities like dyslexia, explicit instruction in these early intervention activities is crucial. Developing a reading intervention curriculum will increase their chances of success.

What Are Reading Intervention Activities?

While reading intervention typically refers to one-on-one or small-group instruction targeted toward specific students, there are also plenty of activities that can be done within the classroom to help students of all levels strengthen their reading skills. Literacy intervention programs can be for all students.

One of the more popular forms of in-class reading activities is “round robin” or “popcorn” reading, which half of K–8 teachers report using. Despite their popularity, these exercises are ineffective in helping students with word comprehension, increased fluency, or word decoding. 

Instead of “round robin” reading techniques, we’ve compiled a list of various in-class activities that make learning to read fun and community-based. This post from Edutopia, “11 Alternatives to Round Robin (and Popcorn) Reading,” shares a bevy of classroom reading strategies, several of which we’ve highlighted here.

1. Choral Reading

In this activity, the teacher and students read aloud together, minimizing the anxiety that comes with solo reading. Choral reading is a much-loved way to get the whole class reading along while also helping less-confident readers learn to recognize frequently used words in a more relaxed and community-based way.

In another version of this exercise, the teacher reads aloud and pauses on certain words, prompting the students to fill in the blanks together. This classroom reading strategy actively helps students with decoding and fluency.

2. Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS)

Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a peer-tutoring activity in which students are divided into pairs, with each pair alternating between the tutor and the tutee. This exercise allows students to practice reading with their peers and improves their literacy, decoding, and comprehension skills.

For this activity to work best, teachers should pair students based on their individual strengths and weaknesses. Where one student might be great at pronunciation but struggle with comprehension, their partner would fill in the gaps for them—and vice versa.

3. Teacher Read-Aloud

When teachers read aloud with students following along in their own books, they emphasize intentional pauses, expressive reading, and word pronunciation. This activity allows students to develop their fluency and comprehension skills directly. Playing audiobooks in the classroom or at home also achieves similar results.

4. The Crazy Professor Reading Game

This game has four stages: 

• Stage 1: Students individually read aloud from their portion of the text, reading with as much verbal expression as possible.
• Stage 2: Students reread their section with the same amount of verbal expression as Stage 1, adding dramatic hand gestures as they read.
• Stage 3: Teach your neighbor. Students will be partnered with someone who had a different reading than they did, each of them taking turns describing their reading.
• Stage 4: The students pair up to play “crazy professor” and “eager student,” with the “professor” giving a hyped-up overview of the text and asking the “student” questions about it.

This is a high-energy activity for the class that helps facilitate reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. To see an example, you can find videos of this reading comprehension game on YouTube.

5. Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI)

Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) is when students read the same section of text during the course of a week. This process is broken into five steps:

1. The teacher reads aloud in class while students follow along in their books.
2. Students echo read, repeating after the teacher.
3. Students choral read.
4. Students partner read, with each student taking turns reading aloud.
5. Finally, students can take the text home if more practice is needed, and teachers can integrate extension activities throughout the week.

Implementing Evidence-Based Reading Intervention Activities

As mentioned, teaching students how to read can be a complex process, considering each student has their own unique set of needs and preferred learning style. When implementing these classroom reading strategies, make sure to keep this in mind while also considering the science of reading’s five pillars of literacy:

• Phonemic awareness: The ability to identify the sounds that make up speech.
• Phonics: The ability to match sounds to letters.
• Vocabulary: The collection of words and meanings students must know to understand a new text. 
• Fluency: The ability to read accurately and quickly.
• Comprehension: Understanding the concept of what is read. 

Prior to introducing supplemental reading games to the classroom, teachers should also ensure their students are getting clear and cumulative instructions about the concepts being practiced. This can be done through introductory mini-lessons about literacy concepts covered and continued in smaller groups based on individual needs.

Literacy programs can also provide explicit, systematic instruction. Care should be taken to ensure these programs are evidence-based and adaptive and they provide truly differentiated instruction for effective reading intervention.

Alongside instruction, students should also have the opportunity to explore reading independently. This can be done in a multitude of ways, whether it’s allowing students to choose what book they read, placing them in book clubs based on their reading abilities, or assigning creative book reports on a story of their choice.

Resources for Reading Intervention

Beyond classroom reading activities, programs that support each student’s unique instructional needs can further support reading acceleration. Look for resources that include:

• Evidence-based instruction 
• Explicit, systematic, and adaptive learning for effective scaffolding
• Personalized learning pathways 
• Embedded assessment and real-time data for educators 
• Teacher resources for one-on-one instruction
• Engaging, age-appropriate content 
• Alignment with state standards

Lexia® Core5® Reading, a research-proven program for students in grades pre-K–5, ensures each student gets the instruction they need while providing teachers with real-time data and actionable resources for one-on-one instruction. 

Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® is for adolescent students in grades 6-12 who need additional support on reading foundations. Unlike Core5, it’s designed for older students and offers age-appropriate texts that will engage older students. 

Why Early Reading Intervention Programs Matter

There is a great deal of evidence to support the idea that students who cannot read well by the time they are 8 or 9 years old—when the emphasis in school becomes reading to learn rather than learning to read—often struggle to catch up with their peers both academically and socially. 

Fortunately, research and shared best practices available today help teachers develop many different paths to intervention. These range from creating literacy-rich classrooms to utilizing essential whole-group and direct instruction strategies to incorporating Adaptive Blended Learning programs, which can help students become confident, capable, independent readers.

At Lexia®, our goal is to make literacy a reality for every student. See how we can support your school’s RTI or MTSS programs for effective reading intervention at any grade.