EDTC 615 Mid-Term

1. Instructional Needs. Since having a fundamental understanding of phonics and phonemic awareness is so closely related to spelling patterns, it was decided to use a spelling inventory scores to analyze and to create reading and spelling intervention groups. Explained here are the methods used to determine instructional needs. After examining data in the form of a spreadsheet and as bar graphs, the students having the greatest instructional need were chosen to work in intensive intervention groups. The students were placed in intervention groups based on their earning lower than 80 percent for each objective tested. For instance, for the objective initial consonants and final consonants, students who earned 4 out of a possible 6 points qualified them for the intervention group since 4 out of 6 is 67% and less than the 80% cut off. The students who met this requirement were students 1, 4, 17, 19 and 20. So this intervention group has 5 students in all. The rest of the intervention groups were determined using this same system and are as follows: Blends/Digraphs: Ten student including 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 17, 8, 19 and 22. Short Vowels/Long Vowels: Seventeen students including 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 18, 13, 15, 19, 20, 21 and 22. Dipthong/R-Controlled Vowels: Eighteen students including 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22. Inflections: Twenty students including the entire class except for students 2 and 15. 2. Evidence of Instructional Need. A spreadsheet displaying student the results of a spelling inventory test was created which includes the students names, spelling objectives, points possible for each objective, and points each student earned. This information was used as evidence of instructional need. From this spreadsheet, each objective was paired and bar graphs were created to illustrate and display the data in an easy to read format. These two forms of data were then analyzed and intervention groups were created. Please see attachment titled 615 Midterm Data which contains a spreadsheet of the data followed by bar graph displays.

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3. Names and Descriptions of 2-3 New Instructional Initiatives. Since intervention groups are a school-wide collaboration among faculty members, the new instructional initiatives are meant to be implemented in two ways: 1) as an in-class small group intervention and 2) as pull out interventions. They are as follows: In-class interventions including small group work with teacher interaction and as independent center activities include: A. Find it: An addition to all other lessons (interventions) classroom activities should include a focus on having students pick out vowel teams, dipthongs, inflections, and words with short and long vowels from stories and other readings. B. Star Chart: Students will be given bonuses (star chart) for finding examples of these types of words when doing homework at home or when reading with an adult at their home. C. Peer Tutoring: Students will be placed in peer-tutoring groups so that those with higher scores can help those with lower scores improve. Having lower scoring students buddy with higher students can be helpful. They can correct each others written work and encourage ideas for using specific chosen words in creative writing, social studies and other subjects. D. Daily Journals: Daily journal writing can include assignments with specific goals, for instance including words with inflected endings or particular blends. Students will spend a minimum of ten minutes writing in a journal; either first thing in the morning or first thing after lunch, to allow for practice with these needed reading and spelling skills. Words or a topic can be put on the board to help get them started. E. Games: Computer games such as Seek-a-Word and Hangman will be encouraged, both at school and at home. Both of these games are also readily available in paper format (the teacher can program in the words for Seek-a-Word & the computer can generate; Hangman can be played with an adult at home using a specific word list). Pull-out interventions in small group setting include: A. Six Minute Solutions is a program used as an intensive small group intervention system and involves three students working with one teacher.

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B. Small Group Intervention as pull-out is administered by the two members of the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) as a pull-out program. C. Reading Recovery programs are usually implemented in first and second grade only. However, in this design, the Reading Recovery Specialist will work closely with two Media Specialist teachers to design an intensive program for third graders which emphase digraphs and blends. D. After School Extended program is a voluntary program where teachers are offered a stipend to work with a small group of students for one hour after school, two days per week. E. Classroom Small Group intervention is implemented in the classroom by the regular educator, where small groups of students work and interact with the teacher to promote reading comprehension and word decoding strategies. 4. Committee Members Names. Classroom Teacher: Linda Tavares Media Specialists: Karen Francis and Meg McDonald Specials Teachers: Michelle Lima, Richard Peters, Roger Miller, and Rebecca Andrews Instructional Learning Team Members (ILT): Sharon Jackson and Maryanne White 5. List of Evidence of Implementation. See the chart on the following page. 6. Other Helpful Evidence. Discussions with classroom teacher, Reading Recovery teacher, and Special Needs teacher, Collaboration with adults at the students homes to continue encouraging reading and writing outside school hours, Daily written journals to be graded regularly & returned with positive comments to encourage student participation,

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EDTC 615 Mid-Term

NAME OF INSTRUCTIONAL INITIATIVE

INTENDED TO BE IMPLEMENTED BY

TIME OF DAY FOR IMPLEMENTATION

FOCUS OF INTERVENTION

EVIDENCE OF IMPLEMENTATION

OTHER EVIDENCE THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL TO COLLECT

SIX MINUTE SOLUTION

Two Media Specialists

9:15 9:21 (daily)

Vowel team dipthong and r-controlled vowels Initial and Final Consonants

Improvements on spelling tests: journal writing

SMALL GROUP Members of INTERVENTION ILT (pull out)

15-minute pullout sessions (daily)

READING RECOVERY

Two Media Specialists and Reading Recovery Specialist Teacher volunteers including specials teachers

20-minute pullout (2 sessions per week)

AFTER SCHOOL EXTENDED DAY PROGRAM

Intensive 60minute intervention (2 sessions per week) 10 minutes per day

CLASSROOM In-class SMALL GROUP teachers INTERVENTION

Improved word recognition during small language art group: journal writing Digraphs/Blends Improved word recognition during small language art group: journal writing Short Vowels Running Long Vowels records kept Vce patterns during sessions (including bar graph charting improvement) Inflections Improved word recognition during small language art group

Improvements on Spelling Inventory Assessment end of quarter Improvements on Spelling Inventory Assessment end of quarter Improvements on Spelling Inventory Assessment end of quarter Improvements on Spelling Inventory Assessment end of quarter Improvements on Spelling Inventory Assessment end of quarter

Table modeled from example in Data Wise, page 23, Boudett, City, and Murnane.

Discussions with peer tutoring groups Score-monitoring of pre-approved computer (and paper for backup) games such as seek-aword and hangman Monitoring of spelling in all other subjects How students feel they are improving in spelling Spelling test scores, same words

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7. A narrative describing the school, each initiative and goal with overview of ideas for implementation and acquisition of data. This intervention system will take place in Winnie the Pooh, a K through 5th grade elementary school which has a total of 431 students and containing seventy third-grade students. The school is located in a suburban area outside of a major city having a population less than ten-thousand. The focus of the intervention is twenty-two students from one classroom (specifically the inclusion classroom) who have taken a spelling inventory assessment. The test is routinely administered without students having the benefit of seeing the words before-hand, the initial test being administered during the first week of the school year and then quarterly thereafter to chart improvement through on-going data analysis meetings. Faculty included in these interventions will include the regular educator, two media specialist teachers, two members of the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), a Reading Recovery specialist, two specials teachers pulled from the following departments depending on who is available: Art, Science, P.E. and Computer Lab. As these teachers implement their specific programs, they will keep a record of data in the form of running records, timed test scores, and worksheets. The data collected will be shared during collaborative meetings. Once data collection has taken place, it is important to develop an inventory of instructional initiatives or organize a task list, describe how learning interventions will take place, and which faculty members will be implementing these interventions (Data Wise, Boudett). Instructional colleagues will engage in regular weekly collaborative meetings (data meetings) to discuss student progress and examine on-going data collection and to formulate lesson plans aimed at student improvements in phonemic awareness and phonics improvement. Katherine Boudett (2008) explains in the book Data Wise, great conversations are often the result of careful planning and skillful facilitation (P. 23). Therefore, teams that meet regularly to examine data and open a dialogue concerning best teaching practices is an important component in any intervention system. The instructional initiatives listed on this chart are explained as:

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Six-Minute Solutions: During this six minute long intervention, students practice common phonic elements that are necessary for teaching young students to read. Students who are selected for this program based on the scores on spelling inventories meet with teachers at the beginning of the school day before reporting to the regular educators classroom. Small Group Intervention: A small group of students (numbering 5 or less) are pulled from the classroom to work in the Library, or some other quiet location in the school, where they will work on initial and final consonant sounds. During this time the students will work with make-it break-it word activities focusing on the initial and ending consonants. They will complete worksheets and data will be collecting for analyzing student progress. Reading Recovery: A small group of students will meet with these instructional specialists twice per week as a pull out program where they will spend twenty minutes using programs created specifically for this group using the Smart Board. After School Extended Day Program: During this hour, students receive intensive instruction concerning short and long vowel patterns including Vowel-Consonant-e (Vce), VowelConsonant-Consonant-Vowel (VCCV), and other patterns. Classroom Small Group: Students who are identified as requiring additional interventions with inflections spend ten minutes per day in small group focusing on activities that incorporate inflecting endings and their spellings and recognizing them in text while reading a passage.

Boudett, K.P., City, E.A., & Murname, R.J. (2008). Data wise. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press.

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