3 Strategies for Building a Stress-Free Reading Intervention Schedule
It’s back-to-school season! This time of year means back to early mornings, the hustle and bustle of busy classrooms, and the crinkle of autumn leaves.
This time of year can feel like a whirlwind for educators. But surprisingly, for interventionists, this time of year is our “downtime”. The month of September provides time to prepare for interventions that begin after the beginning-of-the-year assessments. However, I’m sure that you are also being pulled in multiple directions - covering classes, proctoring assessments, and filling in wherever your school needs you. That’s exactly why this is the perfect time to focus on one of the most important (and often most challenging) tasks: creating your reading intervention schedule.
These three strategies will help you build a schedule that feels realistic and sustainable all year long.
How to Plan an Effective Reading Intervention Schedule
1. Understand Your School-Wide Intervention Schedule
Some schools may already have created a school-wide intervention schedule. If that’s the case, then you will have a good roadmap to creating your own schedule for the grade levels you work with. One thing that can be tricky is scheduling your time with multiple classrooms on the same grade level. If you run into this issue, consider taking both grade level groups at the same time, working with them together will make sure you’re not stressing about getting to multiple classrooms at the same time.
If your school doesn’t have a school-wide schedule, perhaps plan to meet with your administration and let them know how important it is to have continuity for interventions in order for them to be successful. Also, plan to meet with grade level teachers to see if they have small group instruction time so that you can push into their classrooms during that time so that you can service your students.
A word of caution: try not to pull students out of specials to complete interventions because they will grow to resent the process and not want to work with you.
Remember, DO NOT pull students out from whole group instruction for interventions. Students must receive Tier 1 whole-group instruction first, before working with a reading interventionist. When you are working with students, you should NOT be introducing new skills; that happens during Tier 1 instruction. Interventions should be a review of skills that were already introduced during whole-group lessons. That's why it is important not to take students out of Tier 1 instruction.
2. Collaborate with Grade-Level Teams
This tip is SO important. I stress this to all of the interventionists whom I coach.
Oftentimes, teachers are not fully aware of the intervention process, especially if there is no school-wide protocol. At times, they may be resistant to you taking students out of class and may suggest you pull students out of specials, but remember, we don’t want to do that. Let the classroom teachers know why reading interventions are important, that you are here to help students succeed, and try to find a happy medium to work with your students. If classroom teachers implement small group instruction in their class already, you could ask if you could work with your students during that time (which makes scheduling way easier for you!)
Always try to remain in constant communication with the classroom teachers. Try to attend grade-level meetings or schedule to meet with the teacher at least once a week.
3. Build in Duties and Breaks Before Scheduling Groups
In today’s educational landscape, schools are understaffed, and in some cases, auxiliary staff are asked to cover other roles and responsibilities.
It’s probable that you will be asked to complete other duties in addition to your role as a reading interventionist. Therefore, when you build your schedule, build in the “other” roles and responsibilities first so that you will not have to go back and forth changing your schedule multiple times as you are asked to do other responsibilities. For example:
Schedule YOUR lunch and prep time first, that’s important.
Add in your building duties such as, lunch monitor, arrival/dismissal hall duty, etc.
Fill your schedule with your intervention groups.
If necessary, share your schedule with your administrator so they know what you are doing. This can also open up conversations to free you up from “other” responsibilities so that you can service more students.
Creating a reading intervention schedule doesn’t have to feel like piecing together a giant puzzle. By understanding your school-wide framework, collaborating with grade-level teams, and building in your other responsibilities first, you can design a plan that works for both you and your students. The more intentional your schedule is now, the smoother your school year will run…
And the more progress your students will make.
If you’d like to save even more time, check out myReading Intervention Schedule Template on Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s editable, easy to use, and designed to help interventionists map out their groups without the stress of starting from scratch.
