My Top 3 Go-To Reading Intervention Strategies to Simplify Lesson Planning
Now that the school year is back in full swing and beginning-of-the-year assessments are complete, it’s time to formulate your skills-based groups. Deciding which students should be in each group is the easy part, but planning can be stressful. Whether it be from a lack of time, not enough reading intervention resources, or inadequate training, piecing together lesson plans can feel daunting.
Teacher friend, I want to take away some of the stress by sharing with you my go-to reading intervention strategies that will simplify your lesson planning. I incorporate these strategies into all of my reading intervention lessons! And the best part, incorporating these strategies will not only simplify your planning, but they will also ensure that you are targeting what is most important - student growth!
Strategies to Plan Effective Reading Interventions
Start with Quick Phonemic Awareness Warm-Ups
Phonemic Awareness is one of the early indicators of reading, but often, these skills are skipped, and most teachers go straight to teaching phonics skills.
The good news is that a lot of phonics programs have now included phonemic awareness warm-ups as part of their instructional routine and lesson plan. However, as reading interventionists, we don’t always have access to these intervention materials, and we have to find them on our own, which is why having a solid lesson plan template is key!
I’ve found the most success with incorporating phonemic awareness practice to the beginning the lesson as a warm-up (this practice should take less than 5 minutes!). Phonemic awareness practice isn’t meant to be long and laborious but rather a way for students to apply new skills. This also serves as a great (and quick) formative assessment of previously taught skills.
Here’s an example of a phonemic awareness warm-up lesson:
Can you guess my word? /c/ /a/ /t/ [student says “cat”]
Can you guess my word? /r/ /a/ /g/ [student says “rag”]
Can you guess my word? /p/ /a/ /t/ [student says “pat”]
Can you guess my word? /g/ /l/ /a/ /d/ [student says “glad”]
Use Dictation to Strengthen Phonics and Encoding Skills
Gone are the days of weekly spelling tests. Now we use dictation.
Dictation is a phonics strategy in which students listen to sounds, words, or sentences and write them down (Burkholder, 2025). Incorporating this reading intervention strategy into your lesson planning will help strengthen students’ encoding abilities while also providing teachers with the opportunity to check for understanding and ensure mastery.
When incorporating dictation into your intervention lesson plans, you’ll start with dictating sounds, then words, and eventually sentences based on the phonics skill your students are working on.
Here’s an example:
Say the /c/ sound: students will write the letter c.
Say the word cat: students will write the word cat.
Say the sentence: “The cat sat on the mat.” Students will write the sentence.
Incorporate Fluency Practice to Build Confidence and Comprehension
Oftentimes, fluency practice isn’t included as a literacy station activity, and routine practice is often nonexistent after second grade. But, incorporating daily fluency practice not only helps students improve their accuracy, rate, and prosody; being a fluent reader also increases their comprehension mastery.
When planning my intervention lessons, one of my favorite fluency activities is blending lines. Blending lines activities help students build their reading rate first by reading sounds, then words, phrases, and eventually sentences. Click here to get the ones I use!
High Impact Reading Intervention Strategies
When it comes to planning reading intervention lessons, it’s important to choose activities that not only align with the skills our students are working on but also are known for having a high impact on student growth. (Not to mention, they are also fun!)
Give one of these reading intervention strategies a try when planning your next intervention session. Keep me posted on how it goes and which strategy was your favorite!
