Why We Must Track Data Effectively in Literacy Intervention
Today we’re jumping right into one of our favorite things to talk about!
Literacy Intervention Data
We’re fun at parties (well at least back when there used to be parties), trust us…
We know that diagnostic prescriptive instruction following a systematic and structured approach is the most effective way to get students to grade level and beyond, but how exactly can we provide truly diagnostic and prescriptive instruction?
How do we determine which assessments to provide and which data to track during intervention sessions to get the most valuable information possible?
Collecting data during intervention sessions as well as throughout pre-determined progress monitoring intervals with clearly outlined activities designed to measure phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension is the best way to truly individualize instruction.
However, it can be incredibly difficult to determine which norm-referenced assessments or curriculum-based measures are going to give us the most “bang for our buck” in terms of time with our students. We need to find a balance between assessing students and providing the instruction they need to progress to grade level and beyond in their literacy skills.
Our #1 Tip for Effective Literacy Intervention Data Tracking -
Use a structured process and system to measure progress in order to stay consistent in providing a truly diagnostic prescriptive approach without losing valuable intervention time with students.
It is critical that we know students’ strengths and weaknesses before diving into a structured and systematic lesson plan. It can feel like we are spending a ton of time - I get this, but it’s 100% worth it on the backend because you’re using ALL your future time during your sessions more effectively!
When we put together an effective lesson-based data tracking system along with progress monitoring assessments that measure ALL areas of literacy, we can better support our students, speed up their learning trajectory, and provide valuable information to parents and other educators.
When we have clear data - we provide stronger and more targeted intervention that gives us better results!
So what exactly does this look like?
1. We use progress monitoring or formal standardized assessment to find holes and gaps in students’ abilities. Specifically, we are looking for holes and gaps in phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension ability.
2. We build a lesson plan that will specifically target any identified area of weakness. If you’re using a structured literacy curriculum - AMAZING, make sure that you can identify specifically which tasks are designed to target phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension ability within your program. Sometimes, even the best programs don’t target ALL of these skills in EVERY lesson at the LEVEL your students need, in which case you need to supplement - you SHOULD be supplementing if your program doesn’t specifically address the skills you need!
3. Once our lesson plan is built, we can provide a set number of trials for each targeted skill in order to track growth and continue to dial in on student needs. For example, if you provide ten phonological awareness prompts in your session and the student gets eight correct, they would score 80% for that lesson’s phonological awareness section. Watching this data after each session helps you continue to target your instruction from week to week.
If students are consistently doing well with phonological awareness but are really struggling with sentence syntax, you would spend more time teaching and practicing the development of syntactically correct sentences. You can also use this information in group settings to determine which students you should target specific questions toward because we often have mixed groups of students with differing needs and abilities.
Understanding how to use data and lesson-based data tracking is critical in providing diagnostic-prescriptive instruction.
However, learning how to choose assessments or put together an effective data tracking system isn’t something most of us learn how to do. Without having this knowledge we are failing to fully meet the needs of our individual students which can impact student growth.
In a study conducted by Otaiba and Fuchs (2006), it was found that the majority of students who did not respond to best practices in reading intervention struggled more in areas of language development, specifically syntax and vocabulary, than did their responsive age-matched peers.
WOAH! This means that had we better understood their need for targeted vocabulary and syntactic understanding we could have incorporated more of those skills into their reading instruction and they may have responded more effectively to intervention. This view isn’t new, the idea of using direct assessment of reading skills to inform intervention has been around for many years (Elliott & Piersel, 1982).
By understanding specifically where a student is at, not only can we work to build a diagnostic-prescriptive intervention plan, but we can also be at the forefront of helping support general education classroom teachers in incorporating these skills into their classrooms in order to improve outcomes in the classroom (Vernon-Feagans, et. all, 2012).
So tell us, how are you tracking data in your sessions? Where do you feel stuck!?!
We know that there can be a lot to juggle when it comes to literacy intervention, and we want to help make things easier! Click below to grab our free Data Tracking System. This tool will help make data tracking easy and help you keep your session data organized.
We’re getting scientific for you here, we have sources and everything (you know since we’re talking about data and all)…
Al Otaiba, S., & Fuchs, D. (2006). Who Are the Young Children for Whom Best Practices in Reading Are Ineffective?: An Experimental and Longitudinal Study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(5), 414–431. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194060390050401Stephen N. Elliott & Wayne C. Piersel (1982) Direct Assessment of Reading Skills: An Approach Which Links Assessment to Intervention, School Psychology Review, 11:3, 267-280, DOI: 10.1080/02796015.1982.12084975Vernon-Feagans, L., Kainz, K., Amendum, S., Ginsberg, M., Wood, T., & Bock, A. (2012). Targeted Reading Intervention: A Coaching Model to Help Classroom Teachers With Struggling Readers. Learning Disability Quarterly, 35(2), 102–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731948711434048