Comprehension Intervention: Small-Group Lessons for The Primary Comprehension Toolkit

"When it comes to learning reading comprehension strategies children differ. They learn in fits and starts. What works for one may not work for another. For some it's a matter of time, for others a matter of interest. Some kids take these strategies and run with them after one whole-group Toolkit lesson. Others need additional time, guidance, and practice to internalize comprehension strategies and use them to make sense of what they read. The small-group lessons in Comprehension Intervention are specifically designed to support those kids."
-- Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, and Judy Wallis

Enhance your Toolkit Instruction with Targeted, Small-Group Lessons

Created to follow each Toolkit lesson, the Comprehension Intervention small-group sessions narrow the instructional focus, concentrating on critical aspects of the Toolkit's lesson strategy to reinforce kids' understanding, step by step. Using the language of the Toolkits in a small-group setting, Comprehension Intervention approaches each Toolkit strategy lesson in a new way and with new texts, showing kids that they can apply the thinking and strategy language they learned within the whole group to a wide variety of readings.

Framed around the gradual release of responsibility, the four-step session structure provides explicit scaffolded instruction. With an eye towards formative assessment, each session ends with Assess and Plan, a section that supports daily progress monitoring with strategy-specificsuggestions for reviewing student work, assessing students' thinking and accomplishment of session goals, and determining the need for additional practice.

Comprehension Intervention lessons lend themselves to a variety of instructional settings:

Guided reading groups--Sessions are ideal for small, flexible, needs-based guided reading groups to reinforce or extend what has been taught in a Toolkit lesson.

Tier 2 RTI groups--Sessions are designed to take about thirty minutes. They break down the original Toolkit instruction into smaller steps, making learning more accessible for Tier 2 students.

Tier 3 RTI groups--Infinitely flexible and targeted, sessions help teachers increase instructional intensity for individuals or very small groups, allowing additional time for instruction and practice.

Special Education--The Toolkit whole-group lessons are ideal for special ed inclusion because they are based on shared readings, which allow for natural differentiation. All kids can participate in the whole groupToolkit lessons and then have their individual needs met in the small-group intervention lessons.

Stephanie Harvey has spent her career teaching and learning about reading and writing. After fifteen years of public school teaching, both in regular education and special education classrooms, Stephanie worked for twelve years as a staff developer for the Denver based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC), a partnership of leaders from education and business, who support innovation in public schools.

Insatiably curious about student thinking, she is a teacher first and foremost and currently serves as a private literacy consultant to schools and school districts. In that role, she conducts keynote speeches, presentations, workshops, demonstration lessons, coaching sessions and ongoing consultation to teachers, reading specialists, literacy coaches, principals and district administrators. With a focus on K-12 literacy, her specialties include comprehension instruction, inquiry-based learning, content area reading and writing, nonfiction literacy, and the role of passion, wonder and engagement in teaching and learning.

Stephanie has written many articles, books and resources; her Heinemann publications include the title Comprehension and Collaboration which she co-authored with Smokey Daniels, and The Comprehension Toolkit series which is an in-depth Curricular Resource for comprehension instruction co-authored with Anne Goudvis.

Click here to read recent Heinemann Blogs from Steph.

Connect with Steph at @StephHarvey49

» Listen to an interview with Stephanie Harvey on Education Talk Radio--2/29/2012 (30:35)

Judy Wallis has spent the past four decades as a teacher, literacy coach, staff developer, and university instructor. She served two large, diverse, Houston, Texas school districts as language arts director and provided leadership support for literacy coaches for 21 years. Her professional interests and work focus on leadership and whole-school/district change through robust literacy instruction. She currently works with schools and districts across the country as a staff developer and educational consultant. Her work has focused on linking research and practice and bringing out the strengths in others. Judy has authored a number of professional book chapters and articles and written the "Blue Pages" in Conversations with Regie Routman. Recent books, Comprehension Intervention, K-2 and Comprehension Intervention, 3-6, were co-authored with Steph Harvey and Anne Goudvis.

Anne Goudvis has taught students in grades K-6 over the years, beginning her teaching career in urban schools on the south side of Chicago. She spent many years as a staff developer in the Denver area, working in culturally and linguistically diverse schools. Currently, Anne works with schools and districts around the country to implement progressive literacy practices and comprehension across the curriculum.

She is the coauthor with Stephanie Harvey of Strategies That Work and The Comprehension Toolkit series, along with resources including Scaffolding the Comprehension Toolkits for English Language Learners. A history buff, she and Stephanie also coauthored the Short Nonfiction for Teaching American History series, which includes strategies for teaching historical literacy and student articles about often overlooked voices and people in history. With Inquiry Illuminated, Anne, Steph, and Brad Burhow show how curiosity and student agency thrive as kids engage in Researcher's Workshop across the curriculum.