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Article Review 1- Matching Interventions to Reading Needs: A Case

for Differentiation

Brooke Spear
Department of Education, Geneva College
EDU 385: Phonics and Spelling
Dr. Michal Wargo, Professor Emily Maddox
February 23, 2024
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Nationwide, 21% of American adults are illiterate. Therefore, the children of that 21% do

not get read to regularly and most likely don’t have books in their living spaces. This leads to

various students coming to school with little to no emergent literary skills. This causes various

difficulties for these students and their teachers. As a college student, who is training to be an

elementary educator, these numbers are important and the difficulties because of low literacy

rates correlate with the number of struggling readers we see every day. This begs the question,

what do we do about it? I appreciated this article because I think it indirectly answers this

question. There are so many different struggles that readers have who come from difficult

backgrounds. In this article they brought to light the fact that every struggling student struggles

with different things. Therefore, we should look to differentiated instruction and intervention

more intensely to make literary instruction more intentional, useful, and effective for student

progress. The closer we match our interventions to the needs of our struggling readers, the closer

we will get to expediting their reading progress.

Differentiation can take place in four areas of a lesson- content, process, product, and

environment. All of these are super important to consider when attempting to meet the needs of

your students, especially those who struggle with literacy. This article targets the three

foundational needs in reading- word recognition, reading rate and comprehension. As I was

reading, I took notice of the section where the article spoke toward how to identify the

fundamental needs of a student who is struggling. This section presented us with a cognitive

model of reading assessment. This involved a series of yes or no questions and a box to follow

with further instruction. It begins with asking if a student’s comprehension is adequate and ends

with asking about the students’ decoding skills. This flowchart looked like a dry, simplified
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version of the five pillars of reading. Although it goes from the goal (comprehension) down, the

five pillars of reading do include comprehension, fluency, and decoding as a part of

distinguishable importance. This made me realize how important the philosophy of a teacher

truly is. If a teacher doesn’t prescribe to a philosophy that recognizes the fundamentals of

reading that need to be targeted, then their intervention is going to be ineffective and their efforts

futile.

Throughout this section they go on to discuss some details on how to help students with

decoding needs, inadequate reading rates and troubles comprehending. As they did so, the four

different spheres of differentiation were going through my head- content, process, product, and

environment. For students with decoding deficits, it seemed that intervention with their word

recognition skills is pertinent to their progress. This makes me reflect on the great environment

my co-op has set up in her classroom. When she teaches, she is always modeling how to decode

words, what they mean and make sense of all the rules in the English language, to the students.

This has helped me think of how to help Kamora in my tutoring sessions. Especially at this stage,

these students are going to be sponges. So, I need to surround them with a well-practiced model

of GRR (Gradual Release of Responsibility). As I segment words, she should practice

segmenting and then she will segment them. The environment is important, but this also can

relate to the process in which your students learn as well. You could have several modes of

learning for student who need intervention with decoding. Have students not only verbally copy

you but combine that with writing or dancing. As for rates, the environment is so important. I

plan to open every single tutoring session with a book of Kamora’s choice. At this point she

needs assistance in decoding so I will spend most of my time intervening with her letter

identification. In light of this, I want to continue building that environment of literacy by having
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her hear me read, seeing me follow the words with my finger, and making reading a happy

experience. This is where predictable books come in, because we can have a variety of books

where we can do some shared reading or repeated reading. These books can look like fiction or

nonfiction. For differentiational benefit, why not have both! Kamora likes princesses. I can build

the students’ interest by bringing books that are fun fairytales and level readers about real

princesses in history. This is the differentiation in content and product. The student gets a scope

of reading experience and a greater knowledge of princesses in history. Lastly, the component of

comprehension. The goal of reading is to be able to understand all the things you read. There are

students that can read whole texts fluently, but cannot comprehend the meaning, or recall details.

Students at the kindergarten level will only be able to answer verbal questions, but this is a great

time to build students metacognition. This article refers to the ways in which readers think about

what they are reading as they read (Jones, J. S., Conradi, K., & Amendum, S. J. (2016).). You can

get creative with how you ask these questions and how students answer them. You also should

have a range of difficulties with the questions you ask. I reflect on some questions that I ask my

students and am surprised at what your students can answer, so don’t always stay basic.

As Christian educators, we are called to glorify and enjoy him forever. I think this calls

for us to meet our student’s needs the best we can. This requires you to be knowledgeable and

execute interventions with love and excellency. We need to keep informing ourselves of the

science of reading and continue researching articles that reveal the complexities of creation. We

need to be able to assess a student and do our best to meaningfully serve the students we teach.

This is achievable as teachers by continuing to think about how we can use differentiation to

make reading achievable and fun for our students. The article gives us detail on how we can

match intervention appropriately to meet our students needs. Doing so creates great students that
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grow up into great community members. We won’t be able to fix the world’s problems and we

cannot force people to love education, but we can equip them with skills they can choose to use.

For Kamora I already see a spark for learning, but I also see hesitation and lack of confidence. I

hope to be able to create a safe place where learning is achievable and fun for her by assessing

her well and giving her appropriate intervention that will equip her to be a successful reader.

Work Cited

Zauderer, S. (2023, June 30). 55 US Literacy Statistics: Literacy rate, average reading level.
Life-Changing ABA Therapy - Cross River Therapy.
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C
%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022.

Jones, J. S., Conradi, K., & Amendum, S. J. (2016). Matching interventions to reading needs: A
case for differentiation. The Reading Teacher, 70(3), 307–316.
https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1513