Iowa Department of Education : Coming soon: A guide for early literacy intervention

Iowa teachers and schools soon will have a new guide to use in their work to help struggling readers get back on track.

The guide, portions of which were presented to participants attending Tuesday's School Improvement Symposium in Des Moines, focuses on students in kindergarten through sixth grade whose needs go beyond universal instruction, or a general classroom approach, and have specific challenges that could impede their progress toward literacy goals.

The guide is designed to enable building-level teams 'to effectively organize and implement literacy interventions while monitoring their effectiveness,' said symposium presenter Greg Feldmann, who is a consultant at the Iowa Department of Education.

Feldmann said the guide is intended to provide sound and consistent practices. It is being piloted now but will available to schools statewide in the coming months.

'Currently, there is variability in delivery and monitoring of interventions throughout the state,' Feldmann said. 'The guide works to give educators a common language and employs a common-sense approach that is user-friendly and can be used for system improvement.'

Developed by a task team comprised of local schools, Area Education Agencies and the Iowa Department of Education - work done under the umbrella of Collaborating for Iowa's Kids - the guide is designed to be user-friendly and easy to understand.

The guide includes a flow chart, which outlines common-sense steps to help teachers identify appropriate intervention, monitor the intervention and gauge student growth.

'The concept is to try to guide teams to ask the right questions, collect the good implementation information, and appropriately monitor interventions,' Feldmann said.

Feldmann said the guide could be ready for statewide training cadres as early as this spring.