How to Make Time for Teaching Reading Intervention

Teaching reading intervention is one of the many tasks teachers try to juggle into their schedule everyday. It is so hard to find the time you need to help struggling readers, but I have the solution for you!

Find out how to help struggling readers despite your busy schedule.

Most Important Tip for Teaching Reading Intervention

First and foremost, don’t let teaching reading intervention overwhelm and stress you out! It’s easy to think it has to be this perfect, all the way planned out plan. However, sometimes perfectionism can delay action and halt progress.

If you are currently overwhelmed by teaching reading interventions, try changing the way you see them. Instead of thinking of them as an entire hour-long period you have to magically fit into your day that’s already 2 hours too long, try to think of it as a life-style, or teaching-style.

If you have the time to specifically designate to interventions, that is fantastic!! But if you can’t have that built into your schedule, try to always be in the intervention mindset. Give the extra help to students who need it while you are walking around during independent work time. Use those random spare minutes to give your struggling readers some attention. Just always try to have that “teacher radar” on, scanning for opportunities (formal OR informal) to help those students who need it.

Make teaching reading intervention possible with these time-saving tips.

Teaching Reading Intervention in Real Life

Okay, this all sounds well and good, but what does it look like in real life? Here are 7 specific ideas for times you could spend teaching reading intervention that won’t clash with your entire schedule.

Interventions in the classroom can be held during your morning routine.

1. During morning routine

Hopefully you have a solid morning routine set up where students know exactly what to do when they walk in the classroom, and can self-govern themselves for for 10-15 min. This is a great time to work with struggling readers. You’re waiting for everyone to arrive since students are coming in at different times, and you do not have your entire class together. Sometimes this time can just be blank time for the teacher, but you can make the most of it by using it for reading intervention!

This is still a short amount of time, so you will probably only work with 1, maybe 2 students. Even if it’s only a 5 minute session working on ONE skill, that’s still valuable practice that adds up, and they will likely be super focused the whole time since it is so short.

A great teacher tip is to work one-on-one with struggling students during independent work time.

2. During independent work time after a lesson

If you send students back to their desk for independent work at any time throughout the day, you can use that time for teaching reading intervention as well.

Now, if it is after a whole group lesson and they are practicing the skill you just taught them, you will definitely still want to walk around the room and monitor the students to see how they are doing. But if you’re feeling pretty good with how they are doing, go ahead and use the last few minutes to pull back a student to work with.

Again, totally fine if it is just 1 student, and if it is just for a few minutes. Any little exposure to extra practice is so valuable!

Use odd transition times in your classroom teaching strategies to reach your struggling readers.

3. During odd transition times (15 min here and there)

We all have those odd transition times that seem to pop up and we have no idea how to fill them. During those times, try engaging the whole class in a quick activity they can do on their own (hang-man with spelling words, guess my number, silent reading, etc.). Then use that time to work with a couple students!

That time no longer becomes wasted, “kill the time” time, but rather super valuable intervention time!

A teacher organization hack for time management is to work with students during non-essential activities.

4. Nonessential activities (IF it’s short and a quick pull back)

Non-essential activities are theoretically a great time to work with students. No new content is being learned or practiced, and it is typically just “fluff” activities they are missing out on.

NOW, I want you to be very careful with pulling students back during this time. Again, it seems like a great time to work with students because they are not missing out on anything, but that’s not the way they see it. These “fluff”activities are often the “fun” activities (parties, experiments, guests, performances, rehearsals, etc.). If students are always missing the “fun” activities, they might start to feel resentment and frustration, and their engagement will be so much lower. It might also start to affect their self esteem, as they will definitely start to notice they are always missing the fun stuff while their friends get to enjoy it.

SO, just be sure when you do hold interventions during the “fun stuff”, that you make them QUICK, and that the student still gets to enjoy a majority of the activity.

Plus, if they are quick, you can go through a lot more students, which gets more students more help and also helps the students feel less picked on and isolated.

Some intervention tips are to work with students before and after school if possible.

5. Before school or after school

If you have a student that needs a lot of extra help, before and after school might give you the most amount of time to work with them. This would require coordinating with the parent, and for you to sacrifice some of your own time. But this can be very effective because there are no other students around for distractions, and you are much less rushed.

Just be careful of student burn-out if you are doing it after school. After a long day already, students are going to feel tired and be able to focus less. Still be sure they are somewhat quick interventions, and that you give the student a break if needed.

You can use reading intervention strategies during your guided reading time.

6. During Guided Reading (Tier 2)

Guided reading is perfect for teaching reading interventions, because it is likely already built into your day, and the structure of it already has your students grouped by ability. Small groups let you be very efficient with your intervention time in that you can teach multiple students the same skill they all need at the same time, and you also likely have a routine for engaging the rest of the class during this time.

Make sure you are being intentional with this time and keeping in mind what each individual student needs. Try to keep your lower groups smaller, and meet with them every day if you can.

Use volunteers in your strategies for teaching reading.

7. Volunteers

This last tip is great, because it requires no extra time and very little effort on your part. It only requires an extra person (which I know, is often harder to come by!). But if you are lucky enough to have volunteers come into your classroom, try having them read or work with some of your struggling students. You can see tip #3 in this post for ideas on how to implement this.

If you don’t have any volunteers coming in, try sending home a parent sign-up sheet asking for parents to come in if they are able to.They do not need to have any teaching background, just patience and kindness as they support the students. You can have them simply read a book with your low students (which is still super valuable), or you can have intervention activities ready to go for them to use.

Well, there you have it. That’s how you can magically squeeze teaching reading intervention into your already packed day. I hope this gives you some ideas and alleviates some of that stress! (If not, read this blog post for the key to stress-free reading interventions).

Now that you now WHEN to fit in your interventions, you can download this free reading intervention cheat sheet to know WHO to work with and HOW to reach their needs.

These reading intervention strategies and ideas will help your struggling readers!

Happy teaching and reading!