How LEAD Brick Church is Closing the Gap Through Reading Intervention
After the pandemic, LEAD Public Schools saw the need to implement a reading intervention program to help students recover lost learning and get back on track. Although the program is only in its first year, students at LEAD Brick Church are already seeing significant growth.
When students returned to school after remote learning, it was clear the gap in reading proficiency had widened as a result of the pandemic. Having foundational reading skills and fluency is essential for students to be able to build their knowledge across all school subjects. By the time a student reaches middle school, their grade-level ELA classes are designed to only teach comprehension and analysis, which is why LEAD launched a reading intervention program to improve reading proficiency for students who have fallen behind.
“When students can easily and automatically read, they protect their cognitive processing power to focus on comprehension and analysis of the content of what they’re reading,” said Mary Laurens Minich, chief academic officer at LEAD Public Schools.
The program offers six different levels of reading intervention based on the needs of the student. Improved student reading has a ripple effect: Not only does it raise their overall achievement and grades, it also strengthens their relationships, grows their feelings of success, and improves their desire to come to school, as well as their behavior while at school.
While LEAD has implemented the reading intervention program across all middle schools, LEAD Brick Church is leading the pack by surpassing the network in growth in four of the six levels of reading intervention.
“The reading intervention program is working for our students because our RTI team is dedicated and the program itself works along with the efforts that the children put in,” said Latonral London, a reading interventionist at LEAD Brick Church. “Our RTI team is phenomenal, and we have a great support system amongst our team, including Ms. Haley Giffin and our instructional manager Ms. Janell Gilbert.”
Brick Church students are also outpacing the network in growth of words read correctly in five of the six levels. In particular, students in the B2 level of reading intervention grew an average of 24 more words read correctly per minute from Fall 2022 to Winter 2022.
“I’m an advocate for the transformation at Brick–watching them grow is like seeing them break free,” said Morgan Allen, a reading interventionist at LEAD Brick Church. “When given the space to grow in love, we see each of them are able to achieve higher than expected. Our classrooms are filled with love, respect, and high expectations for our students.”
