Intervention (2025)

      During my 12-week student teaching placement in a 5th-grade classroom, I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with a student and develop my own intervention curriculum. 

       While unconventional for the typical general education teacher, my experiences through the Saginaw Valley State University Teacher Preparation Program, combined with my Undergraduate Research experiences, have provided me with extensive knowledge on reading and writing intervention practices. 

       After analyzing beginning-of-year data with my host teacher to determine intervention placements, one student stood out as a data anomaly. *

       With permission from my host teacher, the intervention team, and building admin, I worked one-on-one with this student Monday-Thursday for 15-20-minute intervals and saw such exponential growth that the student was able to be placed in the general education intervention groups after my placement concluded.
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*My host school evaluates data from iReady (beginning of year and historical) and MAZE testing to determine placements for students in Intervention groups.

     This school implements a "W.I.N." (What I Need) time for both Math and Reading, where all general education students receive Intervention or extension opportunities.

     For this student in particular, their beginning-of-year data placed them in late Kindergarten to Early First Grade with needs stemming as early in the reading process as letter identification and formation. Simultaneously, this student's historical data would disqualify them from IEP resources due to a lack of strengths, high adaptive skills, and a lack of diagnosed disabilities affecting reading ability.

     All too often, students in this position fall through the cracks. Data too low to be placed in small groups with trained interventionists due to a lack of popularity in needs and minimal availability in the appropriate curriculum, but too adaptive to receive services at their level. With the beautiful opportunity afforded by having two educators in one classroom, my host teacher and I were able to "divide and conquer" so that I could provide individually curated intervention.