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SUMMARY

Several important themes have been stressed in this chapter. First, each literacy intervention must be considered in light of available resources, including financial, instructional, cultural, timing, and time required. Second, it is imperative to assess the existing external factors or characteristics before simply adding an intervention. Consideration must be given to the adequacy of existing instructional practices before deciding to implement any intervention. Third, the process of determining appropriate interventions must take into account the characteristics of students who are at risk for failure. For example, if an entire school is at risk, it might be wiser to begin an intervention that includes school-wide restructuring, as presented in Chapter 7, than to devote resources on an isolated turtoring technique.

Furthermore, a close examination of the successful supplementary interventions described in this chapter reveals a number of common features across these studies:

·      Duration of the intervention—generally occurring on a daily basis for the duration of a school year or a good portion of the school year.

·      The amount of instructional time—all successful interventions involve more time in reading and writing than for children not at risk—but extra time is not sufficient in itself.

·      In each case, there is an array of activities that generally consist of some reading (and rereading) of continuous text. In addition, each intervention features some form of word study. In some cases, specific strategies for decoding are incorporated.

·      In all cases, writing is an important feature. However, the writing activity is not simply support while engaging in invented spelling; it is typically conducted in a more systematic manner.

·      Although materials vary among the interventions, in each case there is careful attention paid to the characteristics of the material used, whether they are characterized as predictable, patterned, sequenced from easy to more difficult, or phonologically protected.