Daily Interventions

The why, how, and what

As many of you know, I had 100% of my students at or above level on mid-year DIBELS testing and 100% at or above level on end-of-year DIBELS testing. I share these results because it’s important to me that you know that the person you’re following and learning from and listening to does actually get good results in her classroom.

But I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again—I would not get these results if it weren’t for the daily intervention time that I build into my schedule. I would instead have the typical four or five students per class who just cannot get to where they need to be.

Today’s post is about why I established an intervention time in my classroom, how it is managed, and what can be accomplished during this time. Several of you who followed along last school year mentioned that you realized how invaluable this time was to me and that you hoped to get something like this going in your class this year. I hope this post ignites or reignites that interest.

---

The Why of Intervention Time

The why behind my daily intervention time involves some history.

In the early 2000s when I taught half-day kindergarten and then again in the 20-teens, I surely did not have time to conduct interventions; I barely had time for all the whole group instruction that needed to happen in the less-than-three-hours that I had with my students. RTI (Response to Intervention) came along during those years of teaching half-day kindergarten and the only solution we could come up with to conduct interventions with kindergartners was to bring the morning students in before school started and have the afternoon students stay after. In exchange, we teachers were relieved of any before- or after-school duties we may have had.

It wasn’t ideal. But I learned that consistently working with students for 15 minutes twice a week—one-on-one or two-on-one—was hugely beneficial. I’d been given the time and I found the ways to reach those students who weren’t learning from the standard whole class and small group instruction combination that sufficed for most learners.

At that time—and to this day—I did not think of it as “intervening” and I did not invite just those students who I thought might have a disability. I would look at the data, such as number of letters named, and would work with the bottom four, six, eight, or ten students, depending on how many time slots I had available. Some students were already identified as having a learning disability, some were English language learners, many just hadn’t been exposed to the alphabet yet or were getting no academic support at home, and then there were those who had a disability just waiting to rear its ugly head. As I learned to prioritize what kindergarten students need to know and all the different ways to reach students and make their learning stick, I realized just how effective and crucial this time of day was for these students. Over the years, the majority of my intervention students were able to learn and meet the kindergarten standards. They just needed that consistent extra support and had they not gotten it, many of them would have been taken through the RTI process in first grade and possibly labeled with a disability.

Eventually, we were able to start offering full-day kindergarten. Though not all five- and six-year-olds need to nap, I did schedule a rest time into the daily schedule, based on several reasons but primarily so I could conduct interventions during the actual school day. First, we went to lunch quite early which meant that we had a long afternoon (our day goes until 4:00). Several students fell asleep—or needed to—at some point each afternoon and it made sense to facilitate that happening—if it was going to happen at all—all at the same time. Also, 45 minutes after lunch my students left the classroom for an hour of specials. It was vital that they each had a chance to use the in-class restrooms so that they weren’t all roaming the hallways alone and lost during specials time. Rest time also helped ensure that my aide could get a lunch break. She taught all morning and then accompanied the students to the lunch room and the playground after. It was easier to insist that she took a lunch break when “nothing” else was going on at the time. And last, a daily rest time when all students were (theoretically) quietly lying down would provide me the time to work with students one-on-one, a time to conduct required—and highly effective—interventions.

So, for years I had students lying on the floor in their assigned spots during quiet time right after lunch and before specials. I trained them to use the in-class bathrooms; there was a specific order and they were responsible for tapping on the next student and keeping the process going. Some students slept, some looked at books, some entered their own imaginary world, and some worked with me for five minutes every day. For all of those years, I supervised the students on the floor, kept an eye on the bathroom-using process, and worked with students with very few interruptions (some years better than others, of course, depending on the make-up of the class).

Enter Chromebooks and online interventions. A few years ago just before COVID hit us, our school acquired enough Chromebooks for every student to have their own, including kindergartners. Subscriptions were purchased to Lexia Core 5 (literacy) and Dreambox (math) for all students. Since these programs teach children at their levels, they are considered interventions and count toward intervention time. Teachers were expected to find ways to get their students onto their Chromebooks for these two programs on a regular basis.

This was going to be difficult and not fun, in my opinion, at the kindergarten level. I already knew it took months just for these kids to learn how to log on. I wasn’t sure I wanted to sacrifice any classroom time to running around and helping 28 students log on. Around this time we got a new principal and he ushered in some crucial changes to this whole process. First, students would go to a computers class twice a week for specials. This is where kindergartners got to practice logging on, among other skills. Second, every grade level had a dedicated intervention time during the day—and luckily those 45 minutes between our lunch and specials was reserved for kindergarten—and an intervention teacher to use as we’d like during that time.

The How of Intervention Time

All of this history explains why I have my current set-up for interventions in my classroom. And now I’ll talk about how I manage this block of time to get the most out of it.

We start the school year off resting so that the notion of laying quietly and doing not much of anything—or sleeping if preferred—is established, as is the process and order for using the bathrooms during this time. Before the first day of school, I draw a map that shows where each student will lie during quiet time. It needs to be ready in advance because you don’t want to be searching for spots while trying to manage 25 students who have nothing to do but wait for you to tell them where their spot is. I draw the furniture in the room and then draw one rectangle to represent one prone child. I squeeze the rectangles between the furniture on the map, leaving enough space between them so that they’re not too close together. Yes, it can be challenging to find spots for 28 children and still be able to move about the room. I write the name of the students on the rectangles, trying as best as I can without knowing them that well yet to separate students who might have trouble being next to each other. It’s helpful to lay the children down in alphabetical order by first names, as you’ll see when we get to using the bathrooms and tapping on the next student.

So on the first day, I explain what quiet time looks like (everyone is laying down, everyone is quiet, you will not talk to the teachers unless necessary, you will not get up and walk around until someone taps on you, and you can fall asleep if you want to). I take each child to their spot, tell them to remember it, and tell them to stay there. Once I’ve got everyone situated, I explain how the bathrooms work. There is one girl and one boy who start the process each day. They can go to the bathroom and then wash their hands or they can just wash hands if they don’t have to go. When they are done in the bathroom, I show them who they will tap on, what that student’s name is, and where to find them lying every day. If students are in alphabetical order (by first name), it is easier for me to find them when I need to. It also means that whoever is tapping will probably tap on someone who lies next to them. They say, “It’s your turn to use the bathroom” while gently tapping on their shoulder. I explain to that student that they have to get up and go or at least go wash their hands. And the tapper has to watch and make sure that the student they tapped on actually gets up and keeps the process going. We continue this until everyone has had a turn. It’s a slow start and not really that quiet the first few days. However, each day gets a little better—students start to just lay down on their own without waiting for me to settle them, the first boy and the first girl learn to get the bathroom sequence going right away, and they figure out that I am serious about them not talking to me or others during quiet time. I always put on the same relaxing music and this signals that it’s quiet time. My teammate puts on a peaceful undersea video.

After four or five days, the students know the routines and expectations, and I am ready to start conducting interventions during this time. I usually have a list of 8-10 students and I spend 3-5 minutes with each of them almost every day. The intervention teacher comes in and gradually, over the course of several weeks, gets the entire class working on their Chromebooks during this time. She starts with just a few students and helps them get logged on and into the Lexia program. Each day she adds a couple more and, as the students get faster and more independent, soon the whole class is working during this time instead of resting.

The intervention teachers work four days a week. When they are not there, the students rest on the floor instead; or, in the springtime when they don’t require much guidance at all, they work on their Chromebooks on their own. Spring is a good time to allow them to explore other apps, my favorite for them being PebbleGo.

Of course, students will talk to me during this time and they will interact with their peers on the floor, so I have to continually be supervising and explaining why I need it to be quiet during this time. It is much easier once all the students are on their Chromebooks with headphones. The classroom is dim, the relaxing music is playing, and I can focus on my intervention students and really get some good teaching in. It’s one of my favorite times of the day.

The history I included demonstrates how you can conduct interventions in your classroom even without another teacher coming in to assist. You can—like I did for years—just have the students lie quietly on the floor. Not only will it not hurt them to do nothing for 45 minutes, but I think it’s good for them. My students work so hard all day long and they spend so much time listening to me that I feel it’s a gift to offer them this time to relax, possibly nap, and have time to get lost in their own thoughts. On the days that the intervention teacher is not there, the students are always thrilled that’s it’s going to be a rest day and that they don’t have to work on their Chromebooks. And, I always have three or four students who fall asleep every time I give them the time and space to do so, even on into the spring months.

The What of Interventions

Now that we’ve discussed the why and the how of interventions, let’s get to the good stuff—the what. What exactly do I do with students during this time?

First, you might be wondering why I conduct interventions when there are intervention teachers at my school and one of them is assigned to my class four days a week. I choose to do the interventions myself because I’m a pro at getting kids to learn letter names and sounds and I can help students make connections between what they’re learning during this time of day and what we talked about during whole group phonics, their small group that day, or writing time the day before. I have 30+ years of experience teaching, two degrees in special education, and a whole lot of other professional development to draw upon. You can do it, too, especially after seeing the quick and easy technique I use.

Before school even begins, I meet with students individually and give a quick assessment on how many letter names and sounds they know. I usually have between 10 and 15 students who know no letter names whatsoever or maybe just one—the one their name begins with, x, or o. From this assessment data, I choose 8-10 students who I think are going to need the most help getting started with learning in kindergarten. The one and only thing I am going to work on with them for the next two or three months are letter names. Now, I know you may have heard that it’s better to teach letter sounds before letter names, but I disagree. I prefer to teach them simultaneously during whole class instruction and small group instruction; and, I’ve found that focusing on just the letter names during interventions really pays off. Letter names are crucial vocabulary in the kindergarten classroom. If students don’t know what these 26 “words” are that I toss around all day long, they are going to miss out on a whole lot of what I am saying.

I make a stack of 52 letter cards for each intervention student—the 26 uppercase letters and the 26 lowercase letters. I pull out the letters in a student’s first name and put a rubberband around those cards and those are the letters we work on first. For example, Savanna had capital S, a, v, and n in her stack of letters to work on. We start with these because we are working on learning to write first names and that involves a lot of talk using the same vocabulary. Your name starts with S. V is fun because you just go down, up. To make an a, you first have to make the letter c.

I use letter cards that came with a reading program years ago and I also make sets of letter cards by hand writing the letters onto blank playing cards. I prefer that the cards are slippery so they can easily be manipulated. If you don’t have any letter cards, you are more than welcome to these. I suggest copying them on cardstock and laminating them before cutting them apart.

Learning the letters in their first name gives students a good base of letters upon which to build. Once they are pretty solid on the letters in their first name, I add in two more letters, probably M, m, O, and o since those are two that I teach right away. It doesn’t matter which letters you next add to their stack; just be sure they are ones you’ve taught and ones that would be particularly helpful to know the sooner the better. So now Savanna would have S, a, v, n, M, m, O, and o in her stack of letters that she works on every day with me. Even if she has demonstrated that she’s solid with the letters in her name, I keep them in the practice stack and we review them daily. The goal is to get all 52 letter cards into the rubberbanded stack, which is the stack of letters that the student knows or is currently learning. There should only be a few new ones in there and the rest should be letters that only need to be reviewed.

Basically, I use these as flashcards with hints on the back. I show a letter card and if the student cannot tell me the name of the letter within a few seconds then I show them the clue on the back. I have come up with the best clues based on years and years of doing this and I will share those with you when the school year begins (or you can see them in some of the videos I link to). Examples, for now, are m&m’s on the back of the lowercase m card, a picture of an envelope on the back of N and n, and an elbow on the back of L and l. I draw the clues on the smallest size of Post-It notes and just stick them on the back. At first, students will look on the back for the clue, then they slowly transition to visualizing the clue without actually looking at it, and then not needing the clue at all anymore. As the weeks go on, the number of letters they know really increases. In just a few months, they are usually on equal ground with their classmates who were lucky enough to learn some letters before starting kindergarten.

Interventions in Action

You can see my letter naming intervention in action as early as the second week of school here. At the beginning of the video, I talk about all the clues for the back of the cards and at 13:43 I start working with students. Also, you can see the gains that were made in just two weeks on this video, starting at 4:40.

Interestingly, David Kilpatrick, author of Equipped for Reading Success, works on letter names with struggling students in the exact same way that I do! From his book on page 110:

When a student cannot identify a letter sound (or letter name), correct the error immediately. However, do not put that card at the back of the stack. Put it 1 or 2 cards back in the pile so the student will see it again soon. Do the same when the student responds slowly but correctly. If the student gets it correct the second time, still refrain from putting it in the back. Rather, put the card back 4-5 cards behind the front card. This gives the student further opportunity for reinforcement. Only correct items responded to instantly the first time go to the back of the deck.

Letter name interventions typically run through November or December, when most students now know most letter names. At that point, I start working on a variety of different things with different students. I might work on blending with some students; we might practice high frequency words that have been introduced but not yet learned; or, I might call students over in pairs to complete additional PA/Phonics sheets because they have proven to be so very effective in getting students to be able to read and spell CVC words and read short sentences.

An intervention I did with all students in April was revisiting CVC word reading and nudging some students into whole word reading in preparation for end-of-year DIBELS testing. These videos show how this intervention time can be used for anything that your data shows needs attention.

Interventions as Prevention

By the way, at the kindergarten level, I like to think of interventions as prevention rather than intervention. I am not intervening—as you would with an older student—because the student is way behind and has possibly been identified as dyslexic or should be. Instead, I am intervening to try to prevent the student from falling behind and being labeled. Kilpatrick and others suggest that disabilities can be prevented with early and effective interventions and I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree. When you see, on the videos, some of my students struggling with remembering a letter name or two in August and then realize that they were above level and reading and writing by springtime, you’ll know, too, that something amazing happened with those brains during the months in between.

---

If you have any questions about setting up an intervention time in your classroom or need help thinking through the details for your particular situation, don’t hesitate to ask.

I truly believe that if all three of these components—quality whole class instruction, quality small group instruction, and quality one-on-one support conducted by the classroom teacher—are in place and happening daily, there is a very good chance that 95-100% of your students will be at- or above-level by the end of the school year.

Thanks for hanging in there! This was a long post (but an important one)!

Randee

---

Please consider a paid subscription to Busy Bee Kindergarten to access all posts and videos and to stay apprised of future posts on this topic. I’ll be showing interventions/prevention in action again soon when I start another school year with another batch of students who need that immediate boost with letter names. I would love to assist with getting all three crucial components of instruction in place and happening in your classroom, the sooner the better!

---