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I just started my second year as a reading interventionist and am loving it! I hope I will get to continue in this position for years to come, but time will tell.
Anyway, when people ask what my job is and I say reading interventionist, most people ask, “What is that? What do you do?” Usually, I’ll say, “I teach reading to small groups of students.”
However today, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do my best to describe what a typical day looks like in the world of reading intervention.
It takes a handful of weeks at the beginning of the school year for testing students, seeing who qualifies, creating groups, and getting them approved before you really have what I consider a typical day in reading intervention. A typical day for me is a day where I get to see all my groups, which, sometimes, happens less than I’d like.
At my school, I work with grades 1-5 and it varies year to year on how many students I service from each grade level. This year I have 26 students on my caseload, at the moment. That number changes during the year as students reach their goals, other students need intervention, or students move. I have 8 groups with no more than 4 students per group. Each group lasts for 30 minutes.
Once my groups are established, I use their data and grade level to decide what curriculum I will be using with each group. We have a selection of different curriculums that we are allowed to use with our intervention students. Now, that the groundwork is laid, I can describe a typical day.
I arrive at school and go to my morning duty station. That duty lasts for half an hour and then I stop back in my room for about 5 minutes and make sure everything is out and ready for the 1st group.
I go pick up my first group and we head back to the classroom that I share with a literacy assistant. I teach the lesson and it goes well. I just have to encourage them to participate and speak up so I can hear them. I take them back to class at the end of 30 minutes and quickly head back to the room to clear away the books from group one and put out the materials for group two.
I teach group two and then another three groups successively. All the while, we work to keep our voices at an appropriate level as there is another group going on right next to us with only a couple large cupboards between us. I, also, have to make sure we stay on pace by not letting my students get me off track with side conversations (even though, they can be fun). Furthermore, I do sneak in a quick bathroom break between groups three and four.
After group five, it is time for planning and lunch. I have 1 hour and 10 minutes for this, except for one day a month where I attend an MTSS meeting. During planning I will write up lessons for the next day. In intervention, plans aren’t written too much in advance because they change based on student need. The great part about that is I write my plans in a notebook and don’t have to add a lot of detail because the lessons come from a book. The not so great part is there is not a lot of room for creativity, like so many other scripted curriculums. Other things I may do at planning are attend meetings, make parent phone calls, talk to other teachers about student progress, complete paperwork, check e-mails, or analyze data. Then, at some point during that time, I eat lunch.
The second part of my day consists of another 3 groups. When, those groups are complete, I go to my afternoon duty station. That lasts for about 20 minutes. At the end of the day, I go back to my room and make sure the tables are wiped down, check for any last minute e-mails and make sure I have all of my materials ready for the next day. Once in a while I will meet with a teacher about a student if I wasn’t able to catch them earlier in the day. I, also, attend an after school meeting about twice a month and participate in after school events when they occur, just like the other teachers in the building.
And that’s basically what my “typical” day consists of. So, if you’ve ever wondered about switching to a reading intervention position or just wanted to know what one does, I hope this was helpful to you. You may, also, want to check out my post “What To Do When You’re Questioning Your Career Choice.” As this was just a basic overview of my day, if you have any other questions, feel free to comment below.
Reading intervention is fast-paced, as I’ve said only 30 minutes per group, and you need to be flexible because things change at a moment’s notice. For instance, oh, we’re having a fire drill this morning and you need to check that such-and-such hallway is clear, or this grade is testing and you won’t be able to see them all week, or another good one, it’s an early release and you need to help deliver lunches to the classrooms.
However, I love teaching small groups of students all day. And teaching only reading is amazing! I feel like this was what I was meant to do all along and never knew it. I definitely didn’t go to college and say, “Hey, when I graduate I want to be a reading interventionist.”
But, I am so glad that I decided to make this change and that someone gave me the chance to do it!