All grade levels have students who need intervention strategies to boost basic reading skills; this includes the high school level, a target group often overlooked when it comes to instructional strategies. In order for students to make the most progress during their time with an intervention teacher, the Center on Multi-Tiered System of Supports says Tier III reading interventions must be “individualized and intensive.” What can be difficult for intervention teachers is the lack of motivation some students have for such rigorous intervention strategies.

While motivation is complex to measure quantitatively, teachers may argue it is easy to observe through student behaviors, such as readily conversing in cooperative groups and engaging with the work through questioning, discovery, and application. Lack of motivation presents through refusal to work or participate, speeding through diagnostic and monitoring assessments, or sporadic attendance. For a reading class, student motivation is a fine line because one encourages students who, typically, want to master skills for which they know they have a deficit but also for which they do not want to admit that they have a deficit.

Students are placed into the Tier III setting because they have a detrimental skills gap. The challenge for teachers becomes walking that line of how to increase classwork motivation while still giving explicit instruction on fundamental reading and phonics strategies to teenagers. Many social and emotional concerns have to be delicately addressed, considering reading is a basic skill learned by majority of modern society at a very young age. Teenagers in my class have expressed resistance through exclamations such as “I don’t need this work; I really can read” and “I don’t want anyone to know I’m in this class.” Because Tier III reading includes elementary-level instruction on phonics and vocabulary with applications of prosody, the practice must be contextualized to help preserve teenage dignity.

Relating Reading Skills to Other Content Areas

What may be the easiest and most obvious application for the learning is relating the skills to other content areas. Students learn ways to use their phonics and vocabulary skills to pass their biology or algebra tests, topics not connected to typical language arts classes. Therefore, students should understand that Tier III reading is different than a language arts class. Tier III reading instruction is not content-specific. The foundational knowledge is a prerequisite to achievement in all subjects, and a direct connection to success in all academic areas gives a whole new reason for learning the skills. When discussing this with students, include the usefulness of the learned skills in earning graduation credits or conversing with peers about the subject matter. Suddenly, phonics practice with elementary words is now helpful with a task in Physics.

Perhaps more than any other grade level, high school students need to feel they are not wasting their time at school; they need to understand their learning is useful outside of the classroom. To maximize student buy-in at this level, students must genuinely understand that the lessons’ skills are purposeful in their current and future lives. My students have researched potential careers after graduation, they have written responses for various interview questions, and some have brought in applications for an after-school job. I conference with students for each situation and consistently draw connections to our word-skill practice. The results are stronger relationships between teacher and students and students’ growing intrinsic motivation to learn more about reading.

Weaving in Real-World Connections to the Lesson

In a playful application, students plan lavish vacations. National Geographic offers remarkable destination trips to every continent, and the Orient Express suggests historic expeditions across Europe and Asia. My students have planned extravagant trips with private jets and luxury ships and then presented their day-by-day itineraries to the class. Everyone enjoyed the fantastical descriptions of the sights and the wild dreams of this kind of travel. Most importantly, the research and synthesis required all the reading skills from the intervention lessons.

Motivation and engagement are fruitless if students do not leave the lesson with a
thorough understanding of the application of the practiced reading skills. So more important than merely offering different projects, the teacher must explicitly connect the skill’s knowledge to the skill’s application; transference is vital. With these real-world opportunities, secondary students will have a greater sense of buy-in to the intervention methods as they increase their independence with the skills thus increasing their overall academic success.

Samantha Bart-Addison is a 20-year veteran teacher at Seckinger High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia. She currently teaches Tier III Reading Interventions and other various types of learners. Her goal is to share engaging differentiated strategies to support teachers in the classroom.

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