Barb McBride
VSB Reading Recovery Teacher Leader/
Early Intervention Coordinator
bmcbride@vsb.bc.ca
The child cannot afford to
waste time on letter-learning
activities or games when he
could be reading well-chosen
books.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, Part 2
p121
Early Intervention / Intervention précoce
Meeting the Needs of Every Grade 1 Child
The child with stanines in the:
0 - 2 range is unlikely to ‘catch up’ without immediate, intensive expert teaching.
3 - 4 range is already struggling with average tasks.
4 - 6 range is able to participate in and benefit from average classroom activities.
7 - 9 range is probably eager to reach out to a more complex or challenging task.
Clay, M.M. (2005)
VSB Early Intervention / Reading Recovery Team
SUPPORT TO INDEPENDENCE
ZONE OF FRUSTRATION
ZONE OF
PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
“LEARNING ZONE”
(Vygotsky)
The child is not
yet able to learn task
even with support or
assistance.
The child can
do with support
or assistance those
things just beyond his
level of development
ZONE OF
ACTUAL
DEVELOPMENT The child can
accomplish tasks
(Piaget)
independently
Appropriate for
guided practice,
peer tutoring, or
adult coaching
Appropriate
for independent
learning
Feeling of
confidence and
competence
Text Level Accuracy
100-95%
Feeling of
uncertainty and
questioning: state of
challenge and growth
94-90%
< 90%
If she (a teacher) works alongside a child
letting him do all that he can but
supporting the activity when he reaches
some limit by sharing the task she is more
likely to uncover the cutting edges of his
learning. He, on the other hand, will not
be bored by doing ten times over
something he already knows how to do,
but is likely to be challenged to risk
attempting the novel, knowing that help
will be offered for shared completion of
the task if he cannot do it alone.
Marie Clay, 1991
Becoming Literate, p65-66
Gradual Release of
Responsibility
Teacher
Responsibility
Teacher and
Student
Responsibility
Student
Responsibility
Shared Reading
Explicit
Demonstrations
Shared Writing
Independent
Practice
Sustained Reading
Modeled Reading
Modeled Writing
Guided Reading
Think Aloud
Guided Writing
Sustained Writing
Teaching... can be likened to a
conversation in which you
listen to the speaker carefully
before you reply.
Marie Clay
Comprehensive
Literacy Program
If we keep a note of the
longest sentence we have
heard him use, we can update
it when a longer one comes
along. Length of utterance is
a reliable indicator of growth
in early oral language skills.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, Part 2
p51
The teacher must make clear
to the child that what he
already knows in writing can
be of use to him in reading
and vice versa.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed
for Individuals, Part 2 p121
Most people find it difficult to
think of writing and reading as two
different ways of learning about
the same thing—written language.
It is like having two hands. What
you know in writing can be helpful
in your reading and vice versa, just
as the right hand can help the left
hand with holding or vice versa.
Marie Clay, 2002
Integration (of the sources of
information) occurs in reading, in
composing messages to be written,
in writing, and in rereading a
written message.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, Part 2
p88
I think it is most helpful to
think of the learner (who is
successfully solving reading
problems) as building a neural
network for working on
written language and that
network learns to extend itself.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals,
Part 1 p103
Processing
System
for
Reading
Fountas and
Pinnell
And in the end it is the individual
adaptation made by the expert
teacher to that child’s idiosyncratic
competencies and history of past
experiences that starts him on the
upward climb to effective literacy
performance.
Marie Clay, 2005
Literacy Lessons Designed for
Individuals, Part 1 p63