INDIVIDUALISED LITERACY
INTERVENTIONS
Information for Teachers
What is it, and who is it for?
An Individualised Literacy Intervention (ILI) is an intensive Wave 3
input delivered 3 x weekly for 30 minutes over 10 week blocks to
pupils with significantly delayed literacy skills.
It is an evidence based intervention that is useful for pupils between Y2
and Y9.
What happens in the sessions, and what will it achieve?
Each session is broken down into component activities that cover
reading, writing, phonology, spelling, tricky words and writing a
sentence using a consistent framework within which the TA plans the
lesson.
Completion of a good initial assessment is vital to the effectiveness of
the intervention.
The aim is to accelerate their progress – for example over 3 months,
when delivered correctly, you should see at least 6 months progress on
reading and spelling, often much more.
In 2013/14 across the county the average gain was 10.5 months in
reading and 6.3 months in spelling.
What conditions are required to maximise its effectiveness?
In order to achieve this rate of progress a Teaching Assistant needs
regular, timetabled teaching slots and a commitment from the school to
ensure they have time to plan and prepare lessons (30 minutes per
week), as well as opportunities to discuss progress and perceived
difficulties with the teacher or SENCO.
Research demonstrates clearly that all Wave 3 interventions have the
greatest impact on progress when the teacher provides opportunities
for consolidation of the learning and helps the pupil to generalise their
new skills and strategies in the context of the classroom setting.
Please discuss this with your SENCo if you would like further
information.
ILI V.1 2015
Learning
Support
Service
Consolidating Progress through
Individualised Literacy interventions
Strategies for Classroom Teachers
Make sure
you are
aware of
the specific
phonemes /
graphemes/
tricky
words that
have been
taught in
ILI and give
further
practice in
class.
What you could do
 Refer to the pupil’s ILI passport.
 Ask the TA to put the information on a post it note on
the wall to remind you.
 Discuss with the TA.
 Use IT opportunities to provide extra practice outside
of the ILI sessions.
 Note correct use of the word/ phoneme/ grapheme in
written work and mark it positively.
 Note correct use when reading and give positive
praise.
 Notice an error in writing or reading when using
taught words and phonemes, ask them to think back
to the ILI session and how they learned it. Make the
link between the session and what happens in class.
 Take one sentence from the pupil’s work – particularly
if sentence order is muddled, and use it to teach error
correction in the same way as an Individualised
Literacy Intervention does.
 Give the pupil a simpler writing task – eg a speech
bubble to write a sentence in, related to a picture or
key word - differentiated work.
 Make sure that the pupil receives some direct relevant
teaching in class by planning to work with them or
their group at some point during the week that does
not clash with the Individualised Literacy Intervention.
This time enables teachers to guide TAs who need
further advice.
 If an opportunity arises in whole class work to ask a
pupil a question relevant to learning being promoted
in the Individualised Literacy Intervention use it.
Sometimes planning one specific question for the
pupil during a session is helpful in developing this
process.
ILI V.1 2015
Learning
Support
Service