Supporting struggling adolescent readers through the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to describe what needs to happen in Australian schools to provide effective literacy support for adolescent students with reading difficulties. The central thesis of this paper is that the Response to Intervention (RtI) model provides a useful framework for organizing multi-tiered evidence-based reading interventions for struggling adolescent readers. Necessary adaptations of the model for the secondary context are discussed and the benefits and pitfalls of flexible and fixed groupings are outlined. Australian schools cannot afford to adopt a “business-as-usual” approach. Reasonable adjustments within classrooms are not enough to equip students with the literacy they need. Rather, schools should look to how they can use the RtI model to provide varying levels of evidence-based reading intervention, drawing on the expertise of speech pathologists.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Secondary students are those in Years 7 or 8 up to Year 12 in Australia. Secondary students are 12 − 18 years old.

2. The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia. An annual national assessment for all students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9.

3. Primary school runs for seven or eight years, starting at Kindergarten or Preparatory school through to Year 6 or 7 in Australia.

4. The Matthew Effect in reading refers to the idea that struggling readers avoid reading and are therefore not exposed to rich vocabulary, further limiting their reading progress (Stanovich, 1986).