Interventions

Somehow it seems that having only 17 students makes each of their needs ever more apparent.  As I analyze the assessments of each student, I realize just how different the needs of each student are.  It is hard to group students in a way that truly benefits each student and it is impossible to work with each student one on one.
In my gut, I know that what these students need is weekly extremely targeted instruction in the skills they are lacking.  However, this is a level of intervention they will not receive until Spring (waiting on money from the state).  All of the assessment data I have collected so far indicates that these students are severely behind and may even need tier 3 intervention.  I think we could be closing the gap a lot faster if we offered more individualized interventions from the beginning of the year.

Math seems to be the most difficult for me to give intervention during instructional time.  I have been thinking a lot about why this is and it finally came to me: because students require more support with reading instructions, I am not as free to work with small groups.  Now my search begins for apps and websites that will target the math concepts they need to learn, but will also read the instructions to the student.  That will allow me to do more work with small groups.

Recently we've been working on number line skills and using skip jumps to add.  We did some whole group warm up intervention by working as a class to create a number line on the floor.  Students then took turns making jumps of 2, 5, and 10.  It was a lot of fun and great for kinesthetic learners.  It's simple, but its the most intervention I can do at this point.

I would love to hear your thoughts on interventions in math with struggling readers.