Theory and Practice Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Theory and Practice Paper - Essay Example However, the primary function of the United States Department of Education is to formulate federal funding programs involving education and to enforce federal educational laws involved with privacy and civil rights. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control over. However, there are reading intervention programs that have been developed to help struggling readers to improve reading in kindergarten and first grade students. This paper will discuss three early reading intervention programs that are designed to prevent early reading problem from developing rather than trying to correct a problem after it is established. These programs have been applied in first and second grade and have proved very effective. The early reading intervention to be discussed is The Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention Program. The paper w ill also show the current assessment practice of the early intervention program in Ocean View School District in California. Early reading intervention programs refers to early school intervention programs that are designed to prevent early reading problem from developing rather than trying to correct a problem after it is established. These programs have been applied in first and second grade and have proved very effective. The early reading intervention to be discussed is The Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention Program. The paper will also show the current assessment practice of the early intervention program in Ocean View School District in California. Early Reading Intervention Early reading intervention programs refers to early school intervention programs that are designed to prevent early reading problem from developing rather than trying to correct a problem after it is established. (Pikulski, 1997) To improve reading in kindergarten and first grade students, a number of early reading intervention reading programs have been invented. The programs are used in within the regular classroom to help the struggling readers and the classroom teachers carry out the program with the help of instructional aides or older students. They help struggling readers succeed in school and make good progress in reading especially in grade 2 through 4. In Scott Foresman Early Reading intervention, the program was designed to provide kindergarten and first grade children with an intervention to improve their reading. A teacher is supposed to deliver daily lesson of 30 minutes to small groups of 2-5 students. The intervention is comprised of 126 lessons distributed across 30 weeks of instruction. The Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention Program is organized in a carefully planned sequence of skills; the explicit instruction and systematic review are intended to ensure student success. The teachers' guide provides a detailed lesson plans that are easy to follow and the instructional materials are well organized. The lesson takes 30-minute that consist of seven activities, with each activity designed to last only three to five minutes. In the first 15 minutes of the lesson, the emphasis is on the phonological awareness and alphabetic understanding while the next 15 minutes focuses on writing and spelling. To help teacher pace instructions, each activity is labeled with the amount of time it should last. For the sake of the students who do not grasp anything, the lesson provides immediate re-teaching strategy. It is recommended that a formal screening assessment, such as Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), during the fourth to sixth week of the school year should be administered in the Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention program. A comprehensive assessment plan is an important part of this intervention program. The intervention prog