Historically, about 80% percent of 9th graders who enter EPIC read at a 7th grade level or below. To prepare them to be ready to meet the demands of reading in college and the real world, EPIC has committed vast resources during its elective period for our most struggling readers to receive intensive reading intervention. Teachers are trained on how to deliver instruction to meet the particular needs of their students and work hard to develop students' identity and skills as readers.

Though the task is daunting, the bottom line is this: it is OUR job - no matter how many gaps in skills our students have when they get to us - to develop our students as readers. We will do this by leveraging their strengths and interests and identifying needs to deliver targeted, efficient instruction.

The most important element to making your Reading Intervention class successful for the year is having a strong "culture of reading." Most of our students who end up in RI have a history of failure as readers and/or have read very little - in school or at home - compared to stronger readers. Many studies have documented this difference. As a result, struggling readers often consider reading a "boring" activity and lack the motivation to engage with text. Each teacher team must work diligently to build a strong classroom culture where students are valued as READERS and where students find value in READING.

Reading Intervention classroom libraries should be warm, organized spaces where students can easily "shop" for books to read. Each RI library is outfitted with 150+ books and 10-15 book bins to hold books. Books should be organized within bins and labeled by genres. Additional bins can be found in the program resource center.

Each RI book has been tagged with "RI" and a color that represents its Lexile range. You can get a copy of the Lexile ranges and correspondence to book colors here. Post this on your library and educate students on how to use it to guide book choices, but DO NOT box students into a particular color. The Lexile color bands are merely a tool to help you and students make appropriate book choices.

Use book stands to feature books in your RI library to encourage students to share what they read and to use the power of peer pressure to get students to read more (see top shelf of picture at left). Another excellent practice is to have students write recommendations when they complete a book. These can then be placed inside or below the featured book to encourage other students to read it.

Classrooms with a strong reading culture make strong reading habits public. Use the RI Universal Practices goals for reading amount with kids to help them set goals and pacing plans for reading. Then, create a public tracker for your wall that displays how much students have read and keep it frequently updated. Best practice tracks the number of pages each student has read (and the teachers, too!) and also displays genres read via color (see example in picture to the right).

You can get students excited about reading a book by having them do "book shopping." Take a couple dozen high interest books from your independent reading library from a variety of genres that you think may pique different students' interests. Lay the books out on tables throughout the room and have students "shop" for books in groups, spending a set amount of time at each table looking at books at each station.

To maximize the effect of this practice, it is important to model for students how good readers make decisions about what they want to read. Readers use a variety of strategies to evaluate whether they want to read a book (consider interests, look at cover, read back cover, open and read the first few paragraphs, etc.). There is a graphic organizer attached at the bottom of this page to facilitate student thinking through this process.

Reading is a social process. As adult readers, we are typically more likely to engage with a text when someone else has shared it with us or when we know we will have the opportunity to communicate our thoughts about it. We are also more likely to engage in reading (or anything else) when it is valued and celebrated within a community in which we belong.

You can raise motivation around reading by setting up structures and routines in your class for your students (and you) to share what they have read or have been reading about. Many teachers have had success formalizing this by having weekly or bi-weekly "Book Talks." In a Book Talk, students share a brief summary of the book they are reading/have read. Book Talks can also include what makes the book interesting, how the student connected with a character, and a recommendation for other students. These should take no longer than 1-2 minutes. Many teachers have found success by creating a schedule where 1-2 students are assigned a book talk a week.

Another best practice to raise motivation in the classroom is to celebrate successes around reading. Set smaller reading goals with students and shower them with praise when they reach it. Though students act embarrassed when they are publicly acknowledged for reading success, they really love it! Some ideas for celebrating success:

• If a student has just finished a book, have the student stand, acknowledge him/her, and have his/her peers give him applause

• When a student finishes a book, let them do the honors of coloring in the pages on the public wall tracker.

• Take students' pictures with the book after they finish it and post them on the wall (we had one teacher team that always took kids pictures after finishing a book and kids loved it - and they never even printed and posted the pictures!) #bookselfie

• At the end of independent reading, give publicly give students merits for positive reading behaviors or reading progress