Classwide Intervention

Classwide Intervention is provided to the whole class on specific skills, that the class, as a group are missing. The emphasis is at the classwide level, not on individual student performance. The focus is on the median performance of all students in the class.

Classwide intervention has been found to be an effective, efficient and equitable intervention for students in mathematics (Codding, VanDerHeyden, Martin & Perrault, 2015; VanDerHeyden & Codding, 2015; VanDerHeyden, McLaughlin, Algina & Snyder, 2012).

Classwide intervention has been found to be effective for other academic skills as well, including reading. For example, a two-week implementation of a classwide intervention for reading in two, third-grade classrooms resulted in increases in the median words read correct (WRC) of 28 and 23 respectively. The number of students falling below the risk criterion decreased from 52% and 61% to 22% and 28% in this study on the efficacy of classwide intervention (Burns et al., 2015).

• Addresses specific skills that the class, as a group, are missing (i.e., median score in frustration range)

• Supplements core instruction (Tier 1)

• 5-10 minutes daily produce the greatest gains

• Focus on either computation and/or applied problem solving

Textbook activities or core instruction may not provide:

• Enough opportunities to review prerequisite skills before new skills/concepts introduced

• Enough practice for skills/concepts to achieve mastery

• Opportunities to discriminate between new/previously learned problems (switching)

• Frequent & meaningful feedback on errors or fluent performance

Classes of students for whom the average (median* or mean) score falls at or below the 25th percentile on a nationally or locally normed screening measure could benefit from an intervention that targets the entire class (Ardoin et al., 2005).

*the median tends to be better measure of average performance in case there are outliers in scores.