In My Classroom: Rebecca Barrett's Approach to Literacy Intervention

It was wonderful to welcome Rebecca Barrett to kick off the "In My Classroom" series, where she shared her expertise in literacy intervention at Spotswood College in New Plymouth, New Zealand. As the teacher in charge of literacy intervention, Rebecca has developed a comprehensive, evidence-aligned approach to supporting struggling readers and writers in years 9-13.

School Context

Spotswood College serves a diverse population of approximately 1,000 students, with a growing proportion of Māori learners and a commitment to being a culturally responsive school. As the only co-educational secondary school in central New Plymouth, they also welcome many gender-diverse students.

Rebecca teaches intervention classes for students arriving at Spotswood College with learning levels much lower than expected. Her intervention students begin at curriculum levels 1-3, despite having completed eight years of schooling. Through her carefully structured program, Rebecca achieves remarkable progress, with most students gaining at least two sub-levels in a single year.

Timetable Structure and Intervention Placement

Spotswood College has developed an innovative timetable structure that embeds literacy intervention within the school day. Students participate in a dedicated literacy line (Period 1, Monday-Thursday), where they can choose classes that integrate literacy with various subjects, from social studies to digital technology.

Intervention classes are strategically placed within the school's inquiry blocks, which focus on project-based learning. This placement is intentional, as Rebecca noted that intervention students often struggle with the self-motivation required in inquiry settings.

Student Selection Process

Rebecca's selection process focuses primarily on reading, as this is what secondary teachers most expect students to be able to do. She explained:

"Secondary teachers expect that they can give students instructions, a reading, an information pack, and expect the kids can read the actual words on the page. They can decode that, but also understand it at a base level. And that's what our kids are unable to do."

The selection process uses DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) for assessment, particularly focusing on oral reading fluency with one-minute read-aloud assessments. Rebecca prioritizes accuracy percentage first, then triangulates this data with other assessments to ensure proper placement.

Critically, Rebecca emphasizes student voice in the process, explaining intervention to students before finalizing class lists and giving families the opportunity to opt out or request teacher changes.

Whānau Connection and Buy-in

Rebecca puts a big emphasis on whānau engagement, recognizing that family support is critical to student success. Her approach includes regular whānau hui (family meetings) where she takes families through actual lesson demonstrations, teaching them the same strategies their children are learning in class. "Part of the fun of whānau hui is I bring the whānau in with the kids and we all sit in small rooms together and I take them through an actual lesson of what we do in class," Rebecca explained. These sessions occur at the beginning of the year, mid-year if needed, and toward the end of the year.

Reinforcing this is homework, as students take home word lists and are tasked with teaching someone in their whānau how to decode these words—positioning students as the experts and creating meaningful practice opportunities while strengthening home-school partnerships. This approach aligns with the school's broader commitment to culturally responsive practice and ensures that literacy intervention is supported across all environments in a student's life.

Creating a Tailored Program

Rebecca's intervention is grounded in detailed assessment using Liz Kane's "The Code." Her students typically enter at levels 1-4 of this program, and she creates detailed spreadsheets tracking their knowledge gaps. For example, in one class, most students began at a Year 3 level, with some outliers as low as Year 1.

Rather than splitting students by level, Rebecca starts whole-class instruction with fundamental skills, such as long and short vowel sounds and syllable types. This approach ensures everyone builds the same foundational knowledge while still allowing her to support those at the lowest levels.

Classroom Instruction

Rebecca's instruction follows explicit teaching methods with a gradual release of responsibility. Her lessons feature:

• Clear learning intentions that are revisited throughout the lesson
• Hinge questions to quickly assess class-wide understanding
• Cold and warm calling to maintain engagement and accountability
• Turn and talk activities that promote peer discussion
• Lots of wait time before soliciting responses, giving students processing time
• A highly predictable lesson structure that supports students with diverse learning needs, including ADHD, autism, and processing disorders

Her classroom approach prioritizes reading fluency through decodable readers (using the UK Talisman series) and repeated readings. Students read texts aloud—never silently—which Rebecca believes helps bridge the gap between decoding ability and listening comprehension: "When they read the words out loud, it kind of hits that set for variability where they can hear the word as they say it, and then their brains think, 'Oh, I think I know that word! I've heard it before.'"

Lesson Structure

Rebecca's 60 minute lessons follow a structured format:

• Daily review (5-6 minutes): Reviewing vowel sounds and previously taught concepts
• Target sound/morpheme (10 minutes): Explicit teaching of the day's focus
• Word-level decoding (5-6 minutes): Decoding words from the code list
• Text decoding: Moving from decodable texts to grade-level texts
• Teacher read-aloud with think-alouds
• Independent work: Finding target sounds/morphemes or paragraph shrinking
• Morpheme card games: Making learning engaging through games like "Spoons"
• Homework: Taking home decoding sheets and repeated reading practice

A key feature of Rebecca's approach is systematically analyzing words by breaking them into morphological parts (prefixes, bases, suffixes) and identifying relevant spelling patterns. For a word like "predicament," students learn to recognize "pre-" (prefix), "dic" (base), and "-ment" (suffix), making complex words more accessible.

Results and Impact

Rebecca's data-driven approach has yielded impressive results. Students make significant gains in both code knowledge and reading fluency. In 2023, all but two students completed 1-2 code levels by the end of the year, with corresponding improvements in reading fluency. One middle-achieving student progressed from 50 words per minute to 128 words per minute—meeting the Year 9 benchmark after starting at barely a third of that rate.

Perhaps most importantly, students become engaged and excited about literacy. Rebecca shared how students eagerly ask, "When do we get the next book?" and enjoy being "experts" who can decode complex words. Rebecca and her colleagues notice students start to use metalanguage and literacy terminology across their classes and during break times. Rebecca often hears them explaining spelling rules or analyzing word structures through morphology, using the same techniques from her read-alouds.

All of this together is a really positive display of the outcomes that meaningful literacy interventions can yield for our learners!