Literacy Today May/June 2016

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luebird is the pseudonym my vivacious sixth-grade student chose for herself.

Bluebird is always happy, fluttering gracefully with her many friends. Her mother

is a literacy specialist. One morning, she stopped by my classroom. The term-end

Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) scores indicated her daughter’s scores were

below grade level, as they had been throughout her elementary years.

“Can you talk me off a cliff?” she said with tear-filled eyes. She described

testing and interventions she had done with Bluebird in an effort to improve her

scores. We discussed Bluebird’s progress and the work we were doing in school.

I described research on reading interventions using the Neurological Impress

Method (NIM), developed by R.G. Heckelman in the 1960s. NIM involves an adult

and a struggling reader, sitting side by side, simultaneously reading aloud at a

rapid rate using challenging text. This method was designed to expose readers to

correct reading and greater quantities of material while providing scaffolding for

difficult text.

By Lisa Trott ier Brown

Finding solutions for struggling readers

Lisa Trottier Brown

(pbslbrown@msn.com), an

ILA member since 2014,

has taught third and sixth

grades in the Davis School

District in Utah. She is

currently working toward

a PhD in curriculum and

instruction in literacy at

Utah State University.

LITERACY

LEADERSHIP

RESCUING

BLUEBIRD

8

May/June 2016 | LITERACY TODAY

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