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