Intervention Strategies at the Middle School Level: Methods and Practices for Student Engagement
Item
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Title
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Intervention Strategies at the Middle School Level: Methods and Practices for Student Engagement
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Creator
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Shannon Pickering
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Degree Name
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Master of Arts in Teaching (initial licensure)
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Project Type
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Action Research Project
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Date
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6/15/2025
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Abstract
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The purpose of this action research project was to examine whether targeted, tiered intervention strategies, utilizing the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework, could improve reading fluency and comprehension, and to identify engagement strategies that support middle school students performing below grade level. This study aimed to answer: 1) Do targeted and tiered interventions improve fluency and comprehension? 2) What instructional strategies give the most student engagement? This work highlights the importance of closing literacy gaps at the middle school level, ensuring accessibility, and promoting a sense of student success. This study collected data through classroom observations, student work samples, informal interviews, and progress monitoring tools such as DIBELS or PowerUp. Thematic coding and analysis were employed to identify patterns across the intervention tiers and whole-class instructional sessions. Key findings revealed that scaffolded instruction for students below grade level were insufficient to bridge the learning gap. When scaffolds are paired with explicit teaching strategies in tiered intervention environments, this leads to the greatest task completion and student growth in comprehension. Ensuring that students understood the content prior to introducing classroom work, along with scaffolds, was found to impact learning outcomes significantly. Emotional factors were also found to highly impact students’ learning outcomes and social-emotional well-being. This study concluded that the RTI-based interventions, which focused on comprehension and fluency skills, when integrated with scaffolds and emotional support, are highly effective methods for closing literacy gaps at the middle school level. These findings highlight the importance of responsive, student-centered intervention models and suggest the need for broader implementation.
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Keywords
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Intervention
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RTI
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ATI
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Committee Member
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Coley Lehman
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Rights
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Western Oregon University Library has determined, as of 06/20/2025, this item is in copyright, which is held by the author. Users may use the item in accordance with copyright limitations and exceptions, including fair use. For other uses, please ask permission from the author.
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https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en
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License
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CC-BY (attribution)
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Language
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eng
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Type
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Text
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Identifier
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ShannonPickering_ARP_2025
