Reading Intervention Groups in Action: What I Do, Use, and Love

Reading June 24, 2025

Reading intervention groups are a must in any elementary classroom—but how they look can vary depending on your students’ needs. After 19 years in the classroom, I can confidently say that the way I run my intervention groups has evolved a lot, especially as I’ve learned more about the Science of Reading.

My small groups now focus on the specific skills my students need most—whether that’s decoding, fluency, or comprehension—so they can grow into confident, capable readers.

In this post, I’m giving you a peek behind the scenes of how I plan, run, and track progress in my reading intervention groups for decoding skills. Plus, there’s a FREEBIE waiting for you at the end to help you get started!

Picture of teacher working with reading intervention groups

Reading Intervention Groups Set-Up

How you set up your groups may depend on your school’s curriculum and assessments. In my classroom, I use a mix of Fundations, UFLI, Heggerty, and what I’ve learned from LETRS training to guide my small group instruction.

To figure out what each student needs, I rely on several assessments. Our district uses FastBridge for benchmarking, and I also use spelling inventories, fluency passages, and the Quick Phonics Screener (especially if decoding is a concern). These tools help me pinpoint the specific phonics, fluency, or comprehension skills each student needs to grow.

Picture of Quick Phonics Screener and spelling inventory assessments

Reading Intervention Group Plan

Picture of reading intervention groups plan and pages to use in a bag

For students working on decoding, I run small groups three times a week for about 20 minutes. Fridays are set aside for progress monitoring, and on other days I pull groups for fluency or comprehension.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what a decoding-focused session looks like:

1. Phonemic Awareness (2–3 minutes)

Quick practice blending and segmenting 5–10 words that match our phonics focus. This is fast-paced and gets students’ brains warmed up.

2. Trick Words / Heart Words (3–5 minutes)

We review one tricky/high-frequency word per day—talking about which parts we can decode and which parts we need to “know by heart.”

3. Reading Words (5–7 minutes)

Day 1: I introduce 3–4 focus words and we break them down together (sound-spellings, syllables, etc.).
Day 2: Students read from the Fundations word list—taking turns leading rows.
Day 3: We use the Fundations phrase sheet to practice reading in context.

Pictures of fundations pages for reading groups

4. Spelling Practice (5 minutes)

Students spell 3–5 focus words using whiteboards or paper. We tap out each word, then spell. On Days 2 and 3, we add one sentence to work on writing mechanics too.

Picture of spelling practice for intervention groups

5. Apply to Text (5 minutes)

We wrap up by reading a short decodable text that matches our phonics skill. I rotate between:

UFLI free passages
Charge into Reading decodable books
Fundations fluency passages

This structure keeps our lessons focused and consistent, while giving students plenty of practice across multiple formats.

Must-Have Supplies for Reading Intervention Groups

Having the right tools on hand makes small group time run so much smoother! Here are some of my go-to supplies for reading intervention—and they’re all easy to grab and use daily.
(Click the links to check them out for your own classroom!)

Please note Amazon affiliate links are included in this post for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Fluency phones – Perfect for helping students hear themselves as they read.
Caddy or bin – I use this to keep pencils, highlighters, and whiteboard markers organized and ready to go.
Individual whiteboards – Great for spelling, tapping out words, and quick responses.
Whiteboard adhesive spots – Stick these right on the table for each student’s personal work space!
Storage bags or folders – I keep each group’s materials (books, word lists, etc.) in their own labeled bag so we’re ready to dive in quickly.

How Do I Know My Reading Intervention Is Working?

As teachers, we always want to make sure our interventions are actually helping students grow. If something isn’t working, we need to catch it early so we can adjust our instruction and better meet their needs.

One of my biggest frustrations was that most progress monitoring tools for decoding only focus on CVC short vowel words. While that’s an important skill, many of my students are working on other phonics patterns, and there just weren’t great tools out there to track their progress.

So—I made my own!

Photo of progress monitoring probes for reading intervention groups

I created a set of phonics-based progress monitoring probes that target specific skills. Each set includes real words, nonsense words, and mixed word lists so you can get a clear picture of how students are doing.

If you’re looking for a simple way to monitor growth across a variety of phonics skills, you can check out this resource HERE in my TPT store!

Freebie to Help You Plan Your Reading Intervention Groups

Need a simple way to stay organized with your small groups? I’ve got you covered!
Click ABOVE to grab a FREE planning template for your reading intervention groups. It’s editable, so you can either type in your plans digitally or print it out and write by hand—whatever works best for you!

reading intervention groups