Planning for a BLAST intervention
Planning and communication are key to a successful intervention on a large scale. Everyone should be a part of the process, with a single person in charge of the details.
These are some of the questions you will want to consider:
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Who will oversee BLAST implementation and collect student data?
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When can you schedule the BLAST intervention block?
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Which students will take part in BLAST? Will you add others?
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What staff can you make available to participate?
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What additional training can you offer staff?
The BLAST assessment process
The BLAST assessment is completed with each student individually and is designed to assess a student’s mastery of specific Phonological Awareness and Phonics skills that form the building blocks for proficient reading.
The BLAST assessment is designed to align with the intervention toolkits and allow for clear placement in the needed skill area.
BLAST Intervention groups
After completing the BLAST assessment, students who need individual instruction in a specific skill are placed together in groups of no more than 6. Groups combine students in different classes and grades based on their assessed needs. Groups stay together for 9 days of instruction and then students are reassessed. Students who master a skill move on to the next.
Students who have not mastered a skill by the end of an intervention round move into one of the larger groups for a round and then return to an intervention group to repeat the toolkit. If they have not successfully mastered the skill by the second time, staff will closely review to assess what is causing the difficulty. This student may need some one-on-one instruction time.
BLAST Enrichment groups
While students who need literacy intervention are learning in small groups, students who are achieving at or above grade level are placed in larger, mixed-grade groups to develop other literacy skills such as comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and writing.
Having some larger groups allows the flexibility to fully utilize as many staff as possible in the smaller groups to better target students with higher needs. Students in larger groups participate in activities chosen to provide a positive experience and support student learning regardless of their grade level.
Topics such as Readers’ Theatre, novel studies, vocabulary games, or creative writing projects benefit all students in expanding their literacy skills. Larger groups can also be used to target other academic areas such as a numeracy focus on problem-solving or estimating.
Teaching BLAST groups
This is the crucial element for success in any intervention plan. The lessons in the BLAST toolkits are designed to provide all of the elements needed for the effective teaching of essential skills.
BLAST toolkit lessons are:
explicit- each skill and concept is explicitly taught by the teacher
systematic- lessons are taught with a consistent structure and within a predictable routine
sequential- teaching begins with easier concepts and builds to more complex
cumulative- each lesson builds on previous learning, with the teacher reviewing to ensure
mastery of concepts
multi-sensory- students are engaged in learning by using multiple sensory inputs: physical
motions (tapping, clapping), visuals (pictures, cards), verbal (saying sounds,
repeating words), and auditory (teacher modeling, shared chants).
BLAST Re-assessing and Re-grouping
Each toolkit has an embedded assessment on the final day of instruction, Day 9. The teacher assesses each student at the end of the lesson and records their score out of 10.
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Students who show mastery of the skill by scoring 80% or higher are moved into the next toolkit in the skill progression (toolkits are numbered to make this process simple).
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Students who do not show mastery of the skill will repeat the toolkit but will often be placed in one of the larger enrichment groups for a round first. When this happens it can be beneficial to have the student placed with a different instructor and a new group of students so they are given a new setting for their learning.
