5 Early Reading Intervention Activities for the Classroom

Throughout the past decade, teachers have felt increasing pressure to show early reading progress amid declining national literacy scores. The Nation’s Report Card recently revealed that reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) dropped in both fourth and eighth grades, continuing declines first reported in 2019. 

Because every student has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, teaching literacy in a way that works for each learner can be difficult, especially when educators don’t have enough time or resources. Many students require early reading intervention as they work toward literacy. This support typically includes lessons about phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—all key components found in curricula rooted in the science of reading. 

For many students, especially those with reading disabilities like dyslexia, structured and explicit instruction is essential. The reading intervention activities below can help teachers reinforce key skills in the classroom while supporting a broader Structured Literacy approach.

What Is Early Reading Intervention?

Early reading intervention is targeted instruction for students who need additional support building foundational reading skills. In early elementary grades, this often means helping students hear and manipulate sounds, connect sounds to letters, decode unfamiliar words, read connected text with accuracy, and understand what they read.

Intervention can happen across different levels of support. Some students benefit from Tier 1 classroom routines that reinforce core instruction. Others need Tier 2 small-group instruction focused on a specific skill gap. Students with more significant reading difficulties may need intensive, individualized support delivered more frequently.

No matter the setting, strong early reading intervention should be explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic. Students need clear modeling, a logical sequence of skills, repeated practice that builds on what they have already learned, and instruction that responds to ongoing data.

5 Reading Intervention Activities for the Classroom

The following reading intervention activities can be used to reinforce specific foundational skills during whole-class, small-group, or partner practice. Each activity works best when it is tied to a clear instructional goal, such as building fluency, strengthening decoding, supporting vocabulary, or improving comprehension.

1. Choral Reading

In this activity, the teacher and students read aloud together, minimizing the anxiety of solo reading. Choral reading is a much-loved way to get the whole class reading along while also helping less-confident readers learn to recognize frequently used words in a more relaxed and community-based way.

Use choral reading with short, decodable passages or familiar texts that match the skill students are practicing. After modeling the text, invite students to reread with you, paying attention to phrasing and accuracy. For students working on fluency, repeated choral reading can help build confidence and automaticity without putting struggling readers on the spot.

Best for: fluency, word recognition, expression, connected-text practice

2. Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS)

Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a peer-tutoring activity in which students are divided into pairs, with each pair alternating between the tutor and the tutee. This exercise allows students to practice reading with their peers and improves their literacy, decoding, and comprehension skills. 

For this activity to work best, teachers should pair students based on their strengths and weaknesses. For example, one student might be great at pronunciation but struggles with comprehension, and their partner should be able to fill in the gaps for them—and vice versa.

Best for: fluency, decoding, comprehension, partner practice, increased reading time

3. Teacher Read-Aloud

When teachers read aloud with students following along in their own books, they emphasize intentional pauses, expressive reading, and word pronunciation. This activity allows students to develop their fluency and comprehension skills directly. 

Playing audiobooks in the classroom or at home also achieves similar results. Dr. Betsy Okello, a core team member of the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, says picking books rich in vocabulary that develop literacy skills such as rhyming and phonemic awareness can engage students and help them make sense of the text.

Best for: vocabulary, comprehension, oral language, background knowledge, fluency modeling

4. The Crazy Professor Reading Game

The Crazy Professor Reading Game adds movement, expression, and peer interaction to repeated reading.

This game has four stages: 

• Stage 1: Students individually read aloud from their portion of the text, reading with as much verbal expression as possible.

• Stage 2: Students reread their section with the same amount of verbal expression as Stage 1, adding dramatic hand gestures as they read.

• Stage 3: Taking a teach-your-neighbor approach, students partner with someone who reads a different text from their own, taking turns describing their reading.

• Stage 4: Students pair up to play “crazy professor” and “eager student.” The “professor” gives a hyped-up overview of the text and asks the “student” questions about it.

This is a high-energy activity for the class that helps facilitate reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. You can find videos of this reading comprehension game on YouTube.

Best for: fluency, comprehension, oral retelling, engagement, repeated reading

5. Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction

Fluency-oriented reading instruction (FORI) asks students to read the same section of text during the week. This process is broken into five steps:

1. The teacher reads aloud in class while students follow along in their books.

2. Students echo read, repeating after the teacher.

3. Students choral read.

4. Students partner read, with each student taking turns reading aloud.

5. Finally, students can take the text home if more practice is needed, and teachers can integrate extension activities throughout the week.

Best for: fluency, accuracy, automaticity, repeated reading, supported independence

How to Choose the Right Reading Intervention Activity

The best reading intervention activities are selected based on student need, not activity preference alone. A helpful process for activity selection involves asking:

• What specific reading skill is the student struggling with?

• Has the skill already been taught explicitly?

• Does the activity give students enough guided practice with that skill?

• Can the teacher observe performance and adjust instruction?

• Will the activity build toward independent reading?

For example, a student who struggles with phoneme segmentation may need oral sound work before a partner reading activity will be effective. A student who decodes accurately but reads word by word may benefit from repeated reading, echo reading, and choral reading. A student who reads fluently but misses the meaning may need vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension modeling.

Implementing Evidence-Based Reading Intervention Activities

Teaching young students how to read can be a complex process, considering each student has their own unique set of strengths and preferred learning styles. As you’re implementing these classroom reading strategies, it’s critical to keep the science of reading’s five pillars of literacy in mind:

• Phonemic awareness: The ability to identify the sounds that make up speech

• Phonics: The ability to match sounds to letters

• Vocabulary: The collection of words and meanings students must know to understand a new text 

• Fluency: The ability to read accurately and quickly

• Comprehension: Understanding the concept of what is read 

Before teachers introduce supplemental reading games to the classroom, students must understand the concepts they are asked to practice. You can do this by introducing mini-lessons focused on science of reading literacy concepts and adjusting instruction for smaller groups based on individual needs.

Your literacy programs should also take an explicit, systematic approach to literacy instruction. Programs should be both evidence-based and adaptive to provide differentiated instruction for effective reading intervention.

Alongside instruction, students should also have the opportunity to explore reading independently. You can support independent reading in several ways, including allowing students to choose the books they read, organizing students in book clubs based on their reading abilities, or assigning creative book reports on a story of students' choice.

How Lexia Supports Reading Intervention Activities

Teaching every student how to read can be difficult, especially when students bring different skill sets, background knowledge, and literacy needs to the classroom. Lexia® Core5® Reading helps educators support reading intervention through explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic instruction.

Helping Students Build Stronger Reading Foundations

Students who cannot read well by the time they are 8 or 9 years old can struggle to catch up with their peers academically and socially. At that age, the emphasis in school often shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. 

Early reading intervention can help educators address skill gaps before they become larger barriers to literacy. When instruction is rooted in the science of reading and supported by explicit, systematic practice, students have more opportunities to build the foundational skills they need for long-term reading success. At Lexia®, we aim to make literacy a reality for every student. 

Discover how Lexia programs can provide effective reading intervention at any grade.