Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) is that perfect intervention for students in your school who are reading below grade level. At my middle school, we’ve implemented a 35 minute intervention period at the beginning of our school day where EVERY student at our school receives math or reading intervention/instruction/extension. Our philosophy is that every student can become a better reader, writer, and mathematician. One intervention tool that has been instrumental in allowing us to implement our ILA period is LLI.
We have twelve Language Arts teachers, a reading interventionist, and myself (a literacy coach) who are trained in implementing the intervention. Since this period happens at the same time, it is essential that the LLI resources be organized and are ready to use by multiple people at the same time. Our elementary literacy coach taught us an awesome trip at the middle school for organizing LLI systems, and we were blessed to have awesome parent volunteers come in to make the organization come to life. Check out the pictures and tips below for ideas in organizing LLI systems at your school.
Tip #2: Use file folders to label and house the books and lessons. Each lesson has its own hanging file folder. Inside that folder is the lesson, the books for that lesson, and any handouts from the online resources that coordinate to the lesson.
Tip #3: Photocopy the lesson and all of the handouts from the online resources needed for that particular lesson. Tell teachers to make any copies they need and leave the originals in the folder as the master. This keeps everything for each lesson together and allows all of our teachers who need the resource at the same time of day to have access to what they need for each lesson.
Tip #4: We currently use the Red and Gold LLI Systems at our school, and the handout pictured above is a quick reference chart for teachers to be able to check where levels begin and end within each of the systems. Once teachers have their benchmark data on their LLI students, this chart gives them a quick idea of where to start.
Tip #5: We have norms for LLI material use. It is a valuable resource to us, and if it is not maintained, there is not money to simply buy another system. Teachers who use LLI as a resource for providing intervention follow these norms so that it continues to be a great resource.
Tip #6: Each file cabinet has a sign out sheet for teachers to check-out the lessons they take. This once again maintains the resource and allows teachers to ask each other for lessons they may need when the lesson is not available in the file drawer.
At the middle school, we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Purple LLI System, which will target students reading at levels R-W. These levels will be ideal for interventions targeting our 6, 7, and 8 students population reading below grade level.
Hope everyone is having an enjoyable school year! Can’t wait to hear from you as our years get rolling! 🙂
Tip #1: Use file cabinets to store the lessons. This will make the lessons accessible to teachers, and really makes it easier to help maintain and organize the LLI resource. As you can also see, each file drawer is labeled with the color of the system and the lesson range of the lessons contained in that drawer.
