Teach What Counts. Cut What Doesn’t: The Heart of Effective Intervention
If there’s one phrase that captures the essence of strong intervention, it’s this:
Teach what counts. Cut what doesn’t.
In an educational landscape filled with trendy tools, endless curricula, and competing priorities, it’s easy for intervention to become cluttered. But the most effective instruction-especially for struggling readers and language learners-comes down to intentionality. Every minute matters, and every skill taught should move students closer to independence and mastery.
🎯 Focus on What Moves the Needle
In intervention, we don’t have the luxury of time. That’s why it’s critical to focus on high-leverage skills-the ones that unlock access to the rest of the literacy system.
That means prioritizing:
Phonemic awareness and phonics: The building blocks of decoding and fluent reading.
Oral language development: Vocabulary, syntax, and expressive language that drive comprehension.
Morphology and word study: Teaching how words work so students can decode, spell, and understand unfamiliar words.
Comprehension strategies: Explicitly modeling how to make meaning, not just read words.
These are the skills that matter most. The rest-the glittery extras, the worksheets that look busy but don’t build skill-can go. When we teach what counts, students make real, measurable progress.
✂️ Cut What Doesn’t Count
Cutting what doesn’t count doesn’t mean stripping joy or creativity from your lessons. It means removing the noise so the signal-the actual learning-comes through loud and clear.
Ask yourself:
Does this activity directly support the skill I’m targeting?
Can I connect this back to reading, writing, or language development?
Will this move my student toward grade-level independence?
If the answer is no, it might not be worth your precious intervention minutes.
🧠 The Bottom Line
When we teach what counts and cut what doesn’t, we honor both our students and our craft.
We give them the skills that matter, delivered with intention and precision.
Because in intervention, less isn’t less-it’s focused.
And focus is what leads to growth.
