Integration of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Reading Intervention

Pichel, A. (2020). Integration Of Culturally Sustaining Practices In Reading Intervention As the achievement gap persists in Minnesota between white students and students of color, many districts seek to accelerate achievement for students performing below grade-level expectations. Reading specialists diagnose and develop instructional plans to accelerate reading achievement. To accelerate reading achievement, teachers and reading interventionists must support culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students through culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP). CSP builds an understanding of students’ cultural assets to inform instructional decisions which consequently reduces stress for students in the classroom allowing increased academic achievement. To support reading achievement, teachers make informed decisions by selecting effective reading strategies based on reading content knowledge and CSP. This project connected the diverse student population at my school site to reframe Pathways to Reading Excellence at School Sites (PRESS) created by the Minnesota Center for Reading Research, reading interventions with CSP strategies. Developing a variety of instructional options to support CLD students addresses the lack of CSP strategies missing from PRESS reading interventions. These missing strategies and other supplemental materials to support CSP in the reading intervention classroom were collected on a website. To equitably share resources and information for CSP in reading intervention, I created a website, http://sustainingteaching.org. The website is organized into three components: “Know”, “Teach”, and “Learn”. The components reflect a collection of original and sourced materials to supplement the provided materials from PRESS and integrate culturally sustaining pedagogy