It consists of supplemental instruction provided by the first-grade classroom teacher rather than by other personnel. The program has been tested in several locales and has proven that teachers can intervene to support struggling readers.
Children meet daily in a small group with the classroom teacher.
Instruction consists of working with students as they read aloud, and focusing on phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, word recognition, and writing within the context of the story. Reading selections generally are quite short so that children can read the entire story. Stories and retellings of picture books are divided into four categories according to their length, and children progress through these reading materials during the school year. By late February or early March, children are reading independently and working together in pairs. This is not too surprising, however, because EIR does not provide individual tutoring, and the overall intensity of the intervention is actually quite modest.