The Missing Middle of Upper Grade Literacy Intervention
- DocHolbrook
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
When Tier 3 is Disconnected from Tier 1
“Everybody is a reading teacher.”
I believe that. Reading should be taught across content areas and grade levels. Strategies like morphology, word matrices, syllable division, and multisyllabic word mapping help students access complex texts, deepen comprehension, and expand vocabulary. They are essential components of strong Tier 1 instruction.
But here’s the truth we don’t say enough:
Everybody can support reading—but everybody cannot teach a child how to read if they never learned in the first place.
And that’s where this work really begins.
These Strategies Help Students Access Text—They Don’t Teach Reading From the Ground Up
Upper-grade literacy instruction often assumes that students already understand the alphabetic principle and can read words with enough automaticity to benefit from higher-level strategies.
For many students, that assumption simply isn’t true.
Word matrices, morphology, and multisyllabic word work absolutely support comprehension and vocabulary development. They help students access grade-level text. But they do not teach a student how to read if that foundation was never solidified.
And we still have students—far too many of them—reaching grades 4, 5, 6, and beyond without having fully learned how to read.
Where the System Is Working—and Where It Starts to Crumble
I want to be clear about something.
In many intermediate and middle schools, systems are making real progress with students who never mastered the alphabetic principle.
We identify them.We provide Tier 3 support.We deliver explicit, systematic instruction in decoding.
Programs like UFLI or Phonics for Reading are doing exactly what they are designed to do: teaching students how to crack the code. Students learn to decode. They learn to encode. Accuracy improves. Fluency begins to emerge.
That work is necessary. It matters. And in many cases, it’s working.
But this is where my thinking keeps coming back to the same question.
The Harder Question: Now What?
How do we move students from “I can read the words now” back into Tier 1 in a meaningful way?
Because if a student hasn’t mastered the alphabetic principle, they haven’t just missed phonics. They’ve missed years of reading, vocabulary development, knowledge building, and time in complex text.
Even after students unlock the code, they are still carrying the weight of everything they missed.
And this is where systems begin to crumble.
We Need a Bridge—Not an Exit
Providing targeted Tier 3 instruction to teach students how to read is essential. But leaving them there too long—or sending them back too soon—creates a new problem.
What’s missing is a structured bridge:
from decoding to meaning
from intervention text to Tier 1 text
from isolated skill work back into learning
This is what I think of as Tier 2.5—a deliberate space designed to move students back into core instruction.
Rethinking Support Through Three Groups of Learners
When I think about a complex fifth-grade text like Don Quixote, where the instructional focus is on character traits, I no longer think in terms of a single intervention pathway. I think in terms of three distinct groups of learners.
First, there are students who can fully access the text with Tier 1 instruction alone. They can read the words, manage the complexity, and engage in analysis with grade-level scaffolds. In this group I also include my Tier 2 kids. The kids who need a little extra support from the classroom teacher to access Tier 1.
Second, there are students who need Tier 3 support. These are students who are still learning how to decode and who have not yet mastered the alphabetic principle. They require explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills—and that work must happen outside of Tier 1.
But the third group—the one we rarely design intentionally for—are the students who sit in between.
These students have just recently learned how to decode. They often have emerging grade-level fluency. They can now read the words. But when texts become complex—longer sentences, denser vocabulary, layered meaning, and content they missed while learning to read—they struggle to understand what they’ve read.
This is where most systems break down.
The Real Gap Is Knowledge
When students learn to read later in school, the cost isn’t just delayed decoding.
It’s lost time with:
complex ideas and themes
academic vocabulary
rich sentence structures
extended writing about content
So even after students can read accurately—and even fluently—they may not have the background knowledge or stamina needed to comprehend grade-level texts.
This is why intervention cannot stop at word recognition.
What Support Looks Like for the “In-Between” Reader
This is work I’ve been thinking about deeply, especially through my collaboration and conversations with StoryShares, where we’ve been grappling with the same challenge: intervention must align to Tier 1 and prepare students to return to it. For these students, support looks different from Tier 3—and it cannot simply be “more Tier 1.”
Effective support includes:
Text sets built around shared topics or themes (such as character traits) to build knowledge and vocabulary across multiple readings
Explicit multisyllabic word instruction tied directly to the texts students are reading
Repeated and supported reading to build fluency, stamina, and confidence
Graphic organizers that guide comprehension and support writing about text
Explicit writing instruction that uses newly built knowledge as the foundation for written responses
This is strategic re-entry support.
Aligning Intervention to Tier 1 Without Lowering Expectations
If students in Tier 1 are analyzing character traits in Don Quixote, then intervention should not abandon that focus simply because students can’t yet access the text independently.
Instead, intervention should ask:
What is Tier 1 asking students to understand?
What vocabulary and background knowledge does this require?
What multisyllabic words will be barriers?
How can we prepare students to engage meaningfully when they return?
That might mean:
Using text sets to build knowledge around concepts or themes needed to access the Tier 1 lessons
Pre-teaching vocabulary
Practicing multisyllabic word decoding tied to the unit
Reading higher-level decodable text that centers on the same concepts, themes, or skills
The goal is to prepare students to re-enter it successfully.
Building Fluency, Stamina, and Transfer
This bridge must also address stamina.
Many upper-grade students who have recently learned to decode can read accurately and even fluently—but they haven’t spent enough time reading extended, complex texts.
Intervention at this stage must intentionally include:
choral, echo, and repeated reading
oral reading of connected text
sustained reading with support
opportunities to build confidence and endurance
This is how students move from word recognition to comprehension—and from intervention back into learning.
This Is the Work in Front of Us
This Is the System We Have to Build Next
The students who deserve our attention right now are not the ones clearly in Tier 3 or comfortably in Tier 1.
They are the students in between.
Students who have learned how to read words—often accurately and fluently—but who are still locked out of meaning because they missed years of reading, knowledge-building, and sustained work with complex text while they were learning how to read.
These students do not need more phonics in isolation. They do not benefit from being pushed back into Tier 1 without support. And they cannot remain in disconnected Tier 3 spaces indefinitely.
They need a system designed for re-entry.
Upper-grade literacy systems must do more than teach students how to crack the code. They must repair what was lost while students were locked out of reading: time in rich texts, exposure to complex ideas, opportunities to write from knowledge, and the confidence that comes from real participation in learning.
That work lives in the middle.
It requires protected time, aligned instruction, and a deliberate bridge between intervention and core classrooms. It requires us to stop asking whether students are “ready” for Tier 1—and start building systems that make them ready.
Until we do, we will continue to produce students who can read the words…but are still shut out of meaning.
And that is the gap we can no longer afford to leave unbuilt.
When we know better, we teach better.
See you next Sunday!
