Staff of the Arkansas Department of Education, Special Education Unit State Improvement Grant would like to encourage schools to use the Arkansas Literacy Intervention Matrix, a Web-based literacy resource for Arkansas educators that has been "field-tested" in schools across Arkansas for over a year. The Arkansas Literacy Intervention Matrix has received very positive feedback from Arkansas teachers for helping to meet the literacy needs of all learners in the classrooms.
The Arkansas Literacy Intervention Matrix includes (a) “best practice,” research based, curricular approaches linked directly to the Arkansas Frameworks to use with all students, including students with disabilities, to maximize total literacy success; (b) probes to assist teachers in functional analysis of possible deficits in literacy, linked to (c) sample lessons providing a framework to address a particular skill deficit. These lessons include accommodations and modifications for students in need of Tier II, III, IV and V levels of support, to be used when students are not acquiring critical skills in these curricula and need different and/or more intensive strategies to facilitate mastery across the five essential elements of literacy.
Acknowledgement: The completion of the Arkansas Literacy Intervention Matrix was supported by the State Improvement Grant received from the Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education (H323A030002). Content and any opinions or recommendations reflected in this tool do not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Education, and such endorsement should not be inferred.
As with any document involving the identification and integration of research-based interventions developed by multiple authors in the field, great care has been taken to appropriately reference these authors’ work and to respect the copyright of all materials. Nonetheless, if any author or representative believes that a different level of acknowledgement is due, the party is invited to contact the ADE-SEU directly so that any issue caused by any inadvertent oversight may be addressed and the necessary full credit given.
The Arkansas Department of Education, Special Education Unit would like to express sincere gratitude for the expertise and dedication of the members of the ADE-SEU Literacy Task Force (2004-2006). Due to hard work and commitment to the children of Arkansas, there is now an outstanding resource that teachers across the state, and possibly the nation, will be able to implement in the classrooms to help make all learners successful.