While classroom teachers are grappling with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and its implications for instruction in the core curriculum, designing effective intervention to meet the needs of diverse struggling readers poses another challenge, especially because Response to Intervention (RTI) as an instructional framework frequently emphasizes the teaching of discrete skills. Experts have concluded that intervention focusing primarily on foundational skills without instruction in comprehension is not only contrary to literacy research, but also antithetical to the shift to contextualized literacy instruction, resulting in fragmented instruction for those most in need. At the same time, inherent within both CCSS and RTI is the goal for students to read increasingly complex texts. While the CCSS presumes the internalization of the foundational skills to identify the central ideas and themes of a text, isolated skill instruction continues to dominate RTI.

Bridging the divide between RTI and the CCSS will require thoughtful and deliberate scaffolding to provide universal access for all students. Two approaches for advancing student reading achievement include the time-honored strategy of shared reading and not-quite-as-familiar-strategy of close reading, which provide the pedagogical anchors for this article.