Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies for Small Groups (HELPS-SG) Program

When asked “How does HELPS-SG work?” educators often want to know what teaching strategies are integrated within the program.

HELPS-SG strategically combines each of the instructional and motivational strategies most associated with improved outcomes for small-group reading fluency instruction. Specifically, HELPS-SG systematically integrates each of the following teaching and learning strategies, all within an engaging 15-20 minute session with a group of students:

• Repeated reading of ability-appropriate text
• Model reading (i.e. having students listen to a more skilled reader read a passage aloud)
• Systematic error-correction procedures
• Verbal cues for students to read with fluency and for comprehension
• Goal-setting (that is, practicing text until a predetermined performance criterion is met)
• Performance feedback, combined with graphical displays so that students can easily see their progress and improvements
• Systematic praise and a structured reward system that highlights students’ accomplishments and increases their motivation to do their best during each HELPS session

In addition to its integration of the aforementioned strategies, HELPS-SG is effective because it allows students to work through a rigorously developed curriculum of reading passages (that is, the HELPS reading curriculum of passages). Using specific decision rules for students to read each respective passage at a set fluency level, this systematic reading of passages within the HELPS Curriculum ultimately allows students to build their text reading fluency. Research with HELPS-SG not only shows that students develop better text reading fluency for brand new reading content, but they are also better able to comprehend the new content. The HELPS-SG Teacher’s Manual provides additional detail about how HELPS works.

Because all students must develop reading fluency in order to become successful readers, HELPS-SG can be used with learners of all ages as long as they have at least some proficiency in basic decoding skills. Most often, HELPS-SG is implemented with students in grades 1 through 5. However, research and practice have also shown how HELPS-SG can be effective with learners who are in grades 6 and above and have not yet developed proficient text reading fluency.

HELPS is a highly structured intervention that can be used by many types of professionally trained educators, including classroom teachers, reading specialists, intervention teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists working in schools, librarians, and more.

We also have had success with training community volunteers to use HELPS-SG with 100% accuracy. However, not all community volunteers will have the ability to successfully manage small groups of students (such as by keeping them all fully engaged and motivated during instruction). For this reason, if community volunteers are needed to use HELPS-SG, professional educators who are strong HELPS-SG interventionists should carefully oversee any community volunteer who is trained to use the program and ensure the volunteer can work well with a small group. Our past work suggests that volunteers who get high-quality training, as well as several months of experience with the HELPS One-on-One program, are more likely to implement HELPS-SG effectively.

If you want to learn how to implement HELPS-SG, click one of the links below to get started:

• List of upcoming HELPS-SG trainings for individuals who want to learn the program.
• Contact us to learn how we can train you and others from your team. Team-based trainings include, for example, multiple educators from one school or school district, or multiple community volunteers from one organization.

Although training is required to fully learn how to implement HELPS-SG accurately and effectively, the following demonstration video offers an example of what a HELPS-SG session looks like when used with a group of third grade students. There are three students in this group, but HELPS-SG can be effectively used with groups of 2-5 students at once.

Demo video of HELPS-SG

After watching the demonstration video, if you want to learn how to implement HELPS-SG, click one of the links below to get started:

• List of upcoming HELPS-SG trainings for individuals who want to learn the program.
• Contact us to learn how we can train you and others from your team. Team-based trainings include, for example, multiple educators from one school or school district, or multiple community volunteers from one organization.

Please contact us if you would like to preview a demonstration video of HELPS-SG being implemented virtually.

Yes, HELPS has been developed and researched for use in both a one-on-one (adult-student) and small-group instructional contexts. The page you are reading now focuses on HELPS-SG, but from this link you can learn more about our HELPS One-on-One Program.

Read more about virtual HELPS-SG implementation in this section.

Of course, every student has a unique set of characteristics, reading strengths, learning needs, etc. It is therefore impossible to know how many HELPS-SG sessions are needed to best support every individual student, but past research with the HELPS programs has provided a wealth of information related to how often it should be used for it to be highly effective for most students. The following summarizes key information on this topic and we encourage you to contact us if you have any questions.

• A HELPS-SG session can be comfortably implemented in 15-25 minutes once the adult has been well-trained.
• Research shows that HELPS-SG can significantly improve students’ reading fluency and comprehension when at least 3 sessions are provided each week.
• It is not recommended to implement more than one HELPS-SG session in a day; instead, when improving text reading fluency, it is important to spread out the sessions over several days.
• Although research shows that students who receive at least 3 sessions per week make significant reading improvements over time, students can certainly benefit by getting more than 3 sessions per week if that is preferred by the educator.
• Students appear to benefit most from HELPS programs when they receive at least 30 total sessions over the course of at least 7-10 weeks. However, this is an estimate and program impact is influenced by numerous factors.
• Research suggests that some students can make significant improvements with fewer than 30 HELPS sessions, but we recommend that students receive at least 30-50 total sessions because, at this time in our research, this is most associated with the strongest impact.

The HELPS-SG Teacher’s Manual provides even more information about how frequently to use the program as well as considerations for assessing its effectiveness with individual students and groups of students.

If a school uses a tiered approach to providing struggling learners with interventions (such as RTI or MTSS models of intervention), HELPS-SG can easily be used within a tiered intervention model. In fact, many schools throughout the U.S. are using HELPS-SG at Tiers 1 and 2 of common 3-tier models, and they use our HELPS One-on-One Program at Tiers 2 and 3.

For more information about using HELPS-SG in a tiered intervention model, please contact us.

Although the HELPS programs were originally designed for students in elementary school grades, we quickly learned that teachers wanted to use HELPS for students in grades 5 and above who still did not have proficient text reading fluency. In some cases, educators also began using HELPS with adult learners. Since HELPS was originally developed in 2009, we now have research and numerous educator testimonials indicating that the program can be effective with learners of any age who are needing to improve text reading fluency. In this way, HELPS can be used effectively with students in elementary, middle, and high school, and even with adult learners.

With HELPS-SG more specifically, research studies have documented its effectiveness with students in both elementary and middle school.

However, to use HELPS-SG with students in grades 6 and above, the teacher will need to ensure that the motivational strategies integrated within the program are age appropriate. The HELPS-SG Teacher’s Manual provides guidance about age-appropriate considerations and adaptations.

We can also support teachers with supplemental materials. To use the one-on-one or small-group HELPS programs with students in grades 5-8, please download important supplemental materials using the button below. If you would like to use HELPS with learners from grade 9 to adult, please contact us and we can offer materials and/or support.

Download PDF

Preliminary evidence suggests that, on average, English Language Learners (ELLs) benefit as much from the HELPS programs as non-ELLs. This preliminary evidence is true for both the HELPS One-on-One program and HELPS-SG program.

When evaluating a subset of HELPS Program research participants who received English as a Second Language (ESL) services, ELLs who received HELPS tended to improve their reading much more than ELLs who did not receive HELPS. Furthermore, differences between these groups were evident across a range of different reading skills, including comprehension.

In short, preliminary findings support teachers’ use of HELPS with ELLs.