RTI and My Classroom

RTI is so ingrained into how things are done at my school that I had been using the process without even realizing it. With the support of my mentor and master teachers, I used my universal screening assessment at the beginning of the year to create small groups of students with similar abilities and needs. Then I determined how much intensive instruction each group would need and built my instruction around that. I planned intensive small group instruction based on the needs that were demonstrated by the assessment. Ongoing formative assessment has helped me to adjust my groups and my instruction as needed, as well as to gauge the effectiveness of my small group and whole group instruction. After doing research into Response to Intervention, I realized that RTI is exactly what I’ve been doing in my literacy class.

Tier I

Currently, I have a total of fifteen students in my literacy class. From that number, I have created four small groups with similar needs. Nine of my students are on track to reaching grade level. I meet with these students about once a week to check in and practice some standard second grade skills in a smaller setting. These are my Tier I students (split into two small groups). I know by their growth that most of their needs are met during my whole-group instruction. In a true RTI model, I would not meet with them in small group at all. However, I do like to meet with them once a week for about 15 minutes to assess their progress and to give them more individual feedback than I am able to do during whole group.

Tier 2

An additional four students are behind but do not have far to go to catch up to their peers. These are my “at risk” Tier 2 students. I was meeting with these students in a small group setting twice a week for 15-20 minutes. After doing more research into RTI, I realized that I needed to adjust my schedule to meet with them more frequently. Starting this week, I made small changes to my benchmarking schedule so that I will be able to meet with them three times a week. I am excited to see how they will benefit from this extra intervention time, and I am hopeful that it may be the extra push they need to get them to grade level. Their greatest needs are fluency and comprehension.

Tier 3

Lastly, I have two students that are far behind their grade-level peers. One student moved here about two weeks ago from Mexico. For the purposes of this blog, we will call her Cecilia. I still have much to learn about her. She reads very laboriously and slowly, but with a high level of accuracy. Despite her slow pace, she also can demonstrate that she understands what she read by re-telling the story and answering comprehension questions. However, her spelling is very poor. She will often leave out a letter if a word has a consonant blend. I am very curious to see what kind of growth Cecilia shows with the support she is getting at this school.

My other student struggles enormously with reading fluency. For this blog I will refer to him as Pablo. I noticed his fluency difficulties at the beginning of the year and set up an intervention for him. We meet daily to do a one-minute oral reading fluency test. Pablo has a bar graph that we examine each day before taking the test and set a goal. After the test, we review how many words he read correctly compared to his goal and how many errors he made. We practice reading those error words again. Then he colors in his score. Pablo reads the same passage four days in a row, and he is encouraged by the improvement he makes with each read. He knows that when he reads a new passage for the first time, he will not reach the same level of the previous passage that he had practiced four times. However, we set a goal that is higher than his first read of the previous passage. Our ultimate goal is that the first read numbers go up each time. At the beginning of the year, this was the case. However, in the past few months his fluency has stagnated. His spelling also continues to be very poor. Like Cecilia, he will often leave out a letter when there is a consonant blend. He also confuses his R and his D, and I have asked our speech pathologist to meet with him to determine if this is also a speech issue.

The Problem Solving Process

It has become clear that Pablo needs more support than I can give him. I filled out a referral to the Problem Solving Team at our school and informed his parents of my concern. We have a meeting set up for March 7 during which I will present my data and explain my concerns about Pablo’s needs. From there, the Problem Solving Team will decide what actions to take. A possible action would be to place him into a Tier 3 intervention group with the special education teacher. I hope that this is the outcome of this meeting because I believe his needs are greater than those of my other students, with the possible exception of Cecilia.

Pablo used to be part of a Tier 2 intervention group. Now that a student has arrived with similar needs (Cecilia), I have created my own separate Tier 3 group that I will meet with four times a week for 15 minutes each. I will also continue my ORF intervention for Pablo, at least until we can discuss whether it is a good strategy during our Problem Solving meeting.

It is not a “true” Tier 3 intervention because I am not a specialist and I do not have a systematic, intensive, research-support program to give them. I will continue to use my knowledge of fluency and phonics instruction for their intervention. We will see what happens for Pablo as a result of the problem-solving meeting, and what kind of growth Cecilia shows in this school setting. In the meantime, I will give them the best Tier 3 intervention that I am able.

The image demonstrates the Tiers of intervention in my classroom and how much instruction (whole and small group) my students receive in a week.

RTI and Assessment

The RTI process is driven by data. According to the National Center on Response to Intervention, universal screening assessments, given to all students, are used to identify students that are at risk and may need a different tier of support. It is important that teachers used research-based assessments that are not affected by cultural and language differences.

Once students are placed into tiers, the teacher must continuously progress monitor them to gauge the effectiveness of the intervention. Teachers must constantly re-examine data and make instructional decisions based on the data, whether they be to adjust the instruction to better meet students' needs, move a student to a more intensive tier or "graduate" a student back to tier 1. The higher the level of intervention, the more frequently a teacher must progress monitor because the student has farther to go. The teacher must be assured at all times that the students are making adequate growth. If this is not happening, a teacher must adjust her instruction, increase the intensity of the intervention, or get other specialists involved. Assessment ata drives the RTI process at every level, ensuring that no child is overlooked at that educators have a clear, objective way of monitoring every student's achievement.

Information and image from the National Center on Response to Intervention.

Works Cited

National Center on Response to Intervention. What is RTI? Retrieved February 3, 2013, from http://www.rti4success.org/whatisrti

What is Response to Intervention?

I would describe Response to Intervention as a systematic, deliberate and data-driven process for tailoring a child’s education to his or her unique needs and abilities. The goal is to help each student achieve grade-level expectations with the understanding that different children will need different degrees and types of support to get there. Response to Intervention (hereafter referred to as RTI) creates a clear and objective framework for determining these needs through the use of standardized data. Thus a teacher is not relying on subjective classroom observations or personal opinions of a student’s ability. It is “no excuses” approach to ensure that every student’s educational needs are met, regardless of background, economic status, home language, or any other factor.

Response to Intervention is characterized by early identification of students that are at risk for learning issues and reaching them through targeted instruction, or interventions. The intention of these interventions is to give students the additional support they need to meet grade-level expectations. RTI was initially used as a tool for special education and early reading instruction. Currently the use of RTI has expanded to all subjects and grade levels(Samuels,2011).

History of RTI

RTI gained leverage nationally when the Reading First program, a component of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, recommended its use and when the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act mandated that states must allow districts to use RTI as one method for identifying students with disabilities. Since then, its prevalence has grown exponentially. In a 2010 survey, 61% of district administrators either had already implemented RtI in their districts or were in the process of implementing it (Samuels,2011).

How RTI Works

According to the book Teaching Reading to Students Who Are at Risk or Have Disabilities (Bursuck & Damer, 2011), RTI is a type of multi-tiered system with the additional step that it can be used to identify students with learning disabilities. In a multi-tiered system, regular research-based assessments are given to all students, and those that seemed to be struggling were placed into more intensive tiers of instruction. Tier I is the general classroom curriculum, ideally taught to all students, Tier 2 provides more small group support of the curriculum, and Tier 3 often consists of an intensive, alternative program given in small group, usually by a special education teacher (Bursuck & Damer, 2011).

Effective Tier I instruction should be sufficient for about 80% of students. An additional 15% or more will need focused support in Tier 2 to be successful. These students will receive the universal instruction in Tier I, but will need extra small group review and practice of the concepts and skills in order to truly master them. The remaining 5% will have needs beyond what Tier 2 intervention can meet. They will often need an alternative program that is explicit and systematic. Some of these students may have pervasive reading disabilities and should receive special education services. Students with learning disabilities may be included in Tier 3 interventions or become a separate Tier 4 group, depending on the model (Bursuck & Damer, 2011).

Works Cited

Bursuck, W.D., & Damer, M. (2011). Teaching Reading to Students Who Are at Risk or Have Disabilities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Samuels, C.A. (2011). Monitoring Progress: Response to Intervention’s Promise and Pitfalls. Education Week, 30(22), s2-s5. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org.

Image taken from http://www.sterncenter.org/resources/rti

Welcome to My Blog

Purpose

The intention of this blog is to explore the Response to Intervention process from multiple perspectives and at different levels. I will look at the current research behind RTI and how it is impacting schools, districts, and even our entire education system as it becomes increasingly prevalent. I also hope to examine the different ways that the RTI model can be applied, to everything from identifying students with learning disabilities to giving students the support they need to master a single learning target. Most importantly, I want to share my own experiences as a teacher with using the RTI process in my own classroom. In this blog I will share both the impact it is has on my own instruction and on my students’ achievement, as well as the challenges that come with implementing RTI.

Who am I?

As for the blogger, I am a second grade teacher in my second year of teaching. I teach in a dual-language school in a Colorado ski resort area. Half of our student population consists of native Spanish speakers, many of whom live below the poverty line. Their parents generally work in construction, landscaping, housekeeping and domestic services. Most of them live in trailer homes, sometimes with large families. The other half of the student populations consists of native English speakers from generally affluent families. These students ski every weekend of the winter, are involved in various extracurricular activities and often travel to foreign countries during vacation. It is a fascinating place to work, both culturally and socially.

I teach the second grade curriculum in Spanish. Students receive the core subjects of math, social studies and science in a mixed native language group. They spend 2 weeks learning these subjects in Spanish, from myself, and then they will switch to 2 weeks learning in English from a different teacher. We have two groups of 22 students that alternative between the two teachers. Literacy is the exception. In kindergarten through second grade, my school has a larger focus on native language instruction in literacy. Students are divided into native language groups and receive literacy class in their native language. Thus I teach Spanish literacy to native Spanish speakers. All students also receive a shorter daily class in their second language (English as a Second Language or Spanish as a Second Language). This class is also literacy based, but with a larger focus on oral speaking skills and expanding vocabulary. Therefore I teach Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) to native English speakers each day.

RTI in my School

I am fortunate to work in an award-winning elementary school in a progressive district that is committed to adapting the best research-based practices of our field. The school has been implementing RtI for reading instruction and behavior intervention for at least 5 years. Currently, our greatest focus is to close the achievement gap between our native Spanish speakers and our native English speakers, which is also to say between our poverty and non-poverty students. The gap is getting smaller, but we are still not there. As a Spanish literacy teacher, this goal is close to my heart and often on my mind. I know that if I can help my students become proficient readers and writers in Spanish, then the transition to proficiency in English will come more easily for them. I also feel that Spanish proficiency in itself is an important skill to foster as our country becomes increasingly bilingual. I am committed to helping my SSL students become fluent speakers, readers and writers of Spanish.

The Data Teams Process

My district began implementing a new form of RTI, the Data Teams process, this year. The Data Teams process is not intended to replace the form of RTI we have currently in place to help us determine reading interventions and identify students with learning disabilities. Instead, it is on on-going way of using formative assessment to determine the level of support each student will need to master a specific learning target or skill and place them in groups, or Tiers, based on their needs. This process is a collaborative one. Teachers go over assessment data, place students in the tiers based on the data, and then plan targeted instruction for each tier together. This is a powerful process that helps teachers became more deliberate and systematic in their instruction to meet the needs of every student, for any learning task. I witnessed the impact it can have on achievement first hand through my own participation in the process.

In this blog, I will be blending these personal experiences with a wider view of what the implementation of RTI, in many different capacities, means for both Colorado and national education system. I encourage you to comment on my blog with your own experiences, thoughts or suggestions about Response to Intervention!