I send home or give parents lots of things over the year--data, progress reports, and newsletters. I have many parents that ask for about reading levels about what students need to do either to move up or simply give them an idea about where they are in the big picture. The "Parent's Guide to Reading Levels" contains both DRA and Fountas and Pinnell reading levels 1st to 6th grade with a brief list of major themes that have to be mastered. The other form I use to track my students over several years. It's great for IEP meetings because everyone can see the students progress over the years. It is labeled in Fountas and Pinnell. My building uses both-we give the DRA twice a year and our core reading curriculum in labeled in Fountas and Pinnell. I'd love to hear what you share with parents throughout the year. Have a great Wednesday!!

Part 2 of RTI Q and A:

1) What is student progress monitoring?
Progress monitoring is defined as repeated measurement of performance to inform the instruction of individual students in general and special education. The amount of progress monitoring depends on where the student is in the pyramid. A student our is only needing core instruction-benchmarks assessments are all you need to do. Like DIBELS where you give beginning, middle and end of the year screening. Students in Tier 2 it's suggested that they are progress monitored bi-monthly.

Tier 3 students weekly or bi-weekly. It should be noted that progress monitoring Tier 3 weekly allows you to make changes more quickly and move these students through the referral process in a timely fashion. Depending on the skill, I'm working on, I do daily collection with things like letter identification, letter sounds, or number identification.

I'm a huge fan of having my students do their own graphing of their progress. It keeps them motivated and moving towards goals. I also send on these graphs home weekly. This is one way to keep parents in the loop on student progress. Parent involvement in the RTI process is huge and in Colorado required by the time a student is staffed for a learning disability. Part of our paperwork is to document what we did to keep parents informed through the whole process.

2) What are culturally and linguistically responsive practices?
The use of culturally and linguistically responsive practices by teachers involves purposeful considerations of the cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic factors that my have an impact on students' success or failure in the classroom. Attention to these factors, along with inclusion of cultural elements in the delivery of instruction, will help make the strongest possible connection between the culture and expectations of the school and the culture(s) that students bring to the school. Instruction should be differentiated according to how students learn, build on existing student knowledge and experience, and be language appropriate. In addition, decisions about Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions should be aware of students' cultural and linguistic strengths and challenges in how they respond to instruction.

In Colorado, (and I'm sure with others) this means making sure core instruction in the classroom uses those research based strategies. That doesn't mean teachers providing interventions should tune in to those strategies. This is were my team tends to get hung up in the referral process. We have to prove that students are receiving those strategies in core and not making progress-when compared to others ELL students in the grade. This is where progress monitoring is a huge help.

Sites to check out:

In the world of Common Core, we have to shift our thinking to mastery and what it looks like as we move through core. Everyone has there own definition of mastery. Which makes it hard to figure out how mastery is defined.


Determining what's acceptable evidence of mastery is key.  It's not enough to simply identify what knowledge and skills are essential. You have to determine what evidence will show that students have  mastered the essential knowledge and skills.  If not, how will you know if they have mastered the information???


Robyn Jackson (Never Work Harder than Your Students), points out that to figure out what mastery is to ask two questions:
1) What will students be able to do? 
              
Meaning you have to look at your core curriculum and determine what is the essential content and  processes that students need to know. 


2) What criteria you judge this demonstration of mastery?


Example might be: students correctly multiply fractions 80% of the time; correctly identify 45 of the 50 states; or correctly answer 75% of the reading questions on a novel.


There is no answer to this question. A lot of this boils down to your end of the year testing. It also depends on your stated learning goals.  Once you have determined the criteria for mastery, you can determine what summative assessment will best reveal this mastery.


The key elements in mastery learning are:

• Clearly specifying what is to be learned and how it will evaluated
• Allowing students to learn at their own pace
• Assessing student progress and providing appropriate feedback or remediation
• Testing that final learning criterion has been achieved

With the new school year right around the corner (4 weeks and counting-where did the summer go), I have had several people ask me some questions about Response to Intervention. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll try to answer those questions the best that I can.

Student Progress and Request for Assistance

Progress monitoring. What's to say. Some do it without thinking about it. While others of us run and hide. Some think that in a data rich environment that there's no need. This may be true but if you had prove how students were responding to instruction, could you? In an Response to Intervention Model (RTI) it has to be done.

•  accelerated learning because students are receiving more appropriate instruction;
• more informed instructional decisions;
• documentation of student progress for accountability purposes;
• more efficient communication with families and other professionals about students’ progress;
• higher expectations for students by teachers; and
• fewer Special Education referrals.

1. is she making progress towards a grade-level expectation or long-term goal?
2. is she making progress towards mastery of a targeted skill?

Sight Word Fluency Prediction and Record Sheet
Tic Tac -At Word Family

I went in this morning to get some work done before returning next month. Before leaving for break, I was prepping data for our intervention team to review and make decisions on. These students were all getting the same intervention, "Just Words." We had pretested grades fourth through sixth with the WIST. We found that in both fifth and sixth that well over 60% of our students were needing some sort of phonics based intervention. (This was not a shock to us but to our administration is was. I fail to see why since these kidoos didn't have core phonics while in the primary grades nor did they ever have mastery of phonics skills.)

It was determined that Just Words would become part of students core instruction instead of Words Their Way. Just Words became core based on the number of students who needed the program. This was not the case in fourth grade. After pretesting students in fourth grade, less than six were determined to need a phonics program in this case it became a tiered intervention program.  The hope for fifth and sixth is that students can move from Just Words to Words Their Way. Just Words moves to an intervention for those who continue to need it. Even if student's don't move, the increase in their scores is fabulous and the carry over has been seen in students writing. Which is even better.

Our primary students receive daily phonics instruction as part of their core instruction provided by their classroom teacher. There are students who are either pulled out or seen within the classroom who receive the same lesson again or it is pre-taught to them; in this case it is a double-dose. A double dose is getting the same instruction twice but in a different way. In most cases this is done by the classroom teacher but not always. In my building double-dosing is done on top of what ever intervention the student is receiving and is seen as part of the expected core instruction.

The National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, has materials to help parents and teachers get the answers they need about RTI and LD. They define confusing terms and explain new education models, such as response to intervention and its relationship to the methods schools use to determine whether a student has a learning disability. They suggest questions that can be asked to teachers and administrators at your child's school and identify information you can expect to receive from the school.

NRCLD's goal is to help educators, policymakers, and parents understand the complexity and importance of making sound decisions regarding whether a child has a specific learning disability. Their  research in this area--including studies of the role of and best practices associated with responsiveness to intervention.

Big changes in education law. Big changes in your role as a teacher. Big changes in your classroom. You need help. Their materials are designed to answer your questions about specific learning disability determination and responsiveness to intervention. They include "how to" tools to help you navigate RTI and video segments of teachers describing how they have answered some of the same questions you may be facing.

A resource that I've shared with parents and teachers is their "ABCs of RTI." It takes the confusion out of a very complex system.

What resources do you share with parents?

Response to intervention or RTI is one of the most difficult things to get up and running in a building. It's hard to get everyone on the same page with student needs and finding creative ways to help them in the classroom.

I come across this article yesterday, as we were getting ready for Kid Talks. Kid Talks have become our first round in how we set out RTI. It doesn't matter if they have an IEP or not but it gives teachers a change to talk with others and gather ideas about what they can do in the class. Kid Talks are short, sweet and are facilitated (get keep the team on track and on time). The teacher walks away with a plan of attack, a SMART goal, and has planned  help--if needed. Since RTI focuses on what is happening within the classroom, I don't have to make everyone but go when invited by classroom teachers.

RTI is new to everyone and explaining it to parents is even harder. I gave this article to teachers at my building to read and decide if they wanted to share it with parents. I like it because it provides information that a parent can relate to and understand. So much of everything for parents on RTI is written from a researchers or teachers point of view. The National Center for Learning Disabilities has many other great informational pieces be sure to check them out.

A Parent's Guide to Response-to-Intervention   

If your looking for move information about RTI check out CEC's RTI Blog.

I'm always looking for new ideas on how others support or get support in their classrooms to meet students needs--how does your building work through RTI?