For those of us in elementary education, we are offend the first to tell parents that their child needs extra help. Getting to that meeting sometimes is a great relieve and sometimes its not. I think that it depends on how the parents feel about the whole process along the way. RTI demands us to keep parents in the loop about student progress the whole way through. By the time you start thinking, the child needs an IEP (Individual Education Plan)  it shouldn't be a surprise.

When the student is part of the RTI process, you have the time to share with the parents and classroom teacher how the student is responding to the intervention(s). Its during these meetings that you can have the tough conversations about process/lack there of and what will happen next. Having open lines of communication is key. In Colorado, this information becomes the backbone of our IEP reports and evidence reports for giving a learning disability label. Its important to document the parents voice throughout the process and listening to them. This is a chance to educate them on what special education is and isn't. By the time you get to that conversation about looking at special education it should be a no brainer. Parents questions and concerns should have been answered about what they can expect prior to the first IEP meeting. I have created a parent checklist that can be given to parents when you send home an IEP prior to a meeting or have it for them at a meeting. You will find below a checklist that my team used last year as a checklist for ourselves. I'm planning on using it with my parents this year.

Click on the picture to grab your copy.  Have a beautiful Sunday and smile. Hug your family members a little more and tell them you love them.

I have DRA, Fountas & Pinnell, and Lexile scores, they all tell me how hard a text is. I start the a book level and then think about my readers. I think about what skills they need to have to read the book I selected with as little support from me as possible. Common Core is all about text complexity. Common core asks students to gain a deeper understanding of text. They need to be able to answer a variety of questions both literal and inferential.  Even Kindergarten students can answer higher order thinking questions. 

Out blog hopping this morning and stumbled on to An Organized Mess. She hosts a weekly Truth or Dare Linking Party. I'm linking up with Shades of Gray and a Pinch of Pink, Kiss, Laugh and Dream, and Special Teaching in the Middle for Truth or Dare.  


The Rules:

1. Follow your hosts via GFC or RSS: An Organized Mess, Shades of Gray & A Pinch of Pink, & Kiss Laugh & Dream2. Choose truth, dare, OR if you're feeling frisky - do BOTH!3. Be sure to visit a few other blogs & leave feedback on their blogs.4. Have FUN & Be YOURSELF!


This week's prompts:Truth: Have you ever stolen anything? If so, what?OR...Dare: Post a photo of yourself taken first thing in the morning right after waking up. 
Being the chicken that I am -- I suppose I'll choose...Dare: Here is a photo of what I typically look like in the mornings (other than the smile) after my morning run. 



Now looking for the coffee. Have a beautiful Tuesday.

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:

I love this book. I have many guided reading books in my library but no of them lay out what you should do for readers quite like this one. Chapter seven focuses on those struggling reading in the upper grades. We all have at least one each year, a 5th or 6th grade students reading well below grade level.  These guys are part of the RTI system regardless of their special education status. For me they get their guided reading from me--as a have a group that low. 


What stuck out to me, was Rog's comments on boy readers. When I reflect back on the upper elementary groups from the last couple of years, they are made up of mostly boys who state that they hate reading. They were as mostly not staffed and would not qualify for special education. Rog states, "that only 10% of struggling adolescent readers need work on decoding." They can decode but have no comprehension skills.  


In my building, we have pounded decoding in our students K-3 but have not focused on comprehension. We all struggle with the older kids how just have no clue what they are reading. This last year, teachers were giving The Comprehension Toolkit. (If you don't have it, it's so worth the price.) I have used it the last couple of years with my older students and this year with kindergartens. 


She also points out that choosing text is also something that needs to be at the forefront of our planning for struggling readers. That no more than 5% challenging words and concepts should be present. Easier said than done. I have used my computers readability to get an idea of how easy or hard a text is. I have found using the guided reading level doesn't always help--it gives you a range and it could an easy R/40 or a hard R/40. What makes it harder is finding text that boys want to read. Another place, I like using is Intervention Central's, Oral Reading Fluency Passage Generator. I type in the passage I'm using and it spits out readability and I get my running record at the same time. Yeah!!!


This spring I spent close to 6 weeks, reading about Titanic using the Comprehension Toolkit. A boy a requested for it because of the anniversary. By the time we were done, I had taught three strategies and made one girl so sick of reading about the Titanic. Well, I was done with it too. The three boys loved those six weeks.  I think that if I had used a novel, it would not have been as much fun and no one would have been engaged with anything. I like the acrostic that Paul Kropp has for what you need to keep in mind when looking for books for boys. You'll find a poster below. How to you engage boys in wanting to read?


In all my guided reading groups I work in student choice. No always six weeks of it but live is always better when I do. I have found boys prefer nonfiction over narrative.  I never try to water down text or books for my students. I plan my scaffolding around my readers and make sure that they have enough background knowledge to read the text successfully. I'm a firm believer that the book you choose needs to match the readers needs; both decoding and comprehension load. I use my assessments to guide the direction they need to move in.



BEAR Poster

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

I can across this quote over the weekend and it seemed like my life the last couple of weeks with everything going on in Colorado.

Last week, Storie from Stories by Storie blessed Toad-ally Exceptional Learners with an award. I have been blogging for almost a year.  I have learned so many great ideas from so many of you. 

We are all guilty about checking for students understanding this way. These are not ways to check for student understanding. Checking for understanding means that students are able to use knowledge and skills in new situations in the correct way. While recall important information is important it's the same as memorizing the information.

Progress monitoring helps you to know if students are on track to make goals. I know because of the way I have set up my progress monitoring, it takes me a day to get through everyone. Formative assessment is another way to collect data about the connections students are making, about the levels of thinks they are doing, and about the clues they are picking up from my teaching about what is important.  Formative assessment is about giving students growth producing feedback and have the opportunity to make adjustments to their work based on that feedback before the end of the unit.

One way that's quick and I can look at latter are Exit Slips. Exit Slips are written responses to questions the teacher poses at the end of a lesson or a class to assess student understanding of key concepts.  They should take no more than 5 minutes to complete and are taken up as students leave the classroom.  I can quickly determine which students have it, which ones need a little help, and which ones are going to require much more instruction on the concept.  By assessing the responses on the Exit Slips I can better adjust the instruction in order to accomodate students' needs for the next class. 


My favorite is 3-2-1 (Three things I learned, Two things I found interesting, and One question I still have).  I have created these forms I just hand them to students to fill out before they leave but you could also create an anchor chart and they use their own paper for it. I also use mine to have students rate their focus and effort.  With this check in I can change what I'm doing without having to take a day to progress monitor my students. Plus, its quick and doesn't take any extra time for them to do. I can use the data I collect to monitor progress and behavior.
3-2-1 Exit Slip Windshield Formative Assessment

I wanted to share about a great giveaway that Heather's Heart is having. This giveaway has several Pete the Cat units, that have been created by several wonderful bloggers. Make sure to pop by before this Wednesday Midnight.
Making 10 Goldfish Math

What are effective vocabulary strategies?

Last Friday, I explained the basics behind progress monitoring. I want to share one way I have found to keep both me and my students focused that's by using SMART goals. 


S: Specific, Significant, & Simple: Goals need to be specific. To set a specific goal set a well defined goal. 

Intermediate Fluency Smart Goal Primary Fluency Smart Goal

Grab your highlighter and stickies. Bring your questions. Get ready to join myself and a fabulous group of bloggers to take an in-depth look at Laney Sammons's "Guided Math." I'll be co-hosting Chapter 5. Head on over to Primary Inspired this week to get started.





I've create a new basic addition math game that can be used at home or at school. My students love playing anything "High Speed."  This game has helped my students learn the basic addition facts and master them. Once my students learn how to play the game, ask to take it home and practice so they can "beat" someone in class. The progress monitoring tools help them to see their progress and its easy enough that they can track their own progress each week. With them doing their own progress monitoring, I have seen more growth and way more by-in, than when I do it myself. They own the data and celebrate their progress. For more on progress monitoring see my previous post last Friday.  Here's a sample for you. You can find the full version at my TpT Store.

High Speed Plus 5 Addition Facts