Chapter 5 - Intensive Interventions for High-Risk Learners:
Mobilizing Experts and Resources
Tier 3 is about intense and further time, expertise and assessment. It is also important to make sure that the Tier 3 and the core lessons relate to each other. The chapter starts off with an example of a Tier 3 meeting that is predetermined through teacher collaboration and careful consideration of that individual student's needs and interests.
Conditions Necessary for Effective Intensive Intervention Efforts
Condition 1: High-Quality Core Program "Struggling readers struggle more because they get far less appropriate instruction every day than the achieving students do" (as quote from Allington, p. 78).
Condition 2: Access to Expert Teachers - computers, volunteers, and paraprofessionals are not experts.
Condition 3: Individual Instruction - has to be one-on-one.
For interventions to matter, these five components must be in place:
- The teacher should play a critical role in assessment and instruction - only teachers can make those important split-second decisions that are responsive to individual students' needs.
- The intervention should reflect a comprehensive approach to reading and writing - students need to see the whole picture in each subject as tied to and provide engagement and understanding of meaningful and real text.
- The intervention should be engaging - students NEED to see the relevance and feel successful to be motivated and have a chance at being life-long learners.
- Interventions should be driven by useful and relevant assessments - F&F recommend engagement in literacy tasks in a variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes.
- Interventions should include significant opportunities for authentic reading and writing - students need many opportunities to actually read in authentic situations more than they need practicing skills and strategies related to literacy.
Planning Intensive Interventions
Consider the following questions: (these are things I am reminded of that we are already doing that could be considered for Tier 3 lessons as well)
- What is the purpose of the lesson? (TYWL)
- What are the student's background knowledge and prior experiences? (Do Now or Pretest)
- What are the targeted skills or strategies for this lesson? (TYWL or Step 4 in Data Teams)
- How will essential vocabulary be taught?
- What will students produce? (TYWL, Guided/Independent Practice or Closure)
- What future skills will the student need? (Closure, Check for Understanding, Posttest)
Is this similar to what happens when students are pulled out of classrooms now?
What will need to change for this to take place?
Does our district have the funding to provide the time, expertise, etc.?
At our level, will these interventions be done by classroom teachers, special education teachers, or others?
Chapter 6 - The Role of Assessment in RTI2:
Progress Monitoring for Student Success
There are four broad purposes for assessment:
- progress monitoring
- diagnosis
- program evaluation
- accountability
"Assessments drive the entire RTI2 system!" (p. 95). See figure 6.1 on page 96 for assessment types, purposes, and administration guidelines.
Formal assessments provide data that allows us to compare student performance to expected levels. I think of the annual assessment calender that is provided by the district each year. These tests measure knowledge of what was previously discussed and provide a snapshot of a student's progress at a certain moment in time.
Curriculum-based measurements (CBM) are the day-to-day and frequent checks for understanding that occur in the classroom that "are meant to gauge progress and determine effectiveness of instruction and intervention" (p. 98). A good instruction and intervention plan ensures that a student gets both opportunities to master and apply knowledge.
Informal assessment can include CBMs, observations, checklists, rubrics, and self-assessments. It is important for teachers to keep track of these as well. Notes and any other documentation will provide a teacher with specific information to inform their teaching, share with other teachers, and communicate with parents.
"Data collection is useful only if the next step is data analysis" (p. 102). This goes right along with data teams. Data should result in improvement in student work and teacher practice.
Can each teacher come up with one thing to universally screen and track among their classes? Is this too much?
If we stick to non-fiction writing, what will our report show - rubric score overall?
Is there a way to track the use of CBM or checks for understanding? We always say, what gets checked gets done...
In response to Rachel’s reading (and my own thinking while reading chapter 5) I think in order to really implement intensive interventions with efficacy, the district level has to give us the staffing. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I don’t think we currently implement individual intense interventions. Most of the programs we have in place seems to be Tier 2 interventions. I think in order to really be successful a few things need to happen. We are going to have to look at the school day differently. Teachers are going to have to be active in helping special education teachers (or other interventionists) with planning. This is probably the biggest piece. Teachers and interventionists MUST work together. The other thing that stood out to me was their frequent mentioning of silent sustained reading. We used to do this daily in reading classes – but didn’t really feel like it was doing much. According to F&F we need to bring it back. Maybe once or twice a week?
ReplyDeleteChapter 6 reminds us of why we use assessments. Rachel asked if there is something every teacher can screen and track. I think math and reading do this with the SMI and SRI. I think it could be done in all areas – but with a lot of direction. We would have to specifically state what teachers are to track and how. I think our overall report would be for the areas of non-fiction writing. (So – a report for summarizing.) Again, we need to tweak rubrics to make sure we are getting the information that we want and feel is important. Hopefully our new lesson plan form will encourage checks for understanding. Since Mairanne said that is what they will be using for observations, I think they will be monitored. Hopefully this will show teachers how important continuous formative assessment really is!
I have to make this quick because I have a sleeping/sick baby on my lap and only 14% of the battery left on my computer...a couple of things that stood out to me: co-teaching is hard. It is hard because, with all of the other obligations that all teachers have, co-planning is not often prioritized. We need to find ways to make this (co-planning) a priority if we expect our teachers to co-teach. How do we do this?
ReplyDeleteAnother thing, SSR. We always did this at Sudlow, but I was always skeptical due to the mixed results that we received. Some kids, those that invested in it, got something out of it, while some kids got nothing out of it. However, after reading Schmoker's book and seeing how much he emphasized reading for enjoyment I think that we must invest in SSR on a regular basis. Like all things, when teachers fully invest in something the students will, too.
And finally, I agree, we must continue to make sure that all teachers see the value of formative assessments, AND that that ARE USING them!
Again, Eric Ewald is anonymous.
I do not believe we will get additional staffing, but I do feel we can utilize all of our current staff differently. Our special ed teachers will have a daily resource period, but some kids will be Tier 3 but not special education. What then? I still feel the biggest challenge is 85% of our students should be proficient with quality initial instruction.....that did not happen with our non-fiction writing, summaries or other lessons. If we accomplish that it will make a HUGE impact on overall achievement. We do not want to ignore level 3 students, but again that is not many of our students in a true RTI2 model. The importance of formative assessment is clear, but everyone's knowledge of formative assessment is not clear. We will need to continually provide modeling and examples to all staff...maybe by content. We need to remember to ask a question and then go and collect the data...not look at a bunch of data and try to find a question...hard to remember to do this since teachers get so much data. This process will focus our data teams. We also need to work on looking at both cause and effect data...something we did not spend a lot of time with last year.
ReplyDeleteI agree that SSR can be beneficial, but more often it was a glorified study hall because there was not structure or expectations...how could this look different and still be reading for pleasure?
_ Marianne
I agree with everyone- where do we find the time and resources to implement the interventions students need? I hope to be able to plan with the special education teachers and maybe some of the interventions put in place for the students with IEPs will also benefit students in tier 2 and 3. However, I don't know how (what time) to implement the interventions for tier 3 kids.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to continue to model formative assessment in our meetings. It may be important to point out when we are formatively assessing. I don't know if all teachers will notice when we are doing it if we don't announce it. Maybe a few of the alternate data team meetings could focus on formative assessment.
We used to do SSR during advisory-everyone in the building was reading. I enjoyed that time and so did most of the students I had. We would take time share what our books about.
I loved the questions on page 87-89, thank you for highlighting them, Rachel, and providing the way we do them! Bravo!
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Eric on the SSR, and with Marianne--it can easily become a glorified study hall. I think that the books we ordered last year for social studies and science will provide teachers with the resources to make this work in their classroom. Reading classes do this, but I feel that the language arts classes also need to allow students to read a text of their choice.
What does this look like? In my previous teaching experience, I gave one day a week to alternating between reading and writing. We would either write and then share (open mic style--we called it W.O.W., Writings of the Week) or read quietly and then share by reading a short section aloud, or summing up what they read. This worked for me, and my students loved it. I read, wrote, and shared along with them.
Oh, and one more thing: TEACHERS NEED TO MODEL THIS. They need to put aside their work and read silently next to the students, not at their desk.
I do worry about how to get those tier three students the one-on-one they need. As we know, they are not always our IEP student. What can we do as classroom teachers when there are not paras or sped teachers available that day or at that time? Small groups might help, but they still do not give the students the intense intervention they need. Hopefully with our on-going focus on students tracking their grades and looking at their own data, they will continue to be motivated and come in before or after school for extra assistance.
It is hard to comment at the end after everyone's thoughts. Some things that stood out to me were:
ReplyDelete1. SSR-If we are taking away reading logs, our focus could now be on discussing books with students, not worrying about how many pages they read. We could also utilize more writing instruction with students by having them write about their reading. We will have to be careful with this though because we do not want to turn it into a book report after each book. I was thinking more higher level analysis of texts. We all know that students HAVE to read silently on the ITBS and I am not sure we give them enough practice at simply reading silently ON THEIR OWN.
2. As Rachel commented, whatever we decide, we have to account for it. Any adult will let things slip if they know they will not have to be accountable for it. How this will be done with fidelity is not completely clear to me yet but something that seriously needs to be considered. We always start the year with a bang, but let things slip around winter break.
3. Eric talked about the difficulties of co-planning. It can be hard to consistently find time, but it's not impossible. Becky and I have planned together for years now, but it takes effort on both parts. I think there is plenty of time in the school day. Even if staff do not have the same prep period, we have before school, after school, and email. We must find efficient ways to discuss teaching with our Special Ed teachers, paras, coaches, and so on because as Marianne said, we will NOT get more staff.
4. Formative assessment does not mean we have to give a test. I hate the word "assessment." I think checks for understanding are less threatening and more specific. I agree with Marianne that we need to continually model what formative assessment looks like. Staff meetings would be a good place to model this.
Enjoy your weekend before the craziness starts! :)
I love the SSR idea. When I taught 5th grade my class day started off with it. I made sure to model reading myself as I would sit in the front of the room and read. We started off reading for 125 mins and built up to 35 by the end of the year. After we completed our SSR time we would journal about what we read and on Friday's would share out.
ReplyDeleteThe tier 3 is always a concern for me. I think that there is so much that these type of students need to do in order to catch up that how can we possibly get to them and all of the other students in the classroom? Someone above made the comment that this is where some help from our district would make a differnce.
Anonymous....Aaron