RTI - Chapters 5 and 6

Hi! Don't forget to respond to Jen's entry on Chapters 3 and 4. Time flies...

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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...

 





Chapter 3: Quality Core Instruction: A Necessary First Step

“It shouldn’t go without saying that all students need access to quality instruction. Without high-quality initial instruction, significant numbers of students will require supplemental instruction and intensive intervention that are costly and time-consuming.” p. 29

How can we ensure that all students are receiving quality instruction? I think the feedback sheets that Marianne and Joe are going to use will help.

The first part of quality instruction is establishing a purpose. We expect teachers to post and go over Today You Will Learn but I don’t think this has been implemented with fidelity. I like how today we decided that TYWL needs to be in a complete sentence and use a skill/verb and concept/noun. This will make it more clear for students and teachers. The students need to know what they are learning and why.

Teacher modeling is a critical component of releasing responsibility to the students. Teachers must provide an example of what they are thinking when they “solve problems, read, write, or complete tasks.” Modeling is NOT a “detailed explanation, nor is it a time to question students; rather, it is an opportunity to demonstrate the ways that experts think.” p. 34 Teachers need to model how they comprehend, solve unknown words, and use text structures (grammar) and features (charts, figures, etc).

The next part of quality instruction is guided instruction-the “we do” of the lesson. Guided instruction should be based on the teacher’s check for understanding. “Guided instruction provides teachers with an opportunity to engage students in thinking without explicitly telling them what to think.” p. 39

Quality core instruction involves productive group work (you do together). Students must first be taught how to work together. “Students learn more and retain information longer when they work in productive groups.” p. 40. I think group work is essential but how to we ensure that it’s being used effectively? I know some teachers used Becky and Amanda’s different colored marker idea.

Next, students must work independently (you do alone). The independent work should be a review and reinforcement of what was previously taught. It should not be based on new. This step allows students to build confidence. Homework should be based on content that students have been exposed to for at least 3 to 5 days.

Chapter 4: Supplemental Interventions: A Second-Level Defense

Remember, 75-85% of students should make sufficient progress through core instruction alone. Tier 2 is supplemental intervention and approximately 10-15 percent of students at one time or another requires supplemental instruction in addition to the core instruction. This chapter focuses on Tier 2.

One takeaway point I think we all need to keep in mind is “providing every student with the same thing a every other student isn’t fair; providing each student with what he or she needs is fair.”

I like this analogy: “Supplemental instruction is much like the medication that doctors order. The prescription comes only after a careful analysis of the symptoms and the patient’s medical history. A treatment is prescribed, and the patient’s progress is monitored. The dosage and duration of the treatment are determined in advance, but that doesn’t preclude the doctor from running further tests if the medication does not seem to work.” p. 52-53. This is where continuous checks for understanding are vital. We need to monitor the effectiveness of the intervention.

Interventions should include:
*A feedback mechanism for student and teacher to continuously foster learning gains

*Peer interaction to further scaffold student understanding

*Explicit instruction that emphasizes skill building

*Contextualized instruction that emphasizes skill application

*A process for informing parents of gains so that they can celebrate success and offer praise and encouragement (p. 53)

The interventions need to be aligned with the quality core instruction and delivered by a highly qualified teacher. When implementing interventions, students should be working in small, similarly skilled groups and given. The interventions need to be in addition to quality core instruction-not take it’s place. Page 54 offers some times that supplemental intervention could be used.

One point I found that contradicts what we have to do is the tutoring. It should be aligned with the core instruction. In the tutoring that we offer, we are doing programs that are not related to what is being taught in class. I’m not sure how this is supposed to help the students.

Enhancing RTI
How to Ensure Success with Effective Classroom Instruction and Intervention
Douglas Fisher / Nancy Frey


Chapter 1 – Choose Your Adventure:
How RTI2 Affects the Educational Environment

“Teaching every child is hard work. With that hard work, though, comes a group of learners who are prepared to participate in society. This learning occurs in the classrooms or well-prepared teachers who are undaunted by student learning variations because they believe that each child is an individual and that individuals exhibit differences in growth due to many factors, including carefully selected instructional interventions.”

The focus of Chapter 1 is a comparison of the interventions and supports in three scenarios which include a traditional school, a RTI school, and an RTI2 school. In the traditional school earlier iterations of the prereferral process were often seen as a necessary formality that almost always led to special education testing. The RTI school the focus was to examine interventions that might prevent referral to testing. The difference in the RTI2 school is to enhance the RTI process and continually examine classroom instructional design. Consultation and collaboration with other professionals and families is essential.


Chapter 2 – Response to Intervention:
Defining and Refining the Process

RTI was designed as a way to encourage teachers to vary instruction and time to create a constant level of learning. A core assumption of RTI is that all students can reach high levels of achievement if the system is willing (and able) to vary the amount of time students have to learn and the type of instruction they receive. In the old view of learning instruction and time were the constant and outcomes/learning varied, but in the new view of learning instruction and time vary and outcomes/learning are the constant.

Tier 1 is the core instruction and 75-85 percent of students should make sufficient progress through core instruction alone. Tier 2 is supplemental intervention and approximately 10-15 percent of students at one time or another requires supplemental instruction in addition to the core instruction. Tier 3 is intensive intervention. Approximately 5-10 percent of students will require an intensified approach that includes more time, a lower teacher-student ratio (typically 1:1), individualized lessons that target weaknesses while leveraging student strengths, and a sophisticated cadre of assessment tools to monitor progress and diagnosis difficulties. It is imperative that teachers first consider individual students’ responses to quality core instruction before recommending supplemental and intensive interventions. They must also determine which students respond to the interventions and continue adapting instructional routines and time to achieve the desired results. RTI2 begins with a strong core instruction built on a gradual release of responsibility model (Fisher/Frey) with strong assessment to monitor progress, and improve instruction in all tiers. RTI2 emphasizes a collaborative approach to classroom support and anticipates that some students will periodically cycle through interventions.
-Marianne

Chapter 7 Making Math Meaningful

Chapter 7 starts off talking about the same type of teaching methods as the other subjects. He says again that we need to take a look at our standards for math. We need to figure out if the standards we have are preparing students for their futures, and not just their educational futures, but their lives in the workforce. It seems our current system prepares kids for more math classes, but not necessarily for the way they will be using math in the "real world". Thought the chapter he reinforces the idea that most people do not sue more than basic math skills in complex situations. Most people don't use algebra in their jobs or lives. With that in mind, does it make sense for students to take certain classes if there is no connection to the real world? Schmoker also went right along with what one of our speakers at the conference said also; we need to teach fewer concepts, but teach them deeper.

From my experience I can agree that students need to take the basic math skills and learn to apply them in many different situations. Unfortunately students continue to struggle with word problems, even when it is an addition problem.

Schmoker also made the point that we need to make math more "real world". To do this, we need more reading, thinking, and writing in math. Math has two fundamental aspects: calculation and interpretation. Students need opportunities to express their "quantitative interpretations in arguments and proposals". We can do this with text books and real world documents. Schmoker had the idea of collections several really good newspaper articles that allowed student to read, think, write, and argue about while using numbers. I really like this idea. He suggested doing it weekly. He also stated that raw data is a great way to get kids talking.

Along with other chapters, he mentioned again that we need to teach kids to read the text book. He says that math problems can come down to understanding one word and if a kid isn't reading the book correctly they could be getting it all wrong. He says that we need to teach them to read the texts slowly and deliberately and make sure they understand every word and sentence. I liked the writing prompts on p. 213, I thought these would be a great way to get kids to write out what they are thinking and then they will be understanding math more deeply. I like these prompts better than the "explain" that is in our texts. Theses give a little more guidance.

The best thing I took from this chapter is having kids read articles and using those to get them to work out some problems using basic math skills. I am sure we have done this some, but doing it consistently could help a lot of our students.

Chapter 6 Redefining Inquiry in Science

Schmoker believes that the science curriculum needs to have lots of changes. Science curriculum has gone from being taught with an emphasis on on content to now where we chose to try and engage students with hands-on activities.

He lists 5 things he believes are the essential ingredients to an effective science curriculum:

1. close reading from portions of a science textbook

2. Regular reading and discussion of current science articles

3. Interactive lecture

4. Writing-short daily pieces to more formal pieces

5. A reasonable number of carefully designed science labs and experiments

Schmoker again refers to the method of Task, Text, Talk which is an effective combination of purposeful reading, writing, and talking.

I thought it was interesting how Schmoker compared the U.S. to high-achieving countries and found that they focus only on science lesson content, where the U.S. pushes that aside in favor of "engaging students in a wide variety of activities" He then goes on to say "worse yet, the majority of these activities have little or no connection to essential science content." I translate that to hmmmm what experiment or lab am I going to do today, when it might not even fit with what I did yesterday!

("Less is more; we must keep our focus on essential science concepts, learned deeply") pg165

It was really interesting when Schmoker began talking about standards and the amount of topics a teacher must cover in a short period of time. He called it "curriculum chaos" and it is when a teacher knows that can't cover all of the standards so the pick out their favorites. I can definitely see this happening in schools.

More Literacy and fewer labs!!!! Research shows that science is learned more from close reading in science textbooks than completing labs. Labs focus more on procedures than the learning goals. You provide the mastery of the standard through language (deep rich discussions). Students love to compare their thinking with others and communicate their thoughts. I think their is less pressure on students when they are in a one-on-one discussion setting so they are more likely to tell their thoughts.

As we continue to read this book Schmoker's thoughts and ideas seem to move from one subject to another. Focus on a few standards and master them, use textbooks for deeper understanding, write and discuss what you are learning and check for understanding along the way to help you with your instruction.

I hope this will help start some discussion!!

Chapter 5 Social Studies with Reading and Writing at the Core

I am liking this book more and more.

Schmoker makes a lot of great points about social studies instruction and continues his less is more philosophy in this chapter. While the chapter focuses on social studies, any subject area could be substituted. Schmoker says literacy is the key to effective social studies instruction (as well as all instruction, in my opinion). He discusses the fact that history should be taught with a heavy focus on making connections and that both literature and history help us to understand ourselves better by understanding the influences around us.

Social studies as well as other content areas are extremely important because they are literacy in use. In language arts and reading classes, the students get the fundamentals and strategies, but literacy is at the core of the other subjects. The same strategies and basics need to be discussed, modeled and implemented to get further into the content.

Social studies is extremely important because it is a place where students have many opportunities to argue and dissect written and spoken arguments. Students need more reading, discussion, analysis, writing. Often in content area classes there are "too many activities to keep students engaged, but illiterate." (p. 135) I feel that if we focus more on less standards, going deeper into the few standards we decide upon, we will eliminate the possibility for that problem and more authentic assignments and more authentic literacy will take place. Students would be given more opportunities to analyze and argue through writing and discussion, which would increase more knowledge as well as modeling of this by reading more.

Other things worth mentioning:

On page 138, Schmokers gives a detailed process for reducing standards. I like this approach much better than the process outlined yesterday at the 90/90/90 conference by Cathy Lassier.

There are great examples on pages 140-161 of task, text, and talk. I think it would be beneficial for our staff to read certain chapters (language arts, chp 4, social studies, chp 5, etc) and discuss them in their departments (with our DRT team??).

There are good ideas of a scaled back rubric for social studies on page 145. I think there could be a place for this, but I do think we should look closely at the rubric from Lead and Learn they presented on Wednesday as a building-wide rubric.

Modeling, modeling, modeling. Again Schmoker mentions the importance of modeling and explicit examples of expected tasks.

My favorite quote from the chapter is on page 153: "To those who say there isn't time, I can only say: Yes, there is." Perhaps they are trying to teach too many standards, or assign too much busy work or ineffective tasks.

Chapter 4: English Language Arts Made Simple

The best piece of advice Schmoker gives us throughout this entire chapter is that all teachers must incorporate reading, discussing, and writing into their discipline.

This chapter focuses on the importance of literacy and how our current English Language Arts standards are preventing our students from becoming literate adults.

“Adolescents entering the adult world of the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives” (Schmoker, 93).

The first part of this chapter deals with the life changing power of broad, abundant reading. Schmoker defends reading and says “wide, abundant reading is the surest route out of poverty and the limitations that impose themselves on the less literate” (Schmoker, 95). When I read this quote, I made an instant connection to our school because we do have a high poverty rate of students who come into our building, and we have all seen them succeed in not just reading, but math and science also. This just proves his statement. People cannot use poverty as an excuse why students cannot perform. What can we do to ensure our current and future students have as much growth as our past students?

Schmoker then goes on to discuss the different forms of reading and why they are all equally important.
1. Literature: Schmoker introduces the concept of using literature to seek out understanding of ourselves and the world around us, not to recognize tone or structure.
2. Nonfiction and Literary Nonfiction: “Nonfiction books are among the richest sources of knowledge” (Schmoker, 98).
3. Newspapers and Magazines: He goes on to reiterate his passion for reading, discussing, and writing about current articles and opinion pieces.

How can we, as a leadership team, encourage the rest of our staff to incorporate literature, nonfiction, and newspapers into their curriculum whether it’s on the pacing guide or not?

The next part of this chapter talks a lot about reading in elementary and how it is hindering our students’ ability to read for learning, and is instead focused on learning to read. We must provide opportunities for our students to learn to read well by reading a lot for meaning.

Schmoker believes that the killing of reading will continue unless we take a hard look at the standards we have in place now, and minimize them. He suggests we adopt four key standards that could be used in all disciplines and at all levels: argument, drawing inferences and conclusions, resolving conflicting views and documents, and problem solving. “We need clear, simple standards that sensibly specify how much reading, writing, and speaking they will do” (Schmoker, 115).

He ends the chapter by again stressing the importance of reading, discussing, and writing. He describes three schools and explains how they have been successful with student achievement by using minimal standards that everyone can digest and adopt.

Looking at the four standards, is this the direction that we want to go? We have worked so hard at narrowing our focus on summarizing and even though these standards seem easy enough, I am reluctant to throw something new at our staff and not give what we are doing a chance to grow even more. However, I do know that our English Language Arts standards are too much. Looking at the new Common Core for grades 6-12, there are close to 30 pages of standards for English Language Arts. How do we begin to narrow the standards to fit our schools needs?