Do we have enough tools to provide Response to Intervention?

Do we have enough tools to provide Response to Intervention?

While the idea of "response to intervention" is excellent for helping students work on their own specific problems, it is also not the best answer for older children.  Within tier one the expectation is that all students are being taught with prevention in mine.  Although, it tends to move the other way since we don't have the tools, the research based methods, to implement in small groups especially at the upper grades.

I teach elementary students, but I imagine it is extraordinarily harder to teach a middle/high school student difficult content when they can't comprehend the text. In regard to this, adolescents need to be taught using response to intervention in mind; teachers need to overcome resistance to incorporate responsive literacy practices into their daily lessons (Brozo, 2009, p.280.)  Although this may be hard due to scheduling purposes, starting with the question "what could go wrong, or what misconceptions might they have?" will help guide the instruction to meet all of the students needs.  For students moving up the tiers, we need to make sure the intervention is meeting their needs at that time and that we are still motivating them to do what's expected.  Since there isn't much research on what intervention methods work at upper skill levels, perhaps we should start collecting data on what we see words and what doesn't.

"In other words, RTI at the secondary level is only as good as its preventative supports.  If content teachers fail to offer responsive literacy instruction to benefit every student and differentiated assistance for those in need of extra help, then the preventative potential of RTI is lost (Brozo, 2009, p.280.)  The bottom line is that we need to do our best to meet the students where they are at and scaffold our instruction to bring them to the understanding of the content.


Inspired by the following article:

Brozo, W. (2009). Response to Intervention or Responsive Instruction? Challenges and Possibilities of Response       to Intervention for Adolescent Literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 277-281.

Let's Make a Change

     The teachers file in to the media center ready for their first day of pre-planning before the new school year and low and behold there are all of these new changes.  Our kids aren't performing as well as we wish they were the administration tell them.  They have set up a new professional learning community format that meets every Thursday morning, and we are all going to have a specific job, and our focus is going to be on Math.  Now the vibe that is buzzing is...why are they taking away our planning time for this silly meeting that won't be worth my time?
 
     For many years schools have had students take standardized tests in order to determine if students are proficient in the major content areas.  These test scores are now determining how much support a school needs in order to continue to promote the highest levels of student learning.  Kathryn Boudett has created a way for schools to work collaboratively in order to make the changes necessary to improve student learning and ultimately those test scores everyone is worried about.  Their protocol addresses ways to look at school wide data, make sense of it, and help teachers work their way into putting the wheels in motion.

     At the beginning of the school year it is important to set a structure using the teachers input with what would look best in their schedules, use the right tone as teachers feel more free to take instead of "pass blame" for bad test scores, and establish times to regroup to see if the strategies implemented are working.  Data is not the easiest thing to look at and analyze, by turning it into good visuals teachers will be better able to focus on the specific needs are not get bogged down by numbers. The next step after looking at the school wide data you have is to turn it into a priority question.  "The Right Question Institute has created a particularly engaging and productive protocol called the Question Formulation Technique...the basic premise of this technique is that for people to take ownership of an issue, they need to participate actively in defining it." (Boudett, 2014, p.85)

     Once you have your focus question as decided by teachers, you will delve deeper into the "learner centered problem" that when solved through different teaching strategies will help meet the larger goals for students.  In this step you would have teachers in their collaborative teams, while using team norms to stay focused on data and not on the teacher, look at multiple sources of student data to help find a solution.  The data may bring out a lot of thoughts and ideas, but it is important to connect the learning to teaching and not any of the outside needs of students.  Allow teachers to establish their own definition of effective practice in order for them to know where they might need to make changes.  "We have found that schools that use questions and data to establish a culture of inquiry in which teachers are participants rather than targets find ways to examine practice." (Boudett, 2014, p.125)  I think this will be the hardest part because no person in this world wants to admit what they are doing is wrong.  If we allow teachers a "safety zone" they will open their eyes to what can be changed.

     Lastly, in order to use data to improve instruction you need to make an action plan.  This plan includes deciding on an instructional strategy that will solve the problem, agreeing on what your plan will look like in the classroom, putting your plan into writing, and deciding on an assessment of the plan so you know if it is working or not. (Boudett, 2014, p.134-135)  I think the one of the most important steps here is putting the plan into writing because teachers and students need to be held accountable for their learning. The other important step is knowing if your efforts were effective and worth your time.  Teachers and students thrive on knowing they are making progress, so assessing your strategies as you go and at major points during the year are crucial if you want to see gains in student learning.

     I will be interested to see if I help lead my first grade team towards Boudett's ideas of assessing data and implementing change, will it be more effective than last year when there was absolutely no professional learning team structure?

Boudett, K. (2014). Data wise: A step-by-step guide to using assessment results to improve teaching and learning.      Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.