Response to Intervention: Collaborating to Target Instruction (Transcript)

Teacher: It’s not an “s”. It sounds like it. What does it sound like?

Student: “C”?

Teacher: There you go.

Donna Barrier: The way we deliver RTI has everything to do with the end results that we’ve seen for student achievement. Today there is a small discrepancy between our highest achieving students and our lowest achieving students.

Beth Rickerman: Our overall vision and mission would be for every child to experience success at their level, whatever that level may be.

Amanda Kuhlman: RTI is “response to intervention”, it’s making sure that every child receives the support that he or she needs at any given time and that might change weekly.

Mary Krenke: It’s a team atmosphere and over these past years with the RTI the walls have come down, we’re all in it together.

Teacher: I could take some of your kids to rea– just for the “Read Naturally” part if your groups are too big, you know?

Donna Barrier: Through the years we moved from being segmented individual classrooms to what you see today. Everything is done by the grade-level team.

Teacher: Yes.

Donna Barrier: When we first started moving students about in the building some parents had a few questions, “You mean, my child won’t be in one classroom all day?” No, we’re going to try to provide more targeted instruction working with them in small groups.

Teacher: The rest of my friends are gonna join me. Grab a stool and a pencil. Take a look at the first problem.

Mary Krenke: The difference is between the tiers, tier one, tier two, and tier three is tier one is the general population, universal instruction.

Mary Krenke: The snowman’s nose is a carrot!

Students: The snowman’s nose is a carrot!

Mary Krenke: What word should we underline?

Students: Carrot.

Mary Krenke: Carrot.

Amanda Kuhlman: Tier two is when a student is not seeing their potential. They are receiving a small group in addition to the tier one– so outside of my classroom or with me at a different time of the day.

Melanie Lyons: They’re always in a small group, usually no bigger than six, with a teacher, with a paraprofessional.

Dara Dutcher: Using an intervention, using the technology.

Amanda Kuhlman: Oh, this one looks cool.

Dara Dutcher: Tier three is even further intervention. I pull them a separate time during the day to give them an extra push of instruction.

Melanie Lyons: That is with groups from one, two, maybe three and they get that about three to four times a week.

Student: Our b- buried–

Teacher: Very good, Norman.

Student: –deep inside the earth.

Brooklyn: Instead of having to have one teacher the whole time, then I get to go to different teachers and experience, like, new classrooms. It was kinda hard to learn my schedule in the first week, but in the second week I got it down.

Dara Dutcher: Okay, if you are one of Mrs. Rickerman’s friends you need to grab your Chromes, head on out to guided math.

Donna Barrier: The students are very proud of what they do. They feel empowered to move from teacher to teacher. They feel in charge of their day.

Heather: My oldest child struggles in reading, so he goes with a group of students that are like himself. So he’s not stuck in one classroom that has twenty-two kids with different levels. So I think he’s gonna get some individual attention in those areas and he doesn’t have to feel like he’s out of place because he’s not at the top.

Amanda Kuhlman: You know, if you see a child who is completely lost in a general ed classroom all day long that wears on a kid emotionally, socially, and academically, obviously, and with the RTI program, they’re receiving support that’s planned for them.

Dara Dutcher: The small group I think is helping, ‘cause he feels–

Teacher: Confident?

Dara Dutcher: He feels confident.

Teacher: Yeah.

Teacher: Right. Less threatening, too.

Dara Dutcher: It is less threatening.

Teacher: In class he’s lost. He’s just not–

Teacher: All right. So if you look at our sheets that we have that show where they’re at, is there anybody that we need to adjust?

Dara Dutcher: We do have to meet a lot grade-level-wise. We have to share a lot of information.

Mary Krenke: Sitting down and talking about our students that we are concerned about, they’re tier two, they’re tier three. What can we do? ‘Cause ultimately that is our goal is to get them back on tier one.

Amanda Kuhlman: You know, every three weeks or so we might have a group of changes.

Teacher: My A.H. is at a ten and I’m thinking we might want to bump him to tier three.

Teacher: Okay.

Teacher: Our data is consistently showing that they’re making progress.

Teacher: The other person that’s in your room, Rachel, is J.C.

Teacher: He is reading like crazy.

Teacher: No!

Teacher: Yes!

Teacher: Right before Christmas break maybe moving him back to tier one and see what he can do. That’s awesome.

Donna Barrier: Over the years our special education numbers have greatly diminished due to our RTI. Today, we only have about four percent of our student population that receives special education services.

Melanie Lyons: Excellent.

Teacher: You know, at the end of the year our students really make gains when looking at reading tests.

Teacher: This type of programming works.

Schools That Work

Meyer Elementary School