Each year, schools and districts review policies and practices to consider ways to improve and enhance student achievement. Defer Elementary School continually strives to be a better school on a daily basis. School Improvement is not a topic for the administrator, or a binder on a shelf – it is the way we do business at Defer. So what are we doing right now in the area of School Improvement? I thought you’d never ask!!! I’d like to share a specific action we are taking for School Improvement each month in my newsletter.
RtI
Response to Intervention ( RtI) is a multi-tier approach to the early identification and support of students for their learning needs. The RTI process begins with high-quality instruction and universal screening of all children in the general education classroom. Students struggling on a topic are provided with interventions at increasing levels of intensity to accelerate their rate of learning. Throughout the RTI process, student progress is monitored frequently to examine student achievement and gauge the effectiveness of the intervention. RtI is not a special education intervention, but is a part of general education.
So what does RtI look like at Defer? Three times a week, for a minimum of 20 minutes in each session, students are grouped for RtI work in their grade. The focus of learning is based on the data from instruction in the classroom. Let me share two on-going examples of RtI during the month of November with you.
In 2nd grade after six weeks of reading instruction, data was used to group students for RtI. During RtI time four teachers come together and work specifically with smaller groups on the reading skill areas needed. Two of the teachers are the Reading Specialists and they pull those students needing very intensive reading interventions. During that same time the two second grade teachers then regroup the remaining students into a decoding group and a comprehension group, based on the classroom data. At the end of six weeks of RtI, we will access students on the specific skills taught during the RtI session to evaluate and plan for the next RtI session.
In 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, their November RtI sessions are focused on Math. After teaching the entire math unit, they used the data from the math chapter test to group students for reteaching. During this RtI session, some students are in groups working on telling time because that is where they are struggling, while another group is doing enrichment work around factoring because the data reveals that they have mastered the basic understanding and would benefit from enrichment on the topic.
To put it simply, no longer does the student that did poorly on subtraction on the math test just move on to the next topic. They are given intensive interventions on that topic to help them master it.
So who is a part of our RtI teams? The answer is - everyone at Defer. For instance, Mrs. Raab and Mrs. Moses are a part of the 1st grade RtI team and it is scheduled in a way that they can work intensively with a small group or an individual student. For the month of November they are working on Fluency with 1st graders as a part of RtI. Kindergarten is including parents as a part of their team, and they are doing RtI at the end of the day when parents are available. Karen Labarge, Sheila Russo, and Stefan Harris, our Title 1 team, are a part of RtI teams at all grade levels. Clearly, we are in this together!
Will we make a difference, our assessments will tell us, and that information will keep driving where we go with each 6 week session of RtI this year.
Have questions? Ask!!! The staff and I are anxious to share and so excited about the work we are doing!
