FOR-PD Literacy Blog

We’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the RtI basic principles. Select 3 of the following core RtI principles to discuss:

• Frequent and ongoing assessment of all students.
• Early identification of learning and behavioral needs.
• Data-driven, shared-decision making on intensity and type of interventions.
• Continuous progress monitoring of a student’s response to these interventions.
• Increased levels of intensity of intervention.

With regard to RtI, what types of collaboration are taking place at your school between general classroom teachers and speech language pathologists, exceptional education teachers, psychologists, and other relevant personnel and parents in planning programs to meet the needs of learners?

The IRA Commission on Response to Intervention (RTI) is interested in learning members’ experiences with RTI. Several national surveys have been conducted that reveal the experiences of special education personnel at state and district levels. Certainly the perspectives of special education personnel are important.

However, they may not reflect the fact that an RTI approach calls for general education to address the learning needs of at least 80% of students nor the evidence that difficulty with literacy is the reason for 50 to 80 percent of learning disability classifications.

To ensure that the perspectives of classroom teachers and literacy professionals are represented in the national conversation about RTI, we would like to hear from IRA’s membership about their experiences with RTI so far, good and bad, and any comments that might guide the Commission’s work. Given that IRA membership includes classroom teachers, literacy specialists, special educators, and an array of other specialists and stakeholders, the range of perspectives is likely to be much broader than other surveys to date.

To contribute your experiences, please click on the following link and complete the survey.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229JF37HXWZ

With regard to RtI, what data or indicators do you use to ensure that some of your students’ difficulties are not due to lack of appropriate instruction?

Response to intervention aims to identify students early and thus, maximizing the probability of correcting early deficits and helping all students to succeed.

How can using RtI ensure that informed decisions are being made about the instruction students need to succeed and also offer support in closely monitoring student growth?

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a promising way for promoting school reform that capitalizes on active and meaningful collaborations between general and special education personnel. RtI helps to bridge the gaps between research and instructional practice. What is your definition of RtI? As you know there are different models and multiple interpretations. What are essential elements of RtI according to your view?

Interested in matching students with text? Thinking about ways to motivate and engage your students in the new school year?

Come and view our online video transcript of the FOR-PD Content Area Chat, “Matching Texts to Students”. This chat was conducted on July 22, 2009 with our guest speaker, Dr. Sherron Roberts.

You can now view it by visiting the following link. https://admin.na3.acrobat.com/_a826512158/p93349723/

Please feel free to share it with your colleagues.

Your Thoughts: How do you match texts with students? How will you increase the motivation and engagement with texts this school year?

According to Keene (2007), the more effective comprehension teachers: are themselves readers and writers, constantly scrutinizing their own reading and learning processes in order to provide the most responsive instruction; don’t follow recipes, scripts, programs, and prescriptions; they understand basic reading theory enough to generate enough instructional options to respond to students’ needs; use a wide variety of texts in terms of genre and level; set aside daily time to confer with kids; this is the key instructional venue; create a classroom environment conducive to scholarly oral interactions and long-term study of comprehension strategies and concepts; and, provide lengthy periods of time for students to read every day.

• How do you rate yourself as a reader and writer?
• How do your abilities and understandings help you relate to your students’ needs, engage your students with text, and assist those struggling with reading and literacy skills?
• Do you feel you reflect enough on your own learning and reading skills/strategies?

E. Keene (2007), in her book To Understand she asks and argues:

• Is the text we’re using more appropriate for fluency instruction or comprehension instruction?
• Do students need comprehension strategy instruction if all they’re expected to do is retell and answer questions?
• We may need to rethink our ideas about the nature of comprehension.

“Are we teaching kids to do all the things that comprehension strategy instruction asks us to do if we are only expecting kids to live up to an out-of-date, low-level definition of comprehension? Kids have intellectual capacity to do so much more. I asked far, far, far too little of students when I was in the classroom and I wonder how far-spread this habit is in our country today, both in the richest and poorest districts.”

What are your thoughts about what we do or not do in the area of comprehension instruction?

Good readers are extremely active as they read. They are aware of why they are reading a text, make predictions about the upcoming text, and associate ideas they are reading about to their own background knowledge (Pressley, 2000). These are just a few characteristics of an active reader.

See a landmark article by Michael Pressley titled, “Comprehension Instruction: What Makes Sense Now, What Might Make Sense Soon” http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/pressley/index.html

What active comprehension strategies do you teach in your classroom? How do you choose which strategies to use?