LITMIR.BIZ

      INTRODUCTION

      Before we arrive at a destination, we need to make a few decisions about our journey. We might know where we want to go, but first we need to accurately analyze the facts. Analysis takes into account the starting point, travel options, and time parameters. For example, one may be able to walk or board a train, bus, plane, or car to get to a given city. However, some modes of transportation are preferable over others; each choice has both benefits and disadvantages. If there is traffic on a road, then traversing on foot for five blocks is quicker than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a taxi. I often print a map, use a phone app, consult a friend, or look for directions online. Navigation requires planning, knowledge, step-by-step procedures, resources, collaboration, and then, after arrival, a review on whether the travel choice was a good one.

      We might know where we want to go, but first we need to accurately analyze the facts.

      Schools are faced with similar decisions as they navigate their curriculum to assist or accompany their diverse learners to safely and happily arrive at their learning destinations. As an educator, instructional coach, and author, my goal for writing this book is to offer evidence-based “travel options” that will ease teachers’ pedagogical journey for schools and their classrooms.

Response to Intervention

      Teachers can use instructional tiers to help students who do not begin their journey at the same starting points. Diversity mandates that instructional decisions respond to multiple learner levels; this assists teachers in determining the best teaching approaches to reach each student. Ultimately, teachers must consider that learners are often at different levels of content mastery, even if they’re in the same classroom. The response to intervention (RTI) approach addresses these levels.

      RTI is a multitiered system of supports (MTSS) that offers diverse routes and step-by-step approaches such as differentiated instruction and universal design for learning (UDL) to help learners achieve mastery. RTI and MTSS are not separate ideas or concepts but partners that value how the core instruction is delivered to learners. Multitiered instruction is basically an instructional interaction. It is how teachers deliver the core instruction to students who learn differently. If teachers introduce, remediate, and enrich student levels with the whole class, small groups, and individuals, then they can effectively address student diversity.

      RTI is often delivered in three tiers, as shown in figure I.1.

      Source: Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012.

       Figure I.1: The traditional RTI pyramid.

      According to Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, and Chris Weber (2012):

      The pyramid shape is wide at the bottom to represent the basic instruction that all students receive. As students demonstrate the need for additional support, they move up the pyramid, receiving increasingly more targeted and intensive help. Fewer students should need the services offered at the upper levels, thus creating the tapered shape of a pyramid. The pyramid is also traditionally separated into tiers, with Tier I representing gradelevel core instruction, Tier 2 supplemental interventions, and Tier 3 intensive student support. (p. 11)

      Tier 1 instruction is for the whole class or small groups; not all learners master the learning initially. Tier 2 intervention provides supplemental instruction in small groups, as needed; and Tier 3 intervention provides instruction for individual students who require additional scaffolding and practice. To further reinforce this concept, Buffum and colleagues (2012) provide an inverted pyramid, which focuses on “a school’s collective attention and resources to a single point: the individual child” (p. 11). The foundation for RTI is that schools should not delay helping struggling students until they fall so far behind that they then qualify for special education, but instead “should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need” (p. xiii). See figure I.2.

      Source: Buffum et al., 2012.

       Figure I.2: The inverted RTI pyramid.

      They contend that the pyramid “should be wide at the top to represent access to the core gradelevel curriculum that all students deserve and need” (p. 11). This initial core instruction should meet the needs of most students and embrace differentiation. However, beyond initial instruction, some students may need more focused, targeted instruction, and the school should respond by individually attending to the needs of each of these students.

      Instruction can address oral expression, listening comprehension, early literacy skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary development, written

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