Navigating the Core Curriculum - Toby J. Karten

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computations, mathematical problem solving, and critical-thinking skills across the grades and disciplines to help learners achieve academic success. Instruction and assistance to know and display appropriate behavioral, social, and emotional skills are also essential.

      RTI requires teachers to provide systematic and explicit instruction to be sure they are planning, organizing, and sequencing their instruction in a way that makes sense to students at all levels of learning.

      The following sections detail systematic and explicit instruction and how teachers can strategically implement it into the three tiers. You also will read about the four Cs of RTI, which identify the four guiding principles all educators should follow to help students succeed.

      Systematic instruction is similar to a builder’s blueprint for a house that is planned for and designed before building materials are gathered and construction begins (Colorado Department of Education, 2008). Even though systematic instruction refers to a carefully planned sequence for instruction, that does not translate to all heads facing forward using the same strategy at the same time for each student (Florida Department of Education, n.d.). Tiered instruction offers multiple entry points to allow students at varying levels to gain and retain knowledge and skills.

      Explicit instruction requires strategic planning that links and builds on prior learning. Teachers must consider what students were taught, what students remember and can apply, and what students need to be taught. Multitiered instruction bridges gaps and connects students to newer concepts as the curriculum increases in complexity. Breaking up the learning into its discrete steps allows for practice, application, and retention within a multitiered approach.

      Explicit instruction offers a road map for how a skill is taught, including a description of each step and the strategies employed. Concepts and skills to explicitly and systematically teach include phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, mathematics, and behavior. Vigilance with structure and then flexibility allow tiered instruction to be responsive to student needs, interests, and levels.

      Teachers must consider what students were taught, what students remember and can apply, and what students need to be taught.

      Tier 1

      Curriculum maps and lesson plans outline the core instruction, but they are never scripted ones, since student responses drive the choice of instructional programs and academic engagements. Tier 1 core instruction provides explicit evidence-based lessons for phonological segmentation, fluency, comprehension, basic mathematics facts, fractions, geometry, and algebra, to name a few academic areas, as well as monitoring on-task behavior to increase motivation and attention. Continual progress monitoring occurs throughout all of the tiers.

      Responsive tweaking of instruction is based on student performance. Many teachers say they have experienced a scheduled fifty-minute period of instruction that some students grasp in fifteen minutes, while other students require fifty minutes or even five hours of instruction. Tier 1 often identifies the students who require additional instructional approaches to be given in Tiers 2 and 3.

      Tier 2

      Daniel Hallahan, James Kauffman, and Paige Pullen (2015) explain that Tier 2 usually takes about six to eight weeks. This time period allows students ample time to learn and then practice the skills. However, if a student is not showing any progress, six to eight weeks may not be realistic. Rollanda O’Connor and Janette Klingner (2010) state “the effectiveness of successful tiers depends not just on instructional content, but also on teachers’ responsiveness to students who respond poorly, or, in other words, on teachers’ instructional savvy and flexibility” (p. 303).

      Tier 2 includes, but is not limited to, small-group instruction, multiple interventions and resources, increased feedback and monitoring, access to both grade-level and student-level text, frontloading the content and challenging vocabulary, and using companion materials that align with the core materials (National Center on Intensive Intervention at American Institutes for Research [AIR], 2014).

      Tier 3

      Academic and behavioral interventions are more individualized in Tier 3 for students with increased learning needs and challenging behaviors. These students often require prerequisite skills that allow them to achieve successful experiences with the core instruction. Increased monitoring and reinforcement offer students in Tier 3 alternate ways to achieve successful engagement with the academics as well as necessary self-reflection.

      Skilled interventionists often provide instruction in Tier 3 within and outside the general education classroom to address students’ skill deficits. Students may tap out syllables, practice multidigit computations, read and listen to appropriately leveled text to understand what is implied in a nonfiction article, and receive more intensive strategies to successfully experience learning and behavioral strides. Progress monitoring is more frequent in Tier 3, with heightened teacher and student reflections and increased collaborative planning.

      Buffum and colleagues (2012) refer to the four Cs of RTI, or the four practices all educators must follow if students are to succeed. They consider these the essential guiding principles of RTI.

      1. Collective responsibility: Embraces the idea that the primary responsibility of each educator is to ensure high levels of learning for every student

      2. Concentrated instruction: Is a systematic process of identifying essential knowledge and skills that all students must learn at high levels. This includes determining the specific learning needs for each student

      3. Convergent assessment: Is a continual process of analyzing evidence to identify the specific learning needs for each student and the effectiveness of instruction in meeting those needs

      4. Certain access: Is a process that ensures that every student receives the time and support needed to learn at high levels

      These principles support learning the core as well as meeting national and provincial learning standards. At the writing of this book, education focuses on using national and provincial standards and narrowing the global achievement gap (Achieve, 2015). Preparing students for successful adult lives and to be college and career ready involves planning, communication, and collaboration.

      Preparing students for successful adult lives and to be college and career ready involves planning, communication, and collaboration.

      Teachers must deliver the knowledge and skills students need to meet these expectations to ensure students own the core knowledge, which is the foundation for higher-level thinking skills. Core knowledge involves the basics. Teachers determine what students know and need to know, therefore developing, nurturing, and expanding student skills. Whether a student reads a fiction or nonfiction book or article, uses mathematical operations to compute, solves multistep word problems, listens to rap or country music, or views Renaissance or abstract art, there is a basic core knowledge he or she recognizes, acknowledges, explores, and embraces.

      Heidi Hayes Jacobs (2012) speaks of the core as “what is at the heart of teaching and learning” (pp. vii–viii). Harvey Silver, Thomas Dewing, and Matthew Perini (2012) provide teachers with core, research-based strategies, referring to literacy and thinking skills. Core knowledge includes solid literacy and mathematics skills and the ability to think critically across the grades and disciplines—from science to music, history, art, world languages, and more.

      This book offers interventions, instructional coaching strategies, and curriculum lessons and resources to help learners gain core knowledge and excellent life outcomes. Without meaning attached to classroom practice and life applications, knowledge exists in a vacuum. Curriculum standards achieve meaning in instructional moments that offer multiple strategies delivered in multiple locations (Bridges-Rhoads & Van Cleave, 2016).

      Ultimately, students must be the ones who hold the core knowledge in their hands, hearts, and brains.

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