Navigating the Core Curriculum - Toby J. Karten

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and identifying adequate student progress. When implemented with fidelity, RTI improves instructional quality to increase students’ chance of school success as they move on to postsecondary choices in colleges and careers (McInerney & Elledge, 2013).

      Teachers make data-based decisions regarding using supplementary intervention for students who do not respond to the core instruction delivered in Tier 1. The teacher delivers the core in whole-class, small-group, and individual instruction. Basically, educators deliver core instruction in the continuum of support shown in figure 1.2. This inverted pyramid demonstrates educators’ collective responsibility for student learning by schoolwide teams and collaborative teacher teams. As noted, Tier 1 can also be referred to as primary instruction, Tier 2 as secondary instruction, and Tier 3 as tertiary instruction.

      RTI is a prescriptive and responsive way to address student skill levels and needs. For many years, special education was the antithesis to the philosophy that one size fits all, some, or even most. But now, differentiated instruction supports all students in inclusive settings (Tomlinson, 1999). Ableism cannot replace individualization, nor should students be viewed from a deficit paradigm (Fierros, 2006). Prescriptive instruction acknowledges and responds to different abilities with tiered levels that occur in mixed-ability classrooms (Karten, 2015; Tomlinson, 1999). Fidelity to the programs teachers select is essential, but teachers also need to acknowledge that students do not fit into neatly wrapped packages. RTI is not a path to special educational services but a way to infuse good teaching practices that strengthen those areas in which students need improvement.

      Source: Buffum et al., 2012.

       Figure 1.2: Team responsibilities in the inverted RTI pyramid.

      Buffum and colleagues (2012) write:

      In the RTI process, schools do not delay in providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead provide targeted and systematic interventions to all students as soon as they demonstrate need…. Some schools mistakenly view RTI as merely a new way to qualify at-risk students for special education and focus on trying a few token general education interventions before referring struggling students for traditional special education testing and placement. (pp. 1–2)

      Just as a doctor prescribes medicine in the right dosage with a policy of “do no harm,” teachers must select interventions that consider benefits versus the risks with scrutiny and respect for learner autonomy (Knott & Harding, 2014). Evidence-based RTI considers the amount and length of tiered interventions with quantity and quality as well as the teachers’ and students’ integrity. In this context, integrity includes fidelity to evidence-based strategies and interventions that honor learner diversity.

      Tier 2 usually occurs over a period of about two months, while Tier 3 may have a longer and more intensive duration. For example, Tier 2 may occur over a period of ten weeks as opposed to twenty weeks for Tier 3 (Sanford, Harlacher, & Walker, 2010). These time frames are not standardized, since the length of tier instruction is responsive to learner progress. Appropriate student information in response to the multitiered interventions informs decisions and ultimately drives positive outcomes.

      Academic and behavioral tasks exist within the context of the core curriculum, but more important, within the context of real life. Student learning becomes more meaningful when students engage in context-related tasks with accompanying remediation and enrichment. RTI’s evidence-based systematic interventions focus on student needs, but when these interventions are contextually based, teachers can establish relevancy for students. Real-world connections link concepts to learner interests to increase time on task and student buy-in with the motivation to learn more.

      The following are examples of skills taught within contextually engaging tasks.

      ➢ Oral expression: Students cooperatively organize notes in small groups of three to five peers as they deliver a class presentation. Topics include a favorite family celebration, best day in school, or a difficult task accomplished.

      ➢ Listening comprehension: Students receive background information before viewing a clip from a popular movie or television show. They take notes with guided questions in a cloze structure in which they fill in key concepts to guide their listening.

      ➢ Reading fluency: Students read jokes and riddles with classmates before creating and presenting mathematics, science, and social studies jokes based on the vocabulary they are studying. The teacher shares a video with examples and nonexamples of fluency with expression, pausing, phrasing, and inflection with choral modeling, and offers instruction, feedback, and guidance to smaller groups and individual students.

      ➢ Reading comprehension: After students receive refreshers on specific types of reading comprehension questions (for example, main idea, sequencing, and so on), they form groups of three to four. Then each group selects a specific fairy tale, fable, or nonfiction article to analyze and writes comprehension questions to exchange with another cooperative group. Afterward, the groups discuss the reading comprehension skills gained with the teacher and the class.

      ➢ Vocabulary development: Students highlight a list of vocabulary words as they follow along on copies of lyrics from curriculum-related hip-hop videos from Flocabulary (www.flocabulary.com); for example, “The Week in Rap,” “Geography,” “Ancient History,” and “Internet Safety.”

      ➢ Written expression: Students write on topics that interest them (for example, fashion, NASCAR racing, soccer, dolphins, or beaded wrap bracelets). They use multiple scaffolding tools, such as transitional word lists, sensory words, online visual dictionaries, glossaries, writing frames, and technology tools.

      ➢ Mathematical computations and applications: Students complete engaging activities (for example, measuring ingredients for a recipe, figuring out the batting average of a baseball player, recording the average weekly and monthly temperatures) to learn reasoning.

      English philosopher Herbert Spencer (Brainy Quote, n.d.) wrote: “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” Even though teachers arrange instructional activities to increase student knowledge, both the students and teachers are active learners. Teachers learn about their students as they note progress with multitiered interventions. In The Student-Centered Classroom, author Leo Jones (2007) writes:

      The teacher’s role is more that of a facilitator than instructor; the students are active participants in the learning process. The teacher helps to guide the students, manage their activities, and direct their learning. Being a teacher means helping people to learn; and, in a student-centered class, the teacher is a member of the class as a participant in the learning process. (p. 2)

      That’s where multiple curriculum entry points come in.

      Successful strategies and mindsets allow for scaffolding, guiding, compacting, and reinforcing the core curriculum to connect to individual learner skill sets. The main goal of RTI is for all students to achieve. Buffum and colleagues (2012) assert: “Response to intervention (RTI) is our best hope to provide every child with the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels” (p. xiii).

      Each RTI tier exemplifies that strategic teaching honors student ownership and hones skills with phonemic awareness and fluency; comprehension of fiction, narrative, and expository text; mathematics computations and concepts; and real-life applications of literacy and mathematics. Teachers with mindsets that

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