Progress Monitoring

We have been progress monitoring every two weeks since the first DIBEL was administered. It has been very difficult to work it in to the teachers or support staff schedule. I have been administering the monitoring to 1st through 3rd grade. We are also monitoring the number of high frequency words that each student is familiar with. We are finding that fluency is definitely affected by the number of high frequency words they can read. The title one staff has been assessing their students HFW skills and the support staff has been assessing those who are not in Title One. We are getting ready to do our second DIBEL benchmark next week.

Scheduling is still impossible. The elementary principal would like to start the RtI time after the first of the year with everyone getting a group of students to work with for the first thirty minutes of the day. Music will come on, students will go to their intervention group, interventions for 30 minutes and then music will play sending them back to their homeroom teacher. I'm not yet sure if the teachers are in support of this plan.

I am finding that most classroom teachers are unwilling to make changes to their way of teaching reading and language. Unfortunately, our scores would be higher if the "way I've always done it" was actually working.

I am noticing that our monitoring graphs are going up and down rather than steadily climbing. They are making progress and the graph points are higher than the original data point from the first of the year. I am not sure if it is the passage they are reading or if there are outside issues affecting their progress.

We have not yet taken a good look at the curriculum. I believe this will be our next big step in closing the achievement gaps and making sure our students can read.

DIBELS

Our support staff received training on how to administer the DIBELS reading assessment for our students 1st through 6th grade. We met together and a lady who was retired from our Regional Professional Development Center who used to provide reading workshops came and conducted the training. I was very proud of the paraprofessional's response at the training. Our paraprofessionals are not required to have any college hours but most of them have been working in the classroom for many years. The workshop went well and I believe they learned a great deal about administering the assessment. I think they were nervous about it though. We scheduled the next week for the assessment. For more information about the DIBELS, you can google it and it will provide you with the weblink. We used the DIBELs Next program that was recently developed.

Reading Schedules

Time has to be the most difficult aspect of response to intervention. Teachers are comfortable with their reading schedules and do not want to make any changes to their schedules. Despite the adage that if you continue to do what you're doing you are going to get the same results - they are unwilliing to change. I understand that teachers have been asked to make changes in the past and there has been no follow through and no continued support so they revert back to what is comfortable. I hope that this isn't the case this year. I hope that I continue to support the teachers and the process of change.

We have met to determine where support will be scheduled. We are meeting to train our support staff in reading assessment. We are on the way.

Change

Change is incrediably hard - within yourself and harder when it is a group. As an administrator you spend so much time investigating the process, learning everything you can and then reaching a decision about implementation. The problem is - that is all within yourself. You have had 9 months to contemplate, visualize and plan and you are expecting your teachers to just blindly agree with you and go without the same 9 months that you had. Teachers need time to contemplate, visualize and plan - but we don't have that amount of time. I began talking to teachers about RtI last year. I indicated that the district would be implementing the process and offered information, workshops and time for review before school started this year. Change is very hard and even though I thought I was giving them enough time - I guess I was wrong. Change is not change until the teachers have to do something - prior to that it is just information.

Back to School

Our district will be having two preservice teacher days next week. The principal has submitted the daily schedule and we are starting to get multiple questions about providing interventions to students in the classrooms. I am anxious to document the questions and comments. We have many teachers who are not on board, change is very difficult. I hope that with communication and information, the teachers will understand that this will improve instruction.

Before school starts

Our district received a special education grant through our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to implement RtI in our second and third grade classrooms for the upcoming school year. This blog is designed to document our progress - the good and the bad this year.