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.
