May 22, 2024 • 20 mins
Are standardized intervention programs failing your struggling readers? Join me, on this enlightening episode of the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we uncover how the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) can be the game-changer in boosting reading skills. We emphasize the critical role of phonics in the Tier 1 curriculum to establish a robust foundation for all students. Learn how universal screeners are the key to pinpointing struggling readers and seamlessly transitioning them to Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions. This is particularly crucial for older students in middle and high school, who need targeted, intensive support to catch up and succeed.
Discover why one-size-fits-all programs often fall short and how tailoring interventions to meet specific needs can make all the difference. I'll share tried-and-true strategies for effective progress monitoring, including how to record and graph data to derive actionable insights. Plus, we discuss the importance of structured MTSS meetings with clear agendas to ensure timely and efficient implementation of interventions. Our ultimate goal? To equip you with the tools and strategies to provide the most effective support, ensuring every student achieves reading proficiency. Tune in for a comprehensive guide to making MTSS work for your struggling readers!
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So last week we talked about MTSS as a whole
system that covers everything,just the overarching system, and
the fact is MTSS servesstudents struggling in reading,
writing, math and behavior.
The system as a whole is set upto focus on the skills
(00:25):
specifically within reading,writing, math and, of course,
behavior.
It could cover science andsocial studies and things like
that.
But let's be honest, we're notcovering the basics right now,
just the very basics of reading,writing and math and behavior,
of course.
So we got to cover those first.
We got to get that going beforewe even think about adding more
(00:48):
to the system of MTSS.
Today we're going to focus onjust MTSS as a system for
supporting students in theirreading.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So the system for supporting students through MTSS
in their reading mirrorsexactly the overarching MTSS
system that we talked about lastweek.
If you missed it, you mightwant to go back to last week's
session, just to you know,refresh your mind.
I might go through some of thestuff a little bit quicker today
for reading, but the overallsystem is the same.
It very much mirrors theoverarching system, because I
(02:02):
mean it has to.
So we'll start with Tier 1.
And in reading specifically,tier 1 is the overarching
curriculum that every studenthas.
If you're involved in educationor have been in the last two or
three years, you know that abig focus has come back into the
(02:25):
reading talks and that isphonics.
We weren't teaching phonics fora while there and we've found
now through lots of, quitefrankly, trial and error.
You got to teach phonics sothat the kids can learn the
actual skill of reading.
But we haven't been doing thatin our Tier 1 curriculum for
(02:46):
many years.
We've been focusing oncomprehension.
Well, the comprehension is thelast step in reading.
It's the last thing thathappens.
Unfortunately, that is one ofthe big reasons that we have so
many students in our Tier 2 andTier 3 reading groups for MTSS
(03:08):
because we didn't teach them,unfortunately, the basics.
Well, at this point this is now2024, we're finishing up the
23-24 school year we know thatwe should be teaching phonics.
So any school that isn't, orany school district system that
isn't teaching directly teachingphonics as a skill to teach
(03:32):
reading, quite frankly, you'rewrong.
That's all there is to it.
There is no softening that blow.
You're wrong.
You have to teach phonics.
So your tier one curriculum iswhat everybody is getting and it
should include phonics.
If it doesn't, you're notteaching your students how to
read.
For those students who arestruggling with reading, you
(03:56):
would move them to a tier twogroup.
The way that you figure out thekids that need to go to tier
two, obviously, if you're in theupper grades and the kids are
not able to read a grade leveltext, they should probably be in
tier two or tier three period.
End of sentence.
That's just where they shouldbe.
If the kids can't read andcomprehend a grade level text,
(04:20):
they should be in tier two ortier three.
Now, unfortunately, if you'reteaching high school and you're
teaching regular classes, you'renot teaching honors or AP.
Unfortunately, the statisticsall say that most of your
students really struggle readinga grade level texts.
(04:41):
So unfortunately, we're in abit of a pickle when it comes to
the upper grades, and I'm goingto have talk about what to do
specifically with middle andhigh school students in this, in
this category, in a few moreweeks.
But what needs to happen, nomatter what the grade level?
(05:04):
Now?
Obviously the kids in themiddle and high schools.
We got to do more to catchthose kids up.
But everybody, as a start,needs to first of all use
universal screeners to identifythe early gaps, to figure out
what are the baseline skillsthat the students are missing.
(05:27):
Honestly, for a majority of ourstudents, it turns out it's
phonics.
It turns out that the kids aremissing the sounds, being able
to identify the sounds thatletters or groups of letters
make, and that we need to startdoing phonics screeners for our
students who are struggling inreading so that we can identify
(05:50):
exactly where we need to startand then we can focus our goals
and our interventions on thatbaseline skill.
I've said it I don't know athousand times at this point
that we have to build thefoundation for our students.
You wouldn't buy a house thatdoesn't have 100% of the
foundation ready to go.
(06:10):
So when we're talking abouttier two.
We have to start with thosebaseline skills, figure out
where do the skills start todrop off and fix those first In
reading.
Tier two isn't going to beenough, especially because
they're in the upper grades andthey are, you know, reading well
(06:33):
below their grade level.
Well, they're going to have tobe in tier three also because
they've got quite a bit ofcatching up to do and they need
more intensive interventions.
That doesn't mean we're mean,that doesn't mean that we're,
you know, singling them out, butwe definitely need to have a
(06:54):
stronger focus.
They need more intense learningtime to get those foundational
skills, to get thosefoundational skills, get those
gaps filled in and then move onfurther.
That means that they need asmaller group.
That means that they need moreindividualized attention because
(07:16):
, quite frankly, they have tohave the individualized
attention so that they can getthe skills that they need as
quickly as humanly possible, sothat they can move forward as
quickly as possible.
That doesn't mean we'reskipping skills anymore.
We've already done that.
That doesn't work.
But it means that forespecially those middle and high
(07:38):
school kids, we really have tospend the resources, the time,
resources, especially on them toget them those skills that they
need, because once they havethose foundational skills, they
move through the upper skillsvery quickly.
I know this from personalexperience.
I have worked with middleschoolers.
(08:00):
One in particular example is astudent who started with me and
he wasn't able to identify allof his letter sounds
consistently.
Well.
A year later he was reading ata third, fourth grade reading
level in a year.
That's what we were able to doand that was working.
30 minutes two or three times aweek and that's not
(08:23):
consistently.
That was pretty inconsistent.
It can be done, but we have tospend the time and the resources
we have to dedicate that tothese students so that they can
make that progress.
Let's talk for a minute aboutthe interventions.
When you have interventions, alot of times schools, school
(08:44):
districts, will have a list ofinterventions and they say these
three interventions are forelementary, these three are for
middle and this one is for highschool, if they have anything
dedicated for reading in highschool.
You need to have a process ofchoosing, not just the
intervention.
What are you going to do withinit?
(09:07):
You have to have the skills.
You have to focus on the skillsthat the student is lacking and
use that to choose whatintervention you are going to
use.
It doesn't make sense to say X,y and Z is for elementary and A
(09:29):
B is for middle school.
You don't know.
Every intervention program hasits pluses and minuses.
They're all dandy and wonderfulin their own little way, but
they focus on different skillsand you have to make sure that
the student's skill deficits arewhat you use to determine what
(09:54):
the intervention is going to be.
A perfect world, yes, it wouldbe fantastic if the specific
intervention that was bought foryour school or your you know
grade level is perfect forwhatever it is that that student
needs.
But the reality is that'sprobably not the case.
(10:14):
The other thing to think aboutis if you have a student who's
struggling in blending CVC words, sounding them out, working on
sight words during that timethat the student is supposed to
be blending CVC words is notgoing to help the child learn to
read.
(10:34):
If your student is unable toidentify vowel digraphs, be able
to read words with voweldigraphs, diagraphs, be able to
read words with vowel diagraphsAgain, sight words and sight
word fluency is not going tohelp that child learn to read,
and I know that a lot of thereading interventions they kind
(10:57):
of fall back on we're going todo five minutes of this and five
minutes of this and fiveminutes of this.
That is not the best use ofyour student's time.
If you have identified that yourstudent is struggling with
letter sounds or CVC words,whatever it is, spending five
(11:17):
minutes 10 minutes on sightwords and fluency or
comprehension is a waste of thatstudent's time.
You've already identified whatthe problem is.
Stop wasting their time withthis intervention program that
doesn't meet their needs.
The intervention programs thatare out there, by and large, are
(11:39):
standardized, meaning they havethis.
Okay, if the student is at thislevel for CVC words, they
should be learning these sightwords and they should be
fluencing at this level and theyshould be reading comprehending
at this level.
And they're standardized.
Guys, if the standardizedcurriculum was working for the
(12:00):
student, they wouldn't be ininterventions, they wouldn't be
in tier two or tier three.
We have to get out of our brainsthis idea that this wonderful,
amazing intervention program isgoing to solve all of our
problems and it'll tell useverything that we need to do.
No, we're teachers and we'reamazing and we know our students
(12:23):
.
We know that we're wastingstudent time, we know that, but
for some reason we have allbowed down.
We've been forced to, but wehave bowed down to the
curriculum makers and we justaccept that they know better
than us, they don't, they knowbetter than us, they don't, they
(12:51):
don't, and the scores tell usthat.
So I want to encourage you, Iwant to encourage all my rebel
teachers out there, that if youknow that your student is
struggling in phonics, don'twaste 10 minutes doing sight
words.
Spend that 10 minutes workingon the stuff that the student
needs to work on and help themadvance more quickly through the
curriculum, through what theyneed, so that they can be on
(13:15):
grade level, because the fact isthat 10 minutes is does add up.
That 10 minutes makes a bigdifference for our students,
especially when we're talkingabout our students who are so
far behind.
They need that extra 10 minutestwo or three times a week to
(13:35):
help them get where they need togo.
Now, of course, with MTSS forreading, we have to progress
monitor.
Make sure that you have aprocess for presenting and
recording and graphing andreporting all that information.
So we know that for theoverarching MTSS system, we have
(13:59):
to identify what are we goingto use for progress monitoring
For when we're working with ourstudents, we have to again
identify what we're using toprogress, monitor, to test to
see if what we're doing isworking.
Make sure that you have all ofthat already laid out and make
(14:19):
sure that you have a system forrecording it.
I, when I first started, wasterrible about post-it notes.
I used post-it notes all thetime and I lost my data or well,
I didn't ever lose the datacompletely, but I had to go
searching for it and it was apain in the neck.
So make sure that you have abetter system than I did.
You can pick up some datacharts that I used.
(14:43):
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
Have a system for recording thatdata and graphing it.
It sounds like another crazy,ridiculous extra work step to
graph the data, but believe me,graphing gives you some
fantastic insight and Iencourage it.
(15:03):
I absolutely encourage graphingit and having that ready when
you have your MTSS meetings,your data chats and all that
reporting what's going on,because the fact is, the numbers
don't lie and you know yourstudents.
The numbers are just a way toback you up.
The graphs are just a way foryou to be backed up as a teacher
(15:27):
going in and saying I need X, yand Z support, I need this
different intervention programor these resources or we need
another aid to come in and helpwith this group of kids or
whatever it is.
It's really it's much moredifficult for higher-ups,
(15:47):
whether you're an administratorgoing to the district level or
you're a teacher going toadministrators.
It is very difficult forhigher-ups to argue a need that
you are showing graphically andthat you can back up with data.
For MTSS, obviously theoverarching system, we have
(16:08):
meetings.
The meetings are usually weekly.
Every single meeting shouldhave an agenda and to make sure
that you're covering all theconcerns and, of course, part of
that agenda should be whenyou're going to be meeting again
.
If you know that you're goingto be meeting on this student in
(16:29):
six or nine weeks, you knowthat you have to have that
intervention data starting thisweek or next week.
You know that you need to havewhatever the intervention is
that the group decided on,that's got to be ready to go.
That helps you me as theteacher or as the administrator
(16:49):
to say no, there's a time crunchon this.
We need to make sure that thatperson gets what they need, so
that the student gets what theyneed, or our data is not going
to be worth anything and we'vejust wasted time.
Use those meetings and anagenda, especially to show that
you're using your time wiselyand to make sure that we're not
(17:12):
getting off track.
Every single MTSS meetingshould have an agenda, even if
it's the same agenda foreverybody.
Finally, determine your redflags for tier two and tier
three when you're moving astudent from Tier 2 to Tier 3 or
Tier 3 to testing and then theopposite direction.
(17:33):
As a, you could do it at thegrade level, you could do it for
the subject area I'm talkingabout reading right now, but I
strongly suggest that you havesome points where, hey, if a
student, for example, has beenat tier two for two iterations
(17:54):
and so two, six or nine weekperiods and the student isn't on
grade level yet, okay, we needto have a strong discussion
about whether that child shouldalso be getting tier three
support.
If a student has been at tierthree for, let's say, a full
school year or whatever you'redeciding, again, it depends on
(18:17):
grade level.
It depends on a lot ofdifferent things.
If the child's been justhanging out in tier three for a
really long time, we need totalk about testing for possible
special needs.
If what we're doing isn'tworking.
We need to talk about uppingthe services, upping the
supports that the child isgetting.
Now, of course, that very muchhas to depend.
(18:41):
Again, these red flags theyshould not be a trigger meaning,
oh, the child's been in tierthree for a full school year,
okay, now we test them.
No, that's not how that works.
That should be a red flag of.
We need to have a very seriousdiscussion.
Has the child been in tierthree for so long because they
(19:04):
were so far behind?
But they're making really goodprogress and we believe that
they can be on grade level in areasonable amount of time.
Then we keep them at tier threeand maybe we look at tier three
and we figure out how can wemake tier three more intensive,
how can we speed them up evenfurther.
Maybe we hold off on asking fortesting.
(19:26):
Have some red flags where, if astudent reaches that red flag
specifically, you're having avery intense conversation about
what's going on, all right.
So I hope that that discussionabout MTSS for reading was
helpful.
Tune in next week we're goingto talk about MTSS for math.
(19:50):
Until then, may your coffee bestrong, your students calm and,
of course, your summer fastapproaching.
Bye.
So last week we talked about MTSS as a whole
system that covers everything,just the overarching system, and
the fact is MTSS servesstudents struggling in reading,
writing, math and behavior.
The system as a whole is set upto focus on the skills
(00:25):
specifically within reading,writing, math and, of course,
behavior.
It could cover science andsocial studies and things like
that.
But let's be honest, we're notcovering the basics right now,
just the very basics of reading,writing and math and behavior,
of course.
So we got to cover those first.
We got to get that going beforewe even think about adding more
(00:48):
to the system of MTSS.
Today we're going to focus onjust MTSS as a system for
supporting students in theirreading.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
So the system for supporting students through MTSS
in their reading mirrorsexactly the overarching MTSS
system that we talked about lastweek.
If you missed it, you mightwant to go back to last week's
session, just to you know,refresh your mind.
I might go through some of thestuff a little bit quicker today
for reading, but the overallsystem is the same.
It very much mirrors theoverarching system, because I
(02:02):
mean it has to.
So we'll start with Tier 1.
And in reading specifically,tier 1 is the overarching
curriculum that every studenthas.
If you're involved in educationor have been in the last two or
three years, you know that abig focus has come back into the
(02:25):
reading talks and that isphonics.
We weren't teaching phonics fora while there and we've found
now through lots of, quitefrankly, trial and error.
You got to teach phonics sothat the kids can learn the
actual skill of reading.
But we haven't been doing thatin our Tier 1 curriculum for
(02:46):
many years.
We've been focusing oncomprehension.
Well, the comprehension is thelast step in reading.
It's the last thing thathappens.
Unfortunately, that is one ofthe big reasons that we have so
many students in our Tier 2 andTier 3 reading groups for MTSS
(03:08):
because we didn't teach them,unfortunately, the basics.
Well, at this point this is now2024, we're finishing up the
23-24 school year we know thatwe should be teaching phonics.
So any school that isn't, orany school district system that
isn't teaching directly teachingphonics as a skill to teach
(03:32):
reading, quite frankly, you'rewrong.
That's all there is to it.
There is no softening that blow.
You're wrong.
You have to teach phonics.
So your tier one curriculum iswhat everybody is getting and it
should include phonics.
If it doesn't, you're notteaching your students how to
read.
For those students who arestruggling with reading, you
(03:56):
would move them to a tier twogroup.
The way that you figure out thekids that need to go to tier
two, obviously, if you're in theupper grades and the kids are
not able to read a grade leveltext, they should probably be in
tier two or tier three period.
End of sentence.
That's just where they shouldbe.
If the kids can't read andcomprehend a grade level text,
(04:20):
they should be in tier two ortier three.
Now, unfortunately, if you'reteaching high school and you're
teaching regular classes, you'renot teaching honors or AP.
Unfortunately, the statisticsall say that most of your
students really struggle readinga grade level texts.
(04:41):
So unfortunately, we're in abit of a pickle when it comes to
the upper grades, and I'm goingto have talk about what to do
specifically with middle andhigh school students in this, in
this category, in a few moreweeks.
But what needs to happen, nomatter what the grade level?
(05:04):
Now?
Obviously the kids in themiddle and high schools.
We got to do more to catchthose kids up.
But everybody, as a start,needs to first of all use
universal screeners to identifythe early gaps, to figure out
what are the baseline skillsthat the students are missing.
(05:27):
Honestly, for a majority of ourstudents, it turns out it's
phonics.
It turns out that the kids aremissing the sounds, being able
to identify the sounds thatletters or groups of letters
make, and that we need to startdoing phonics screeners for our
students who are struggling inreading so that we can identify
(05:50):
exactly where we need to startand then we can focus our goals
and our interventions on thatbaseline skill.
I've said it I don't know athousand times at this point
that we have to build thefoundation for our students.
You wouldn't buy a house thatdoesn't have 100% of the
foundation ready to go.
(06:10):
So when we're talking abouttier two.
We have to start with thosebaseline skills, figure out
where do the skills start todrop off and fix those first In
reading.
Tier two isn't going to beenough, especially because
they're in the upper grades andthey are, you know, reading well
(06:33):
below their grade level.
Well, they're going to have tobe in tier three also because
they've got quite a bit ofcatching up to do and they need
more intensive interventions.
That doesn't mean we're mean,that doesn't mean that we're,
you know, singling them out, butwe definitely need to have a
(06:54):
stronger focus.
They need more intense learningtime to get those foundational
skills, to get thosefoundational skills, get those
gaps filled in and then move onfurther.
That means that they need asmaller group.
That means that they need moreindividualized attention because
(07:16):
, quite frankly, they have tohave the individualized
attention so that they can getthe skills that they need as
quickly as humanly possible, sothat they can move forward as
quickly as possible.
That doesn't mean we'reskipping skills anymore.
We've already done that.
That doesn't work.
But it means that forespecially those middle and high
(07:38):
school kids, we really have tospend the resources, the time,
resources, especially on them toget them those skills that they
need, because once they havethose foundational skills, they
move through the upper skillsvery quickly.
I know this from personalexperience.
I have worked with middleschoolers.
(08:00):
One in particular example is astudent who started with me and
he wasn't able to identify allof his letter sounds
consistently.
Well.
A year later he was reading ata third, fourth grade reading
level in a year.
That's what we were able to doand that was working.
30 minutes two or three times aweek and that's not
(08:23):
consistently.
That was pretty inconsistent.
It can be done, but we have tospend the time and the resources
we have to dedicate that tothese students so that they can
make that progress.
Let's talk for a minute aboutthe interventions.
When you have interventions, alot of times schools, school
(08:44):
districts, will have a list ofinterventions and they say these
three interventions are forelementary, these three are for
middle and this one is for highschool, if they have anything
dedicated for reading in highschool.
You need to have a process ofchoosing, not just the
intervention.
What are you going to do withinit?
(09:07):
You have to have the skills.
You have to focus on the skillsthat the student is lacking and
use that to choose whatintervention you are going to
use.
It doesn't make sense to say X,y and Z is for elementary and A
(09:29):
B is for middle school.
You don't know.
Every intervention program hasits pluses and minuses.
They're all dandy and wonderfulin their own little way, but
they focus on different skillsand you have to make sure that
the student's skill deficits arewhat you use to determine what
(09:54):
the intervention is going to be.
A perfect world, yes, it wouldbe fantastic if the specific
intervention that was bought foryour school or your you know
grade level is perfect forwhatever it is that that student
needs.
But the reality is that'sprobably not the case.
(10:14):
The other thing to think aboutis if you have a student who's
struggling in blending CVC words, sounding them out, working on
sight words during that timethat the student is supposed to
be blending CVC words is notgoing to help the child learn to
read.
(10:34):
If your student is unable toidentify vowel digraphs, be able
to read words with voweldigraphs, diagraphs, be able to
read words with vowel diagraphsAgain, sight words and sight
word fluency is not going tohelp that child learn to read,
and I know that a lot of thereading interventions they kind
(10:57):
of fall back on we're going todo five minutes of this and five
minutes of this and fiveminutes of this.
That is not the best use ofyour student's time.
If you have identified that yourstudent is struggling with
letter sounds or CVC words,whatever it is, spending five
(11:17):
minutes 10 minutes on sightwords and fluency or
comprehension is a waste of thatstudent's time.
You've already identified whatthe problem is.
Stop wasting their time withthis intervention program that
doesn't meet their needs.
The intervention programs thatare out there, by and large, are
(11:39):
standardized, meaning they havethis.
Okay, if the student is at thislevel for CVC words, they
should be learning these sightwords and they should be
fluencing at this level and theyshould be reading comprehending
at this level.
And they're standardized.
Guys, if the standardizedcurriculum was working for the
(12:00):
student, they wouldn't be ininterventions, they wouldn't be
in tier two or tier three.
We have to get out of our brainsthis idea that this wonderful,
amazing intervention program isgoing to solve all of our
problems and it'll tell useverything that we need to do.
No, we're teachers and we'reamazing and we know our students
(12:23):
.
We know that we're wastingstudent time, we know that, but
for some reason we have allbowed down.
We've been forced to, but wehave bowed down to the
curriculum makers and we justaccept that they know better
than us, they don't, they knowbetter than us, they don't, they
(12:51):
don't, and the scores tell usthat.
So I want to encourage you, Iwant to encourage all my rebel
teachers out there, that if youknow that your student is
struggling in phonics, don'twaste 10 minutes doing sight
words.
Spend that 10 minutes workingon the stuff that the student
needs to work on and help themadvance more quickly through the
curriculum, through what theyneed, so that they can be on
(13:15):
grade level, because the fact isthat 10 minutes is does add up.
That 10 minutes makes a bigdifference for our students,
especially when we're talkingabout our students who are so
far behind.
They need that extra 10 minutestwo or three times a week to
(13:35):
help them get where they need togo.
Now, of course, with MTSS forreading, we have to progress
monitor.
Make sure that you have aprocess for presenting and
recording and graphing andreporting all that information.
So we know that for theoverarching MTSS system, we have
(13:59):
to identify what are we goingto use for progress monitoring
For when we're working with ourstudents, we have to again
identify what we're using toprogress, monitor, to test to
see if what we're doing isworking.
Make sure that you have all ofthat already laid out and make
(14:19):
sure that you have a system forrecording it.
I, when I first started, wasterrible about post-it notes.
I used post-it notes all thetime and I lost my data or well,
I didn't ever lose the datacompletely, but I had to go
searching for it and it was apain in the neck.
So make sure that you have abetter system than I did.
You can pick up some datacharts that I used.
(14:43):
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
Have a system for recording thatdata and graphing it.
It sounds like another crazy,ridiculous extra work step to
graph the data, but believe me,graphing gives you some
fantastic insight and Iencourage it.
(15:03):
I absolutely encourage graphingit and having that ready when
you have your MTSS meetings,your data chats and all that
reporting what's going on,because the fact is, the numbers
don't lie and you know yourstudents.
The numbers are just a way toback you up.
The graphs are just a way foryou to be backed up as a teacher
(15:27):
going in and saying I need X, yand Z support, I need this
different intervention programor these resources or we need
another aid to come in and helpwith this group of kids or
whatever it is.
It's really it's much moredifficult for higher-ups,
(15:47):
whether you're an administratorgoing to the district level or
you're a teacher going toadministrators.
It is very difficult forhigher-ups to argue a need that
you are showing graphically andthat you can back up with data.
For MTSS, obviously theoverarching system, we have
(16:08):
meetings.
The meetings are usually weekly.
Every single meeting shouldhave an agenda and to make sure
that you're covering all theconcerns and, of course, part of
that agenda should be whenyou're going to be meeting again
.
If you know that you're goingto be meeting on this student in
(16:29):
six or nine weeks, you knowthat you have to have that
intervention data starting thisweek or next week.
You know that you need to havewhatever the intervention is
that the group decided on,that's got to be ready to go.
That helps you me as theteacher or as the administrator
(16:49):
to say no, there's a time crunchon this.
We need to make sure that thatperson gets what they need, so
that the student gets what theyneed, or our data is not going
to be worth anything and we'vejust wasted time.
Use those meetings and anagenda, especially to show that
you're using your time wiselyand to make sure that we're not
(17:12):
getting off track.
Every single MTSS meetingshould have an agenda, even if
it's the same agenda foreverybody.
Finally, determine your redflags for tier two and tier
three when you're moving astudent from Tier 2 to Tier 3 or
Tier 3 to testing and then theopposite direction.
(17:33):
As a, you could do it at thegrade level, you could do it for
the subject area I'm talkingabout reading right now, but I
strongly suggest that you havesome points where, hey, if a
student, for example, has beenat tier two for two iterations
(17:54):
and so two, six or nine weekperiods and the student isn't on
grade level yet, okay, we needto have a strong discussion
about whether that child shouldalso be getting tier three
support.
If a student has been at tierthree for, let's say, a full
school year or whatever you'redeciding, again, it depends on
(18:17):
grade level.
It depends on a lot ofdifferent things.
If the child's been justhanging out in tier three for a
really long time, we need totalk about testing for possible
special needs.
If what we're doing isn'tworking.
We need to talk about uppingthe services, upping the
supports that the child isgetting.
Now, of course, that very muchhas to depend.
(18:41):
Again, these red flags theyshould not be a trigger meaning,
oh, the child's been in tierthree for a full school year,
okay, now we test them.
No, that's not how that works.
That should be a red flag of.
We need to have a very seriousdiscussion.
Has the child been in tierthree for so long because they
(19:04):
were so far behind?
But they're making really goodprogress and we believe that
they can be on grade level in areasonable amount of time.
Then we keep them at tier threeand maybe we look at tier three
and we figure out how can wemake tier three more intensive,
how can we speed them up evenfurther.
Maybe we hold off on asking fortesting.
(19:26):
Have some red flags where, if astudent reaches that red flag
specifically, you're having avery intense conversation about
what's going on, all right.
So I hope that that discussionabout MTSS for reading was
helpful.
Tune in next week we're goingto talk about MTSS for math.
(19:50):
Until then, may your coffee bestrong, your students calm and,
of course, your summer fastapproaching.
Bye.
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