Personal Best Staff Bulletin
Volume V Number 1 October 28, 2016
Feedback and Reflection
At our faculty meetings we have been speaking about Response to Intervention (RtI) and the strategies that we employ to help our most at risk learners. We are looking, as a faculty, at how we define and address these needs. Our ultimate goal is to put in place a process or protocol whereby we can formalize our best practices so that we are all utilizing consistent strategies with our most at risk kids.
I have been rereading a book on this topic, Simplifying Response to Intervention by Mike Matos, Chris Weber and Austin Buffum. One of the core principles of the book is that a good school has a strong core approach to instruction that meets the needs of approximately 80% of its students. If you consider that 12% of our students are receiving services through special education and hence, are, by definition, in Tier 3 of our RtI Model, then we are really talking about only 8% of our kids. 8% of our kids who live in this murky zone of intervention resistance.
We know they’re out there in front of us, in our classes, these kids who struggle and don’t easily get it? So we need to ask ourselves some questions about this core program:
What strategies do I employ because I know that many of my students have executive functioning deficits?
What strategies do I employ because I know that I have English language learners in my class?
Knowing that reading is a challenge for many of my students, that many of them are anxious, or that they have family and social problems, what strategies to I incorporate into my everyday lessons and to my classroom environment to account for this?
Also, what do we do AS A SCHOOL because we have students who present these issues?
These are the questions we will continue to consider at our faculty meetings. We'll look at case studies of these intervention resistant kids as a lens through which to reflect upon our core instructional program and develop plans to help them.
Best Practice
Links and Resources
Principal's Staff Bulletin
Email: dgately@jerichoschools.org
Website: dfgately.wordpress.com
Location: 99 Old Cedar Swamp Road, Jericho, NY, United States
Phone: 516-203-3620
Twitter: @Donald_Gately