Response to Intervention (RTI)
RTI is a multi-tier system of support (MTSS) that aims at supporting all children, both with disabilities and normal children, to register progress in their learning. This program provides high-quality instruction for young children to help them past their learning or reading barriers. RTI is a stepwise process in which all students are subjected to a universal screener for a certain period. Upon the specified period, an assessment of each student is done, and the level of performance or improvement is calculated. Therefore, RTI aims to identify these students with special needs, so that appropriate intervention measures be implemented to accelerate their understandings. Special attention is provided by regular education teachers, interventionists, school specialists, special education teachers, mental health consultants, among other school professionals. The child’s response to interventions is monitored and evaluated to assess students’ improvement as anticipated to ascertain the progress. Therefore, this paper analyses how RTI could identify children with disabilities that need special interventions.
RTI Tiers
Grouping kids into groups according to their needs helps teachers and educators give appropriate instructions to individual students to accelerate their performance. RTI program strives to identify students with the same needs while grouping them to aid their learning process. The grouping is necessary because the target group is given instructions about their predetermined needs and attention (Thomas et al., 2020). The RTI groups children into three tiers: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3, and in each group, kids need different interventions to enhance their development and performance.
Tier 1
For a start, all students before identifying students with special needs are in Tier 1. In this group, all students are assessed through universal screening. In doing so, the school first identifies and establishes academic benchmarks to be used to assess the individual students. Factors such as phonic proficiency, word mastery, and pronunciation can indicate children’s development and success. Moreover, the innervation practice should be given a specific amount of time with anticipated benchmarks to determine children’s success. The data collected for each student screen individual students to expound the impacts of an instructional intervention on the kids. Those who do not show progress are referred to further supplemental instructional strategies to help them cope with their conditions (Thomas et al., 2020). Universal screening is the primary process for identifying struggling kids and allows the allocation of instructional and intervention resources that are appropriate for grade levels. The curriculum-based measurement screening tools normally employed are phonemic awareness, oral reading fluency, math calculations, mechanics of writing, and content-based vocabularies.
Tier 2
The kids who find it hard to cope in Tier 1 are moved to Tier 2. Although educators spend time with them for more intense intervention, they are still taking part in the regular lesson. The formation of tier 2 is based on a specific skill that the students could not master while in Tier 1. This group is considered temporary because the students are referred back to regular teaching procedures upon mastering the intended skills. With no or little improvement, the educators may decide to keep or call for intense interventions that would help the kids improve their performance (Thomas et al., 2020). In this tier, the educator should assess the students reading, fluency, comprehension, and motivation in determining their development and progress.
Tier 3
Tier 3, most commonly known for tertiary prevention or intense intervention, represents additional support to curb the identified needs for a smaller group of students. These practices and strategies are applied to children who are highly at risk of developing more advanced problems. The central purpose of tier 3 is to eradicate the existing barriers and threats that hinder children’s development and wellbeing. For instance, students who record poor reading skills despite the laid down strategies would probably be subjected to intensive learning support multiple times a week to help improve their reading skills (Thomas et al., 2020). Student grouping is necessary because children exhibit different skills and capabilities. Some are fast learners, while others need special attention to grasp teachings.
Child Study Team
These are a group of individual professionals that work together to identify the needs of special students and formulate interventions that are necessary to improve or remedy the problems hindering children learning processes. Therefore, the child study team consists of school psychologists, social workers, learning disability teachers’ consultants, speech-language specialists, and other professionals who play a significant role in child development (de Haan, 2021). Moreover, the effort of parents also has a considerable impact in shaping their young one’s maturity.
The Role of Child Study Team
The child study team and parents or guardians are responsible for assessing and examining the children to explore barriers to effective learning. Upon identifying the root cause of the problem, the study team, in collaboration with parents and other professionals who understand children’s condition in school, jointly makes a formed decision in helping the needy children. In the process of referring children to a program, all available data and records about the child are reviewed, and appropriate intervention is agreed to help curb the learning barriers that the child could be facing (de Haan, 2021). The study team harnesses the information reported by parents regarding children’s behavior to develop an appropriate intervention strategy.
Important Data to the Implementation of RTI
According to the Kindergarten class profile, several factors can be associated with poor or good children’s performance. In the classroom profile provided, the important data that has to be collected to enhance effective RTI implementation for these groups of students are the ease of English language learning which indicates the ease of understanding English. Socioeconomic background data assess the availability of resources such as the internet that aid children’s development. Moreover, each student’s home language also presents vital information that would allow professionals to develop appropriate strategies for the children. For example, the class profile consists of both children who speak either English or Spanish. As such, grouping Spanish-based or English-based kids would enhance their learning.
Another important piece of data that must be considered and assessed in the implementation of RTI for the defined group is the physical nature of the individual children. These include both emotion disturbance and auditory processing disorder that may cause persistent behaviors (Savitz et al., 2021). Other data that enhance effective implementation of RTI include the pronunciation, reading efficiency, and maths handling proficiency level.
Students Tier Placement
RTI intervention model is s stepwise process used to identify struggling students for further actions. Therefore, the child study team must consider many factors before student placement in the tiers. The distinguishing features for the tiers include the size of the instructional group, mastery requirement content, and frequency and focus of screening. Furthermore, duration of intervention, frequency and focus of progress monitoring, the intervention provided, and instruction qualification are other distinguishing features of tiers (Savitz et al., 2021). For appropriate placement of students into matching tiers, the study team should work together to identify struggling students in a classroom profile. As for the class profile defined, eleven children after universal screening would occupy tier 1 since they show little or no difficulty as their performance is concerned. Alessandria, Alia, Amelia, Antonio, Hannah, Iris, Jace, Kyle, Orion, Sebastian, and Sofia are among these students.
Tier 2 assessment of the group tends to give instruction and intervene for students who need a little supplement to enhance their performance. For example, the students with phonic struggles, emotional problems, and dyscalculia are subjected to further intervention measures to help them cope with their situations before being taken to tier 1. The classroom profile defined proved that Arthur, Emiliano, Liam, Natalie, Nicholas, Sarrah, and Tiffany need additional instructional guidance to supplement tier 1 for their good performance. Moreover, students whose problems could not be contained either by tier 1 or tier 2 but still show poor progress despite the interventions are moved to tier 3 for intense interventions. For example, Evie, Genie, Jaiden, Jessica, and Valeria showed some intense difficulties, such as auditory problems and difficulty coping and maintaining peer relationships.
Importance of RTI Model
The RTI model aims to examine and study students to explore their learning disabilities. For this reason, both able and disabled children are subjected to the same screening procedure and assessment that, in the long run, identify those students with special needs. In the process, children with no disability through the RTI procedures are subjected to learning advantages, which aid their full development and greater academic performance (Savitz et al., 2021). As such, RTI procedures do not only identifiers students with disabilities but also create a foundation for good academic and better performance of the children with no learning disabilities.
Intervention Strategies and Techniques
Giving plenty of feedback concerning the individual kids is one strategy and technique for solving problems such as difficulty reading English words, mathematics, and art for the defined classroom. Providing adequate information and feedback allows the educator to assess the children and know if they are expected depending on their results. For example, using verbal cues while attending to Arthur, Emiliano, Liam, Natalie, Nicholas, Sarah, and Tifanny would significantly help these students develop good pronunciation and reading efficiencies. Another technique that should employ with children with learning disabilities is continual monitoring of progress. The performance data is an indicator of the impact of the applied intervention process. Continually monitoring students’ success reminds teachers and educators of the importance of children’s performance. This technique also indicates the children’s development and behaviors, both positive and negative, to help educators launch strategies to surrogate the existing ones.
Direct instruction is another strategy that teachers often use to eradicate unnecessary misunderstanding and miscommunication. It is the responsibility of teachers to show the kids how to handle some tasks or how to pronounce English words that are perceived as challenging. The children build confidence as they mimic just like their teacher in the process. This technique would help those students with phonic problems in tire 2. i.e., Arthur, Emiliano, Liam, and Natalie.
Making student rephrase your lesson is an assessment which test the ability of the children to offer what they have learnt throughout the lesson. As such, the teacher would identify children with recalling problems and develop appropriate strategies to help individual kids to mastery new concepts.
References
de Haan, M. (2021). Supporting struggling adolescent readers through the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Australian Journal Of Learning Difficulties, 26(1), 47-66. Web.
Savitz, R., Allen, A., & Brown, C. (2021). Variations in RTI Literacy Implementation in Grades 6-12: A National Study. Literacy Research And Instruction, 1-24. Web.
Thomas, C., Allen, A., Ciullo, S., Lembke, E., Billingsley, G., Goodwin, M., & Judd, L. (2020). Exploring the Perceptions of Middle School Teachers Regarding Response to Intervention Struggling Readers. Exceptionality, 1-18. Web.