Response to Intervention (RTI) helps schools be more responsive to diverse learners
A lovely young mother asked her fourth-grade son about his school day. He answered with short responses. Finally, the mother just listened. The son then asked, "Why doesn’t my teacher like me?"
Stunned, his mother probed further, "Why do you think she doesn’t like you?
"Because it seems like I am always in trouble. The teacher puts my name on the board and I have to stay after school," he responded.
His mother looked at him in disbelief. The year before, in third grade, her son was reading well because the teacher adjusted instruction to meet students’ needs. "You know you do learn a little differently," his mother said. "I will talk with the teacher."
When she attended a parent meeting, she spoke briefly with the teacher, whose only solution was to refer her son for special education services. She learned that there were five other fourth-grade boys who also were referred. By the end of fourth grade, these boys had been placed in a pull-out special education class.
In fifth grade, these same boys became very good readers as the special education teacher and regular education teacher collaborated on an instructional program. The mother’s hopes rallied. In the parent meeting, she learned that the classroom teacher taught from a "making sense" framework. He continually asked his students if what they were reading was making sense. The mother was pleased, yet she wanted more for her son.
By sixth grade, these boys were reading only one story behind the regular class in a basal reader. At her son’s team meeting, the mother asked that her son read and discuss the classroom story with the rest of his classmates. This never occurred. These boys remained in the special education classroom reading one story behind their classmates. The fourth- and sixth-grade teachers believed students with learning disabilities demanded radical changes in instruction.
I am concerned about diverse learners who do not receive effective instruction in the regular classroom. Instructional adjustments are not radical changes. They are the way teachers respond and teach diverse learners. Instructional adjustments are positively related to student learning, and teachers can easily find appropriate instructional alternatives for diverse learners.
Response to Intervention (RTI) asks teachers to create instructional adjustments for diverse learners in regular classrooms. Viewed positively, RTI can be a vehicle to help schools be more responsive to diverse learners. RTI encourages teachers and specialists to design appropriate classroom reading instruction, monitor student progress and adapt instruction to meet the challenges of all students.
RTI has two main goals: 1) to identify instructional alternatives that will support learning; and 2) to monitor progress as instructional adjustments are made. By providing intensive, research-based practices in the classroom and by monitoring students’ response, RTI offers an opportunity to reduce the number of students referred for special education services.
Although RTI is optional for schools, the program has many benefits. My perspective is that these benefits could enhance learning in schools around the world. Using RTI, teachers can design effective reading instruction, craft instructional adjustments, collaborate on instruction, and assess student learning while teaching.
RTI encourages teachers to provide struggling learners with extensive instruction while remaining with their classmates. Teachers observe student learning and establish an engaging social context that encourages active thinking.
Effective teachers provide for high-level responses focused on meaning and use conversations in an open exchange of ideas. They hold high expectations and do not get hooked into the self-defeating attitude of struggling learners. They also adapt and adjust their instruction to meet the growing learning demands of their students. In other words, they make instructional adjustments.
RTI encourages teachers to craft instructional adjustments to meet the instructional challenges of diverse learners. During a lesson, readers construct meaning with text. When reading falters, diverse learners often need support to keep engaged. Teachers respond by fostering learning and adjusting instruction. Many times, they support students in ways that are not part of any one particular program, method, or practice. Thus, teachers encourage learning through discourse, demonstrations, and scaffolding.
Teachers can support reading and writing by demonstrating "how" reading and writing work and then supporting students’ attempts. To begin, teachers talk about why they are reading a particular text, what their purpose is, and how that purpose will determine a strategy for reading or writing.
In the next step, teachers actually read or write and then stop to think aloud about "how" they are constructing meaning. Teachers model "I think ...," talking about their own reading or writing. Showing the how and saying "I think ..." releases students from having to think exactly like the teacher. Saying "I do it this way" implies others can think in a different way. While demonstrating, teachers may pause over a word, talk about background knowledge, make text connections, or intertwine information to make sense of reading.
After demonstrations, teachers continue to support or scaffold the new learning. They often provide continuous support and sustain learning by scaffolding students’ attempts.
For example, teachers can deal effectively with inappropriate student responses by using part of the response to probe reasoning. Sometimes they rephrase what the student said to clarify the meaning. As they scaffold, teachers phase in to support the students’ literacy attempts and phase out to free students to think independently.
As teachers implement lessons, their guided instruction provides a means for assessing progress. They keep mental notes of students’ responses. In other words, teachers assess changes in the students’ reading and writing as they teach.
For example, a third-grade teacher named Ron was teaching a small group within the classroom. He asked Sherry to read part of the text to prove a prediction. As she read, Ron assessed word identification and fluency.
Then Ron asked her to explain her reasoning, and he assessed how Sherry was thinking. Sherry made no mistakes on word identification and read fairly fluently, but she had difficulty talking about meaning. So Ron began using a think-aloud procedure demonstrating his thinking using "I think."
This is an example of how teachers assess learning while they are teaching. As basic instructional variables are adjusted, assessment is based on the ensuing response. Effective teachers continually evaluate students’ improvement as a result of instruction. If students do not progress, the teacher looks for another way to adjust instruction for literacy development.
RTI provides an opportunity for classroom teachers, parents, reading specialists, literacy coaches, special educators, and principals to collaborate on improving instruction and assessment. As they collaborate, they create options for students’ reading and writing instruction. As a group, they learn to value and share perspectives and identify alternatives to advance learning. Each perspective adds to a shared understanding of student learning.
For example, Karen, a literacy coach, worked with Ron to help advance Sherry’s reading comprehension. When Ron used the think-aloud in the small group, Sherry did not progress. The literacy coach suggested using a strategy check sheet, but Sherry still struggled with comprehension.
Therefore, the literacy coach formed an instructional team that included the special education teacher, the principal, and the parents along with the others to discuss Sherry’s lack of progress. The instructional team realized that the adjustment of supporting Sherry’s thinking aloud was not enough to change her reading strategies. They looked at recent assessment data and observation notes. The parent mentioned that Sherry loved to write in her diary. The principal mentioned he had seen Sherry writing poetry in study hall.
After sharing their perspectives, the team agreed on having the small group focus on thinking aloud and added writing predictions and rationales before discussing the use of their background knowledge and the text. Karen, the literacy coach, provided support for Ron, the classroom teacher, by demonstrating the instructional adaptations. The literacy coach also monitored progress weekly.
Because the team had shared perspectives, they adapted instruction with increased specificity. With these adjustments, the team found that Terry improved her comprehension and began to contribute to class discussions. Terry stayed with her classmates.
This year, I want to focus on diverse learners. In this vein, I have started a Commission on Response to Intervention to work on options for assessment and instruction for classroom teachers, reading specialists, and literacy coaches.
I also have created four separate ad hoc committees focusing on language diversity, learning diversity, urban diversity, and rural diversity. They will work together to provide professional development activities for IRA members.
In my travels around the world, I have found that diversity is a concern of many educators. Let us work together, celebrating our likenesses and empathetically discussing our differences to improve the learning of everyone.
IRA President Barbara J. Walker is a reading education professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Adjusting instruction to meet students’ needs. (June 2008). Reading Today, 25(6), 18–19.
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