What is Response to Intervention (RTI)?

Background of Class 

Response to intervention (RTI) is an approach with three approaches that are used in the early identification and provision of support to students that have difficulties in learning and have behavioral requirements. The method starts with instruction of high quality and performing an overview of the students in a typical classroom. The students who have difficulties and are struggling are provided with intervention and an increasing level of intensity to improve on their learning rate. The services of the approach are provided by several personnel, including education teachers, special needs teachers and individuals with other specialties. The progress of the intervention is monitored on a close range to gauge the learning rate and the outcome of each student in the RTI system (Bill, Linda and Linda, 2011). The results of the response of each student to the approach will be necessary for making educational decisions. The procedure is designed in a manner in which it can be used in making decisions in the overall education and education with students with special needs through the creation of a well-integrated system where instructions in the approach are used as an intervention to depict the student's outcome. 

My class has a total of 90 students, of which 53 of them are boys, and the rest 37 are girls. The course is divided into three classrooms where two of them are grade 8 classes, and the other one is a grade 7 class. Majority of the students in the class have their age ranging between 12 to 16 years. Thirty-three of the entire pupils in the course require special attention as they are IEP students. Some of the students have difficulties in hearing, and others face a challenge in speech and language speaking. Also, there are students with health impairments and disabilities in learning. Six of the students in the class are English learning students and are first years in general education ICT settings. Four of the students in the class have undergone a transition from self-contained to the settings of ICT with the IEP students. Seven students in the class have both behaviour intervention plans (BIP) and individual education plan (IEP). 78% of the students in the class are Hispanics, 17% are Blacks, 3% are Asians, one is of the Alaska Native, and 1% are Whites. 28% of the students are learning English as their second language, and a total of 94% are from low-income families. 

Strengths and Needs 

The power and needs of the RIT apply to the entire class in general, the students on an individual basis and as a small group comprising of several students form the course. Comprehension of literature is one of the strengths that is present in the entire class. To realize the force, a BIBELS assessment is performed. The evaluation entails giving a test to the students in the class and assessing their phonological awareness and competency in text creation (Margo, 2010). 

Groups in the class have the strength of decoding text. Such is where students with similar interest are placed in the same group and are challenged to translate print into a speech by continuously matching letters or combining of letters with their sounds and make any possible recognition of patterns that will make syllables and other words. That is achieved through the use of the DIBELS assessment test, which is designed to measure the alphabetic principle and phonetic awareness among the groups. Individual students in the class have the strength of providing textual evidence to support a claim. DIBELS is a user-friendly strategy to measure the personal power of students in the class. The test assesses areas separately. Thus, as a teacher, the test will quickly assist me in identifying students with strengths and providing support to their claims and those who are struggling in such areas. 

Individual students in the class, particularly those with disabilities and the ELL students as well as those with poor performance, need integrated Co-Teaching classes. That will ensure there is accessibility in the support given to individual students with needs. Also, an added dedicated instructional approach is a need for such individual students (Bill, Linda and Linda, 2011). That will provide personalized interventions and enrichment of the students. Small groups in the class need laptops. All the classrooms should have several laptops that they can use during group instructions. The laptops should be programmed with software's such Lexia and Big Brainz to support the teacher when giving the instructions and the students when performing the instructions. The class as a whole needs target setting of the academic activities to be completed. The need can be achieved through a gradual release model where the tasks of the entire class will be differentiated for students to carry out through cooperative structures. 

Assessment 

The assessment used in the identification of the strengths and needs of the class, individual students and groups are screening. Screening is a component of a comprehensive literature assessment system that can be used to establish the strengths and needs of students in RTI programs. 

Step 1: The assessment model entails the collection of abundant data that can be used in the identification of the initial pool of the students that may need a target setting for the reading intervention to be successful. 

Step 2: Then, the general screening information form the earlier year provides a summation of the assessment. 

Step 3: Through the summation, students are identified that did not meet the expected level of performance. Through reviewing the outcomes of the assessment, the teacher and school at large will be in a position to plan for the next year. 

The outcomes of the assessment are confirmed by administering a benchmark test at the start of the next year to the students in the class. It is relevant to evaluate at the beginning of the year to weight the results of the previous year. The initial pool of students is further assessed through the DIBELS reading assessment. The assessment entails provision of tests to the students to measure their literacy skills. The evaluation will measure the phonological awareness, principle of the alphabet, fluency of the students and the connectivity to text. 

The quantitative/ descriptive results of the assessment to my class based on I-Ready in determining their strengths and needs indicate 6 students having 7% above the benchmark, 22 students with 25% with a single grade level below, 60 students with 67% representing two or more grade levels below and only 1 student with 1% implying incompletion of the test. When assessed based on their domains. The results are as follows (see appendix A). 

Practices 

Several many practices can be taken to aid in tire 1, 2, and 3. In tire one, all the students in the classroom receive high-quality instructions that are scientific and are offered by an expert. That will ensure that the difficulties which the students are having are not as a result of insufficient instructions. All the students will be monitored in intervals and periodically to create an academic baseline that will assist in the identification of learners that need additional support. At the tier, the students engage in learning through a rough grade level, and they are less likely to need an intervention. From the assessment of my class, six students fall in tire one where three of them are from the 7th grade, and the other three are from the 8th grade. 

One of the practices that can be taken to aid in establishing a validated system for screening that will closely monitor the performance of the students. Such methods include curriculum-based measurement. That practice will enhance the evaluation at the end of the first tire, which should last for eight weeks at most in determining students that have shown progress and need to be taken back to their regular classroom. Those students who are not showing any form of growth proceed to the second tier. 

In the second tier, the students who did not show regular progress are given more increased instructions which match their needs based on their level of performance and development. The services and interventions in this stage are provided to students who have been placed in small group settings which is an addition to the instructions in the overall curriculum. At the start, the intervention is based on reading and mathematics. The best practice to aid the second tier is to increase the time required for the response for students in this juncture. However, the method of increasing the duration should not last long enough to exceed the period for grading. For the students that show little or no progress in the second tier, they proceed to the third tier. 

The practice implemented in the second tier is on the basis that students most likely to perform better when they are with their peers in the same group. In my class, the results of the second tier indicate 22 students in a total of which 10 of them are IEP students, 9 of them are in the 7th grade, and the remaining 13 are in the 8th grade. 

The third tier is the final, and the last where students receive individual attention and the instructions are intensified to target the student's deficit skills. If by any chance, the students do not reach the target level of progression, they are transferred to a comprehensive intervention to receive special education attention. One of the practices that should be aided in the tier is prolonged intervention. The training will give the students the time they need to respond and meet the set level of progression before being transferred to any form of unique education service. The results of the third tier in my classroom indicate a total of 60 students with 23 IEP students. A total of 18 of the students are from the 7th grade, and the remaining 42 are from the 8th grade. 

Rationale/ Theory 

The activity theory is descriptive and takes into consideration the entire work that takes place beyond a single individual. The theory of the environment and the background of an individual. The model of the theory is important in understanding how the various factors come together to impact an activity (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2012). For one to get a result, it is key for them to produce various objects such as experiences and knowledge. The activity can be towards an object, a given goal and the operating structure that is automatic. The theory related to the use of scientifically based instructions which are provided with qualified individuals to the students in the first tier. That ensures that they eliminate the difficulties that result from insufficient instructions. The qualified individuals have the experience and strong knowledge in offering instructions to the students towards the achievement of a specific goal. 

The Actor-Network Theory applies to the second tier. The theory stipulates that the framework and the infrastructure contribute to technological achievements. The approach does not aim at establishing the reason why the network is in existence but is interested in how the components of the actor-network are made (Callon, 2010). In the second tier, the system is created through the creation of groups that allows the students to interact with their peers. The key objective is to intensify the intervention through group works which assist the students in relating to the instructions being given. 

The affordance theory suggests that the world is not only perceived by the shapes and objects in existence and the spatial relationship but buy also based on the affordance where the perception drives the actions taken. The theory changes the visual perception of an individual. The opinion of the environment leads to an effort (Gibson, 2010). The argument applies to the third tier, where objects are used to enhance the intervention to the students of an individual basis. 

Appendix A 

References  

Bill, H., Linda, D., &Linda, G. (2011). Teaching Reading Sourcebook. Oakland, California Novato, Core Literacy Library. Arena Press. Print. 

Callon, M. (2010). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In John Law (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 

Gibson, J. J. (2010). The senses considered as perceptual systems. 

Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. A. (2012). Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction design. MIT press. 

Margo, D. (2010). The Pros and Cons of DIBELS Assessment for Reading.