instructional decisions respond to multiple learner levels; this assists teachers in determining the best teaching approaches to reach each student. Ultimately, teachers must consider that learners are often at different levels of content mastery, even if they’re in the same classroom. The response to intervention (RTI) approach addresses these levels.
RTI is a multitiered system of supports (MTSS) that offers diverse routes and step-by-step approaches such as differentiated instruction and universal design for learning (UDL) to help learners achieve mastery. RTI and MTSS are not separate ideas or concepts but partners that value how the core instruction is delivered to learners. Multitiered instruction is basically an instructional interaction. It is how teachers deliver the core instruction to students who learn differently. If teachers introduce, remediate, and enrich student levels with the whole class, small groups, and individuals, then they can effectively address student diversity.
RTI is often delivered in three tiers, as shown in figure I.1.
Source: Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012.
Figure I.1: The traditional RTI pyramid.
According to Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, and Chris Weber (2012):
The pyramid shape is wide at the bottom to represent the basic instruction that all students receive. As students demonstrate the need for additional support, they move up the pyramid, receiving increasingly more targeted and intensive help. Fewer students should need the services offered at the upper levels, thus creating the tapered shape of a pyramid. The pyramid is also traditionally separated into tiers, with Tier I representing gradelevel core instruction, Tier 2 supplemental interventions, and Tier 3 intensive student support. (p. 11)
Tier 1 instruction is for the whole class or small groups; not all learners master the learning initially. Tier 2 intervention provides supplemental instruction in small groups, as needed; and Tier 3 intervention provides instruction for individual students who require additional scaffolding and practice. To further reinforce this concept, Buffum and colleagues (2012) provide an inverted pyramid, which focuses on “a school’s collective attention and resources to a single point: the individual child” (p. 11). The foundation for RTI is that schools should not delay helping struggling students until they fall so far behind that they then qualify for special education, but instead “should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need” (p. xiii). See figure I.2.
Source: Buffum et al., 2012.
Figure I.2: The inverted RTI pyramid.
They contend that the pyramid “should be wide at the top to represent access to the core gradelevel curriculum that all students deserve and need” (p. 11). This initial core instruction should meet the needs of most students and embrace differentiation. However, beyond initial instruction, some students may need more focused, targeted instruction, and the school should respond by individually attending to the needs of each of these students.
Instruction can address oral expression, listening comprehension, early literacy skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary development, written expression, mathematical computations, mathematical problem solving, and critical-thinking skills across the grades and disciplines to help learners achieve academic success. Instruction and assistance to know and display appropriate behavioral, social, and emotional skills are also essential.
RTI requires teachers to provide systematic and explicit instruction to be sure they are planning, organizing, and sequencing their instruction in a way that makes sense to students at all levels of learning.
The following sections detail systematic and explicit instruction and how teachers can strategically implement it into the three tiers. You also will read about the four Cs of RTI, which identify the four guiding principles all educators should follow to help students succeed.
Systematic and Explicit Instruction
Systematic instruction is similar to a builder’s blueprint for a house that is planned for and designed before building materials are gathered and construction begins (Colorado Department of Education, 2008). Even though systematic instruction refers to a carefully planned sequence for instruction, that does not translate to all heads facing forward using the same strategy at the same time for each student (Florida Department of Education, n.d.). Tiered instruction offers multiple entry points to allow students at varying levels to gain and retain knowledge and skills.
Explicit instruction requires strategic planning that links and builds on prior learning. Teachers must consider what students were taught, what students remember and can apply, and what students need to be taught. Multitiered instruction bridges gaps and connects students to newer concepts as the curriculum increases in complexity. Breaking up the learning into its discrete steps allows for practice, application, and retention within a multitiered approach.
Explicit instruction offers a road map for how a skill is taught, including a description of each step and the strategies employed. Concepts and skills to explicitly and systematically teach include phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, mathematics, and behavior. Vigilance with structure and then flexibility allow tiered instruction to be responsive to student needs, interests, and levels.
Teachers must consider what students were taught, what students remember and can apply, and what students need to be taught.
Tier 1
Curriculum maps and lesson plans outline the core instruction, but they are never scripted ones, since student responses drive the choice of instructional programs and academic engagements. Tier 1 core instruction provides explicit evidence-based lessons for phonological segmentation, fluency, comprehension, basic mathematics facts, fractions, geometry, and algebra, to name a few academic areas, as well as monitoring on-task behavior to increase motivation and attention. Continual progress monitoring occurs throughout all of the tiers.
Responsive tweaking of instruction is based on student performance. Many teachers say they have experienced a scheduled fifty-minute period of instruction that some students grasp in fifteen minutes, while other students require fifty minutes or even five hours of instruction. Tier 1 often identifies the students who require additional instructional approaches to be given in Tiers 2 and 3.
Tier 2
Daniel Hallahan, James Kauffman, and Paige Pullen (2015) explain that Tier 2 usually takes about six to eight weeks. This time period allows students ample time to learn and then practice the skills. However, if a student is not showing any progress, six to eight weeks may not be realistic. Rollanda O’Connor and Janette Klingner (2010) state “the effectiveness of successful tiers depends not just on instructional content, but also on teachers’ responsiveness to students who respond poorly, or, in other words, on teachers’ instructional savvy and flexibility” (p. 303).
Tier 2 includes, but is not limited to, small-group instruction, multiple interventions and resources, increased feedback and monitoring, access to both grade-level and student-level text, frontloading the content and challenging vocabulary, and using companion materials that align with the core materials (National Center on Intensive Intervention at American Institutes for Research [AIR],
