In this context, integrity includes fidelity to evidence-based strategies and interventions that honor learner diversity.
Tier 2 usually occurs over a period of about two months, while Tier 3 may have a longer and more intensive duration. For example, Tier 2 may occur over a period of ten weeks as opposed to twenty weeks for Tier 3 (Sanford, Harlacher, & Walker, 2010). These time frames are not standardized, since the length of tier instruction is responsive to learner progress. Appropriate student information in response to the multitiered interventions informs decisions and ultimately drives positive outcomes.
Contextually Engaging Tasks
Academic and behavioral tasks exist within the context of the core curriculum, but more important, within the context of real life. Student learning becomes more meaningful when students engage in context-related tasks with accompanying remediation and enrichment. RTI’s evidence-based systematic interventions focus on student needs, but when these interventions are contextually based, teachers can establish relevancy for students. Real-world connections link concepts to learner interests to increase time on task and student buy-in with the motivation to learn more.
The following are examples of skills taught within contextually engaging tasks.
➢ Oral expression: Students cooperatively organize notes in small groups of three to five peers as they deliver a class presentation. Topics include a favorite family celebration, best day in school, or a difficult task accomplished.
➢ Listening comprehension: Students receive background information before viewing a clip from a popular movie or television show. They take notes with guided questions in a cloze structure in which they fill in key concepts to guide their listening.
➢ Reading fluency: Students read jokes and riddles with classmates before creating and presenting mathematics, science, and social studies jokes based on the vocabulary they are studying. The teacher shares a video with examples and nonexamples of fluency with expression, pausing, phrasing, and inflection with choral modeling, and offers instruction, feedback, and guidance to smaller groups and individual students.
➢ Reading comprehension: After students receive refreshers on specific types of reading comprehension questions (for example, main idea, sequencing, and so on), they form groups of three to four. Then each group selects a specific fairy tale, fable, or nonfiction article to analyze and writes comprehension questions to exchange with another cooperative group. Afterward, the groups discuss the reading comprehension skills gained with the teacher and the class.
➢ Vocabulary development: Students highlight a list of vocabulary words as they follow along on copies of lyrics from curriculum-related hip-hop videos from Flocabulary (www.flocabulary.com); for example, “The Week in Rap,” “Geography,” “Ancient History,” and “Internet Safety.”
➢ Written expression: Students write on topics that interest them (for example, fashion, NASCAR racing, soccer, dolphins, or beaded wrap bracelets). They use multiple scaffolding tools, such as transitional word lists, sensory words, online visual dictionaries, glossaries, writing frames, and technology tools.
➢ Mathematical computations and applications: Students complete engaging activities (for example, measuring ingredients for a recipe, figuring out the batting average of a baseball player, recording the average weekly and monthly temperatures) to learn reasoning.
Multiple Curriculum Entry Points
English philosopher Herbert Spencer (Brainy Quote, n.d.) wrote: “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” Even though teachers arrange instructional activities to increase student knowledge, both the students and teachers are active learners. Teachers learn about their students as they note progress with multitiered interventions. In The Student-Centered Classroom, author Leo Jones (2007) writes:
The teacher’s role is more that of a facilitator than instructor; the students are active participants in the learning process. The teacher helps to guide the students, manage their activities, and direct their learning. Being a teacher means helping people to learn; and, in a student-centered class, the teacher is a member of the class as a participant in the learning process. (p. 2)
That’s where multiple curriculum entry points come in.
Successful Strategies and Mindsets
Successful strategies and mindsets allow for scaffolding, guiding, compacting, and reinforcing the core curriculum to connect to individual learner skill sets. The main goal of RTI is for all students to achieve. Buffum and colleagues (2012) assert: “Response to intervention (RTI) is our best hope to provide every child with the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels” (p. xiii).
Each RTI tier exemplifies that strategic teaching honors student ownership and hones skills with phonemic awareness and fluency; comprehension of fiction, narrative, and expository text; mathematics computations and concepts; and real-life applications of literacy and mathematics. Teachers with mindsets that hold high expectations for all students never marginalize either the concepts or student potential.
Teachers with mindsets that hold high expectations for all students never marginalize either the concepts or student potential.
MTSS Lesson Connections
The following literacy and mathematics scenarios are examples of multitiered responsive interventions that embrace RTI’s tiered instruction. The lessons offer a glimpse into the RTI process in action. They invite teachers to connect tiered interventions to their own grade levels, disciplines, and students, and to consider the collaborative staff roles and who is responsible for interventions for the whole class, small groups, and individual learners. As teachers plan literacy and mathematics units, they must honor student-centered instruction with an eye on increasing listening skills, fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary, written expression, oral expression, and critical thinking skills.
Literacy Scenario
This scenario takes place in a fourth-grade language arts lesson. For Tier 1, students read Cynthia Lord’s (2008) book Rules. The book depicts the themes of differences and accepting others through exploring the relationship between two siblings, the main characters. Catherine’s brother, David, has autism. Students search the book for text-based evidence in response to written questions, explore character traits, and write a book report. During core instruction, students participate in read-alouds, guided practice, and buddy reads. The teacher offers students characterization graphic organizers where students can record their thoughts, along with writing frames to assist with the book reports.
The teacher offers students who easily grasp the concepts nonfiction articles on autism to review and summarize and present their findings to the class. They compare and contrast the knowledge from the nonfiction autism resources to how Lord presents David. Some students in core instruction write a literary review of the novel, others act out scenes from the novel, and some create storyboards with hand-drawn or digitally created visuals.
For Tier 2, a few students receive literacy instruction in small groups in addition to the core instruction. These students require daily assistance to better understand how to interpret the text to identify the characters’ appearances, actions, and thoughts. Students elaborate on the rules, such as explaining why a boy takes off his shirt to swim, but not his shorts; why no toys are allowed in the fish tank; and why late does not mean you are not coming. The tiered instruction offers students increased chances to discuss the plot, answer inferential questions, and practice
