Transcript Simplifying RTI - Good Spirit School Division 204

Simplifying RTI
FOUR ESSENTIAL
GUIDING
PRINCIPLES
ADELLE, LAUREL & TRACY
GOOD SPIRIT SCHOOL DIVISION
OCTOBER 2013
The 4 Cs of RTI
1.
2.
3.
4.
Collective Responsibility
Concentrated Instruction
Convergent Assessment
Certain Access
1. Collective Responsibility
“Why are we here?”
 Shared belief that the primary responsibility of each
member of the organization is to ensure high levels
of learning for every child
 Educators must embrace high levels of learning for
all students as both the reason the organization
exists and the fundamental responsibility of those
who work within it.
 This collective purpose sets the direction for the
organization and guides its actions
Collective Responsibility
“Are we here to teach, or are we here to
ensure that our students learn?”
 Begins with cultural change of school
 Virtually all educators believe kids can learn, but
many feel how much a student can learn depends on
his/her innate abilities and demographic
background. This creates a sliding scale of
expectations that are carried out in school practices
every day.
Collective Responsibility
 ‘All’ includes any students who will be expected
to live as financially independent adults
someday.
 Achieving anything less than high school plus
will make it virtually impossible to thrive as
adults.
Collective Responsibility
How?
 Build an effective school leadership team or guiding
coalition (early adopters or lead learners)

Team must learn deeply about best practices, assess the
school’s current reality, determine potential next steps for
school improvement, identify possible obstacles, and plan the
best way to create staff consensus
 Resisters to change are often the most vocal about
sharing their beliefs
Collective Responsibility
 Provide the ‘why’ before the ‘what’ – many
resist change because they are never provided with a
clear rationale for change
 Connect school data to specific students –
reminds teachers of the reason they chose this
profession…to help kids
 Create a doable plan – define specific
responsibilities and include resources teachers need
to meet these expectations
Collective Responsibility
 Expect the best – create a scaffold of support for
resistant staff – PD, resources, ongoing support
 Confront the worst – after offering support,
leaders must confront resisters and demand they
meet their responsibilities to the collective school
efforts
 The silent majority must be willing to have
courageous conversations with the aggressive
minority that is holding the school hostage
Collective Responsibility
 Start – if you wait for everyone to get on board the
train may never leave the station.

As staff start doing the work they will see some
improvement in student learning, confirming their
efforts, adding to their commitment, leading to even
better results
Eventually enough staff members will experience the
positive results of RTI that the new thinking
becomes ‘just the way we do business’
2. Concentrated Instruction
A systematic process of identifying essential
knowledge and skills that ALL students must master to
learn at HIGH levels, and determining the specific
needs for each child to get there?
Concentrated Instruction
Designing and Refining Our Instruction
Around Student Learning
“When everything is important, nothing is important”
- Anonymous
Concentrated Instruction
Where are we going?
How are we going?
Where to next?
Concentrated Instruction
“Clarity is the antidote to anxiety…if you do nothing
else as a leader, be clear.”
Buckingham 2005
Teach less…learn more!
(Singapore Ministry of Education)
Concentrated Instruction
A Focus on Learning... PLC’s
DuFour – every collaborative team must ask…
1. What do we expect our students to learn?
2. How will we know they are learning?
3. How will we respond when they don’t learn?
4. How do we respond if they already know it?
Concentrated Instruction
Criteria for Selecting Essential Standards
1. Endurance:
Will this standard provide students with knowledge and skills that
will be of value beyond a single test date?
2. Leverage:
Will this provide knowledge and skills that will be a value to multiple
disciplines?
3. Prepare for the next level:
Will this provide students with the essential knowledge and skills
necessary for success in the next grade or level of instruction?
Concentrated Instruction
Concentrated Instruction
Choosing Our List of Essential Indicators
 Which standards should be essential at each grade
level?
 Which standards have endurance, leverage and
readiness?
 Which standards have our students failed to master?
Concentrated Instruction
Concentrated Instruction
Concentrated Instruction
Concentrated Instruction
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Formative Instruction
Determine what standards students already know
and how well they know them.
Decide what changes in instruction to make in order
to help students be successful.
Create lessons appropriate to the needs of the
students.
Group students for intervention and enrichment.
Inform students of their own progress in order for
them to set goals.
Concentrated Instruction
Targeted Instruction + Time = Learning
Concentrated Instruction
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what
to do, and then do your best.”
-Deming
Concentrated Instruction
Concentrated Instruction and Behavior Systems
A school’s core instruction in behavior should result in
at least 80% of students being able to articulate what is
expected of them, because behaviors have been
explicitly taught, actively supervised, practiced and
acknowledged.
Concentrated Instruction
Behavior Falls in Two Categories:
 1. Academic Misbehaviors

Not paying attention, not completing assignments, missing
class, poor study habits…signs of lack of motivation, lack of
knowledge of the “rules of school’ or attendance problems
 2. Social Misbehaviors
 Acting out, using inappropriate language, or engaging in
physical confrontations – may appear as lack of commission
aimed at getting attention
Concentrated Instruction
Academic Misbehaviors
Students may lack self regulatory skills such as:
 Time Management
 Organization
 Note Taking
 Goal Setting
 Self-Motivation
Concentrated Instruction
Behavioral Rules
1. Explicitly teach and reinforce self-regulatory
strategies
2. Assign high quality task for students to complete
3. Praise and encourage effort to support a growth
mindset
4. Emphasize the importance of regular attendance
5. Build positive relationships between adults and
students
Concentrated Instruction
Social Misbehaviors
 Clearly define behavior as a responsibility of the
school-wide team
 Identify expectations and desired behaviors
 Teach desired behaviors
Such as:
 Respect
 Responsibility
 Readiness
Concentrated Instruction
Collaborative teams require
laser-like clarity
about where they are going
and
how they are getting there.
3. Convergent Assessment
 An ongoing process of collectively analyzing targeted
evidence to determine the specific learning needs of
each child and the effectiveness of the instruction the
child receives in meeting these needs.
Thinking is guided by the question:
Where are we now?
Convergent Assessment
“Assessment for learning, when done well, is one of
the most powerful, high-leverage strategies for
improving student learning that we know of.”
-Michael Fullan
Convergent Assessment
Our Essential Question
How can we use assessment as a convergent
practice to enhance student motivation and
increase student achievement?
Convergent Assessment
 It isn’t the method that determines whether the
assessment is summative or formative; it is how the
results are used.

Formative Assessment – formal and informal processes
teachers and students use to gather evidence for the purpose of
improving learning

Summative Assessment – assessments that provide evidence
of student achievement for the purpose of making a judgment
about student competence or program effectiveness
Convergent Assessment
Convergent Assessment
 PLC Critical Questions
1. What do we expect students to learn?
2. How do we know when they have learned it?
Convergent Assessment
 In order to respond effectively when students don’t
learn, we need to know:
1. Which students did or did not master specific essential
standards?
2. Which Instruction Practices did or did not work?
Convergent Assessment
 Do your teacher PLC’s:
 Give common assessments to measure every essential
standard?

Identify students for extra help, by the student, by the
standard, by the learning target?

Compare results to identify most effective teaching practices
by the learning target?
Convergent Assessment
 What if We Would…
1. Determine student learning outcomes and share
with students.
2. Plan one common formative assessment during
instruction.
3. Plan one day to reteach after analyzing common
assessments.
Convergent Assessment
4. Certain Access
 A systematic process that guarantees every student
will receive the time and support needed to learn at
high levels.
 “How do we get every student there?”
Certain Access
Systemic responses must:
 Identify student who need help
 Determine the right intervention to meet the student’s
learning needs
 Monitor the student’s progress to know if the
intervention is working. If the intervention is not
meeting the intended outcome:
 Revise the student’s support by providing more
intensive and targeted assistance
 Extend students who are at grade level to even higher
levels of achievement
Certain Access
 Includes effective interventions
 The more targeted the intervention, the more
successful it will be
 Group students by the same cause, not the same
symptom
Certain Access
 Student identification – through universal screening,
common assessment data, and staff recommendation
at least every three weeks
 Tier 1 to Tier 2:
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
Teacher teams take the lead on students needing a little extra
help.
They assume collective responsibility for delivering
instruction, formative assessments, and to ensure access to
extra time and support
Certain Access
Certain Access – Tier 2 Supports
Certain Access – Tier 3 Supports
Certain Access
 Essential skills to universally screen:
 Oral
language
 Reading
 Writing
 Number sense
 English language
 Attendance
 Behavior
Certain Access
Simplifying RTI
 Jim Collins says that great organizations “maintain
unwavering faith that you can prevail in the end,
regardless of the difficulties, and, at the same time
have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts
about your current reality, whatever they may be.”
Simplifying RTI
 Understand your current reality, know your
destination, define your path to get there, and begin
your journey!