RTI: Best Practices in Writing & Math Interventions Jim Wright interventioncentral

1. RTI: Best Practices in Writing & Math InterventionsJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

2. RTI & Academic Interventions: Overview Math Interventions & Progress-Monitoring Writing Interventions & Progress-Monitoring Academic Intervention ‘Critical Components’ Ideas for Measuring Integrity of Math & Writing Interventions Web Resources to Support Academic Interventions RTI: Best Practices in Writing and Math Interventions

3. RTI Assumption: Struggling Students Are ‘Typical’ Until Proven Otherwise… RTI logic assumes that: • A student who begins to struggle in general education is typical, and that • It is general education’s responsibility to find the instructional strategies that will unlock the student’s learning potential Only when the student shows through well-documented interventions that he or she has ‘failed to respond to intervention’ does RTI begin to investigate the possibility that the student may have a learning disability or other special education condition.

4. Use Time & Resources Efficiently By Collecting Information Only on ‘Things That Are Alterable’ “…Time should be spent thinking about things that the intervention team can influence through instruction, consultation, related services, or adjustments to the student’s program. These are things that are alterable.…Beware of statements about cognitive processes that shift the focus from the curriculum and may even encourage questionable educational practice. They can also promote writing off a student because of the rationale that the student’s insufficient performance is due to a limited and fixed potential. “ p.359 Source: Howell, K. W., Hosp, J. L., & Kurns, S. (2008). Best practices in curriculum-based evaluation. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp.349-362). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

5. Five Core Components of RTI Service Delivery • Student services are arranged in a multi-tier model • Data are collected to assess student baseline levels and to make decisions about student progress • Interventions are ‘evidence-based’ • The ‘procedural integrity’ of interventions is measured • RTI is implemented and developed at the school- and district-level to be scalable and sustainable over time Source: Glover, T. A., & DiPerna, J. C. (2007). Service delivery for response to intervention: Core components and directions for future research. School Psychology Review, 36, 526-540.

6. Tier 3: Intensive interventions. Students who are ‘non-responders’ to Tiers 1 & 2 are referred to the RTI Team for more intensive interventions. Tier 3 Tier 2 Individualized interventions. Subset of students receive interventions targeting specific needs. Tier 2 Tier 1: Universal interventions. Available to all students in a classroom or school. Can consist of whole-group or individual strategies or supports. Tier 1 RTI ‘Pyramid of Interventions’

7. Avg Classroom Academic Performance Level Discrepancy 1: Skill Gap (Current Performance Level) Discrepancy 2: Gap in Rate of Learning (‘Slope of Improvement’) Target Student ‘Dual-Discrepancy’: RTI Model of Learning Disability(Fuchs 2003)

8. Intervention Research & Development: A Work in Progress

9. Tier 1: What Are the Recommended Elements of ‘Core Curriculum’?: More Research Needed “In essence, we now have a good beginning on the evaluation of Tier 2 and 3 interventions, but no idea about what it will take to get the core curriculum to work at Tier 1. A complicating issue with this potential line of research is that many schools use multiple materials as their core program.” p. 640 Source: Kovaleski, J. F. (2007). Response to intervention: Considerations for research and systems change. School Psychology Review, 36, 638-646.

10. Limitations of Intervention Research… “…the list of evidence-based interventions is quite small relative to the need [of RTI]…. Thus, limited dissemination of interventions is likely to be a practical problem as individuals move forward in the application of RTI models in applied settings.” p. 33 Source: Kratochwill, T. R., Clements, M. A., & Kalymon, K. M. (2007). Response to intervention: Conceptual and methodological issues in implementation. In Jimerson, S. R., Burns, M. K., & VanDerHeyden, A. M. (Eds.), Handbook of response to intervention: The science and practice of assessment and intervention. New York: Springer.

11. Schools Need to Review Tier 1 (Classroom) Interventions to Ensure That They Are Supported By Research There is a lack of agreement about what is meant by ‘scientifically validated’ classroom (Tier I) interventions. Districts should establish a ‘vetting’ process—criteria for judging whether a particular instructional or intervention approach should be considered empirically based. Source: Fuchs, D., & Deshler, D. D. (2007). What we need to know about responsiveness to intervention (and shouldn’t be afraid to ask).. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22(2),129–136.

12. What Are Appropriate Content-Area Tier 1 Universal Interventions for Secondary Schools? “High schools need to determine what constitutes high-quality universal instruction across content areas. In addition, high school teachers need professional development in, for example, differentiated instructional techniques that will help ensure student access to instruction interventions that are effectively implemented.” Source: Duffy, H. (August 2007). Meeting the needs of significantly struggling learners in high school. Washington, DC: National High School Center. Retrieved from http://www.betterhighschools.org/pubs/ p. 9

13. RTI & Intervention: Key Concepts

14. Essential Elements of Any Academic or Behavioral Intervention (‘Treatment’) Strategy: • Method of delivery (‘Who or what delivers the treatment?’)Examples include teachers, paraprofessionals, parents, volunteers, computers. • Treatment component (‘What makes the intervention effective?’)Examples include activation of prior knowledge to help the student to make meaningful connections between ‘known’ and new material; guide practice (e.g., Paired Reading) to increase reading fluency; periodic review of material to aid student retention.

15. Core Instruction,Interventions, Accommodations & Modifications: Sorting Them Out • Core Instruction. Those instructional strategies that are used routinely with all students in a general-education setting are considered ‘core instruction’. High-quality instruction is essential and forms the foundation of RTI academic support. NOTE: While it is important to verify that good core instructional practices are in place for a struggling student, those routine practices do not ‘count’ as individual student interventions.

16. Core Instruction, Interventions, Accommodations & Modifications: Sorting Them Out • Intervention. An academic intervention is a strategy used to teach a new skill, build fluency in a skill, or encourage a child to apply an existing skill to new situations or settings. An intervention can be thought of as “a set of actions that, when taken, have demonstrated ability to change a fixed educational trajectory” (Methe & Riley-Tillman, 2008; p. 37).

17. Core Instruction,Interventions, Accommodations & Modifications: Sorting Them Out • Accommodation. An accommodation is intended to help the student to fully access and participate in the general-education curriculum without changing the instructional content and without reducing the student’s rate of learning (Skinner, Pappas & Davis, 2005). An accommodation is intended to remove barriers to learning while still expecting that students will master the same instructional content as their typical peers. • Accommodation example 1: Students are allowed to supplement silent reading of a novel by listening to the book on tape. • Accommodation example 2: For unmotivated students, the instructor breaks larger assignments into smaller ‘chunks’ and providing students with performance feedback and praise for each completed ‘chunk’ of assigned work (Skinner, Pappas & Davis, 2005).

18. Core Instruction,Interventions, Accommodations & Modifications: Sorting Them Out • Modification. A modification changes the expectations of what a student is expected to know or do—typically by lowering the academic standards against which the student is to be evaluated. Examples of modifications: • Giving a student five math computation problems for practice instead of the 20 problems assigned to the rest of the class • Letting the student consult course notes during a test when peers are not permitted to do so • Allowing a student to select a much easier book for a book report than would be allowed to his or her classmates.

19. RTI: Writing InterventionsJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

21. Defining Student Writing Problems

22. "If all the grammarians in the world were placed end to end, it would be a good thing." • Oscar Wilde

23. Domains of writing to be assessed (Robinson & Howell, 2008): • Fluency/Text Generation: Facility in getting text onto paper or typed into the computer. (NOTE: This element can be significantly influenced by student motivation.) • Syntactic Maturity: This skill includes the: • Ability to discern when a word string meets criteria as a complete sentence • Ability to write compositions with a diverse range of sentence structures • Semantic Maturity: Writer’s use of vocabulary of range and sophistication Source: Robinson, L. K., & Howell, K. W. (2008). Best practices in curriculum-based evaluation & written expression. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp. 439-452). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

24. Domains of writing to be assessed (Robinson & Howell, 2008): 5-Step Writing Process: (Items in bold are iterative): • Planning. The student carries out necessary pre-writing planning activities, including content, format, and outline. • Drafting. The student writes or types the composition. • Revision. The student reviews the content of the composition-in-progress and makes changes as needed. After producing an initial written draft, the student considers revisions to content before turning in for a grade or evaluation. • Editing. The student looks over the composition and corrects any mechanical mistakes (capitalization, punctuation, etc.). • Publication: The student submits the composition in finished form. Source: Robinson, L. K., & Howell, K. W. (2008). Best practices in curriculum-based evaluation & written expression. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp. 439-452). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

25. Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

26. Evaluating the Impact of Effect Size Coefficients • 0.20 Effect Size = Small • 0.50 Effect Size = Medium • 0.80 Effect Size = Large Source: Cohen,J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nded.). Hillsdale,NJ:Erlbaum.

27. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Writing Process (Effect Size = 0.82): Students are taught a process for planning, revising, and editing. • Summarizing (Effect Size = 0.82): Students are taught methods to identify key points, main ideas from readings to write summaries of source texts. • Cooperative Learning Activities (‘Collaborative Writing’) (Effect Size = 0.75): Students are placed in pairs or groups with learning activities that focus on collaborative use of the writing process. • Goal-Setting (Effect Size = 0.70): Students set specific ‘product goals’ for their writing and then check their attainment of those self-generated goals. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

28. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Writing Processors (Effect Size = 0.55): Students have access to computers/word processors in the writing process. • Sentence Combining (Effect Size = 0.50): Students take part in instructional activities that require the combination or embedding of simpler sentences (e.g., Noun-Verb-Object) to generate more advanced, complex sentences. • Prewriting (Effect Size = 0.32): Students learn to select, develop, or organize ideas to incorporate into their writing by participating in structured ‘pre-writing’ activities. • Inquiry Activities (Effect Size = 0.32): Students become actively engaged researchers, collecting and analyzing information to guide the ideas and content for writing assignments. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

29. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Process Writing (Effect Size = 0.32): Writing instruction is taught in a ‘workshop’ format that “ stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing” (Graham & Perin, 2007; p. 4). • Use of Writing Models (Effect Size = 0.25): Students read and discuss models of good writing and use them as exemplars for their own writing. • Writing to Learn Content (Effect Size = 0.23): The instructor incorporates writing activities as a means to have students learn content material. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

30. The Effect of Grammar Instruction as an Independent Activity “Grammar instruction in the studies reviewed [for the Writing Next report] involved the explicit and systematic teaching of the parts of speech and structure of sentences. The meta-analysis found an effect for this type of instruction for students across the full range of ability, but …surprisingly, this effect was negative…Such findings raise serious questions about some educators’ enthusiasm for traditional grammar instruction as a focus of writing instruction for adolescents….Overall, the findings on grammar instruction suggest that, although teaching grammar is important, alternative procedures, such as sentence combining, are more effective than traditional approaches for improving the quality of students’ writing.” p. 21 Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education.

31. Challenge: How Do Schools Stop the Use of ‘Zombie’ Instructional Practices? “In their rush to promote use of evidence-based instructional practices under RTI… schools should not forget that research cuts both ways. It can illuminate new approaches to effectively teach struggling learners. But research also sometimes reveals instructional or intervention strategies that should be reformed or eliminated altogether. Despite the fact that educators may have developed a sentimental attachment to such outmoded practices, schools should provide the appropriate support to help these teachers to discard them and adopt more effective instructional tools. Otherwise, these obsolete, zombie methods of instruction and intervention threaten to linger on far past their expected termination date to continue to drag down student performance.” Source: Wright, J. (2010). Killing off ‘zombie' interventions: The need to root out ineffective instructional strategies. Retrieved from http://www.interventioncentral.org

32. Question: How Does a School Use Research Information to Influence Classroom Practice? • In this workshop, we reviewed recommendations from the Writing Next manual, a meta-analysis of effective writing instructional elements. • How might your school use information sources like this to influence classroom practice?

33. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." • Mark Twain

34. "Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." • Samuel Johnson

35. Selected Writing Interventions

36. Use Selective Proofreading With Highlighting of Errors To prevent struggling writers from becoming overwhelmed by teacher proofreading corrections, select only 1 or 2 proofreading areas when correcting a writing assignment. • Create a student ‘writing skills checklist’ that inventories key writing competencies (e.g., grammar/syntax, spelling, vocabulary, etc.). • For each writing assignment, announce to students that you will grade the assignment for overall content but will make proofreading corrections on only 1-2 areas chosen from the writing skills checklist. (Select different proofreading targets for each assignment matched to common writing weaknesses in your classroom.)

37. Use Selective Proofreading With Highlighting of Errors: Cont. • To prevent cluttering the student’s paper with potentially discouraging teacher comments and editing marks: • underline problems in the student’ text with a highlighter and • number the highlighted errors sequentially at the left margin of the student paper. • write teacher comments on a separate feedback sheet to explain the writing errors. Identify each comment with the matching error-number from the left margin of the student’s worksheet. TIP: Have students use this method when proofreading their own text.

38. Spelling; Run-on and incomplete sentences 1 Rewrite this run-on sentence as two separate sentences. 2 Not clear. Rewrite. Consider starting the sentence with ‘The concept of …’ 1 2 Selective Proofreading With Highlighting of Errors Jimmy Smith Dec 1, 2006 Mrs. Richman

39. "A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason." • Margaret Atwood

40. Sentence Combining Students with poor writing skills often write sentences that lack ‘syntactic maturity’. Their sentences often follow a simple, stereotyped format. A promising approach to teach students use of diverse sentence structures is through sentence combining. In sentence combining, students are presented with kernel sentences and given explicit instruction in how to weld these kernel sentences into more diverse sentence types either • by using connecting words to combine multiple sentences into one or • by isolating key information from an otherwise superfluous sentence and embedding that important information into the base sentence. Sources: Saddler, B. (2005). Sentence combining: A sentence-level writing intervention. The Reading Teacher, 58, 468-471. Strong, W. (1986). Creative approaches to sentence combining. Urbana, OL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skill & National Council of Teachers of English.

41. Formatting Sentence Combining Examples

45. Academic Interventions ‘Critical Components’ Checklist

46. Academic Interventions ‘Critical Components’ Checklist

47. Academic Interventions ‘Critical Components’ Checklist This checklist summarizes the essential components of academic interventions. When preparing a student’s Tier 1, 2, or 3 academic intervention plan, use this document as a ‘pre-flight checklist’ to ensure that the academic intervention is of high quality, is sufficiently strong to address the identified student problem, is fully understood and supported by the teacher, and can be implemented with integrity. NOTE: While the checklist refers to the ‘teacher’ as the interventionist, it can also be used as a guide to ensure the quality of interventions implemented by non-instructional personnel, adult volunteers, parents, and peer (student) tutors.