RTI Updates

Whew, my blog was in some serious need of updating!  The 2018-2019 school year has ushered in a lot of big changes to our RTI department.  Lauryn Wiebenga was moved to a 3rd grade teaching position in order to accommodate for that growing class size, and Lindsay Schryver has joined the RTI team part time in the afternoons to help.  She spends her mornings teaching preschool, and I'm thrilled to have her early childhood expertise!

In addition to personnel changes, we also have some curriculum and assessment changes.  We have eliminated the STAR reading and STAR math tests, and replaced them with MAP testing for reading and math.  We are thrilled with the amount and quality of data these new assessments will provide, and I believe that parents will also be pleased with the easy to read reports and specific information provided.  In order to prepare for the assessment changes, the RTI department had to complete several hours of training, as well as several hours of work setting up the new system and training teachers.  Now that students have completed their testing, our department will have our next round of training later this week.

This year we are also implementing the Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention curriculum for our 1st-3rd grade reading groups.  We piloted this program last year, and loved the high quality materials, the focus on writing and responding to text, and the inclusion of phonics and word work.  In order to ensure that students are working at the appropriate instructional reading level, the RTI teachers must use the Benchmark Assessment System to have students individually read books of increasing difficulty until we find a child's instructional and frustration reading levels.  This is a time consuming progress, but they payoff is worth it!  Our RTI department attended 3 hours of face to face training on the new program this year, as well as a few hours of online training to prepare for this new curriculum. 

These changes got our groups off to a slow start this year, but rest assured the data we have been gathering will be crucial to individualizing our instruction to your child's needs.  We will be starting our first round of progress monitoring this week, so if you have been waiting patiently for those reports we promised, you will see them soon!