Reducing the Need for Intervention
Today is my last day of my first full year as a Reading Specialist. It’s been a year full of learning experiences and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. I’ve been working hard to see what my students need, as well as trying to figure out how my school can best serve all of the students. This section, “Reducing the Need for Intervention”, called to me as soon as I read the heading!
According to ASCD, the percentage of students receiving RTII Tier 3 interventions should ideally be 1-5%. Currently, my school has 7% of its students receiving pull-out services, with more students being referred. A phrase I like is “if everyone needs intervention, nobody needs intervention.” To me, this means that it’s important to look at data and trends to see in which areas students need most support. If I’m being honest, a lot of what I did in my small groups this past year were not really Tier 3 interventions. They weren’t really even Tier 2 interventions - I taught students reading strategies, how to read text features, and provided graphic organizers.
So despite the number of students I had that made significant growth in my small groups this year, something bothered me a little bit. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but after I read this section in Regie’s book, I figured out what it was. In the book there is a section titled “Intervention Matters: Self-Evaluate” that presents some questions to ask ourselves. The second question in particular interested me - “Are we making full-out efforts to be responsive (differentiating instruction) to the needs and interests of every student?” Based on the kinds of interventions I was providing in my small groups, I’m not so sure that we were. Graphic organizers should be a part of good classroom instruction, and reading strategies should be embedded across the curriculum.
I realize this is all really easy for me to say - after all, my job title suggests that I have specialized knowledge of reading strategies. Without the dedicated time to share this knowledge with my colleagues, it really only benefits the students I have in my small groups. There wasn’t a lot of time this year for me to run professional learning groups around literacy, but I did meet with a few colleagues before and after school to talk about reading strategies. The students in those teachers’ classes made fantastic progress. It seemed like the students appreciated having consistent reading strategies across multiple classes - they were getting consistent instruction and were able to practice using those strategies in all subjects.
A number of those students exited RTII after having made over a year’s worth of growth over the past year. It (informally) showed me that with good instruction in all areas, students can make significant growth! I wondered if they wouldn’t have had to be in RTII at all had they been getting the consistent instruction from the start…?
So this section called to me because I can see a connection between good classroom instruction and a reduction in the need for intervention. And just like Regie writes about in this section, I truly believe that we need to be asking ourselves if all our students are being given the opportunities, they can succeed without intervention.
This post is part of a book study around Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners by Regie Routman (Stenhouse, 2018). Check out more resources associated with the text at this website (https://sites.stenhouse.com/literacyessentials/), including a free curriculum for teaching an undergraduate course using Literacy Essentials.