Week 14 Assignment #1 and #2

Implications of RTI for the Reading Teacher


I love how this article opens up; “It isn’t your framework.You’re just aggressive about kids’ learning.” and as the article goes on to state,
No instructional method, approach, technique, strategy, or scheme has ever been found to be 100% effective. Even in the most advantaged and highest achieving school districts some students struggle; 
RTI tries to make sure that classroom teaching is “up to snuff” and that when a student does falter, there will be a rich, and ultimately, sufficient instructional response to his or her reading needs. 
As it pertains to reading, Reading teachers should have a substantial understanding of the developmental continuum of learning to read. How else can we expect them to assess and recommend intervention!? They should also have a firm grasp of sound assessment strategies and procedures! 
Reading teachers can have a tremendous impact on the trajectory of a student if the teacher understands the core reading skills necessary and how to assess students and intervene! 
RTI is a fundamental framework for reading, as a core skill set for budding students!



Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

The second article is a wealth of information on how to appropriately execute RTI in the classroom for Reading! As well as the science behind the framework!
A 5 step process: 

1.  Screen students, what do they know?
2.  Scientifically valid interventions for applicable student base are implemented. 
3.  Monitoring of student progress based off of intervention. 
4.  Individualized interventions for students for whom interventions have not yet worked well.
5.  Deciding as to whether a student requires special services outside the scope of the classroom.



RTI works because it is a focused and iterative process which builds on the success of intervention or at the very least is on top of student intervention based on assessment and changes intervention or escalates. 

ELL Case Study - Interviews

My Pre-Writing Assignment Interview with the teacher (Devorah B.)

Me: Hi, Devorah, Thank you again for letting me participate in your classroom and observing your ELL student Yakov. I am going to be interviewing you about your ELL experience, and taking notes.

Me: Please describe your ELL teaching experience.

Teacher: I have been a teacher for close to 15 years, I have had a few ELL students, not every year though. Most of my ELLs have been from Israel and Russia.

Me: What is your perception on ELLs in terms of their learning motivation and performance? What learning difficulties do ELLs usually encounter in schools? What is the role of family and community in helping ELLs’ learning?

Teacher: Wow, Ok. That’s a loaded question, I will try to answer it one at a time. My Perception of ELLs really is, some are very very motivated but some are just too overwhelmed, I guess there is little middle ground as you would find with non-ELL students. In terms of learning difficulties, ELLs really have all the cards stacked against them, they don’t understand the other students, they notice that the other children do look at them a little different. They don’t understand other teachers or parents, they are usually adjusting to a whole new world, all of this can be a lot on a young child. So that segways into the last part, community and family mean everything to ELL students, for most students community and family mean a ton, but without family and community support my experience is that ELLs just don’t do well at all.

Me: In your opinion, how do classroom teachers resolve ELLs’ learning difficulties? What strategies do you adopt? Are they effective or not? Do you participate in on-going professional training for teaching ELLs? What is your experience in terms of working students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds? How do you make sure that your teaching is culturally responsive? How do you go about reaching out to the family and the community?

Teacher:  There is a lot which teachers do, the most important of which is to make the ELL feel comfortable, include their language into signs, books and the like. This school requires us to stay on top of the latest in teaching, including training for ELLs. In terms of culture, the cultures I deal with are very similar, given that this is a Jewish private school, but there are some cultural differences between Americans, Israelis and Russians and it is very important to understand those differences and be sensitive to the other cultures. I reach out to all of my families, but make a concerted effort when a student requires special consideration such as an ELL.

Me: If you have an ELL in your class whose culture you are not familiar with at all, how do you go about teaching the child? 

Teacher: We are given the roster before school starts, and I am made aware of all special considerations. When I had my first ELL, an Israeli boy, my principal pulled me aside and walked me through some of the challenges. She was very involved throughout the school year to make sure I handled the situation and that I was sensitive to the students culture and disposition.

Interview 2 with teacher, Post Writing Assignment

Me: Please describe the ELL’s performance after participating in this project.

Teacher: Rebecca, first, I really appreciate the work you are doing with Yakov, and I feel a little sad that you are done with your observation hours, can’t you come back some more? Yakov loves you!!!. Yakov has been doing fantastic he really is making such great strides!

Me: Devorah, you are too kind. Although, you may have answered my question, for the record, In your opinion, how did this partnership affect the ELL’s learning performance and motivation?

Teacher: It has been fantastic, you really made a difference, so please don’t leave Yakov!!

Me: What did you learn from this school-university partnership model?

Teacher: I am not sure I understand the question? Can you paraphrase?

Me: I think the question is, what did you learn for me, as a student, partnering up with you to help with Yakov?

Teacher: I learned a lot from you Rebecca, let’s see, I had not done a SOLOM before, I also loved hearing about the different types of work you were learning in class, and I think we may try a readers theater! That looked like a lot of fun and I appreciate that lesson plan you gave me.

Me: What difficulties did you encounter in this school-university partnership model?

Teacher: To be honest, you are leaving now, and it is going to be rough on Yakov, even though he has his ESL pull outs, he really took a liking towards you, and he loves that book you guys made, so please stay!!!!

Me: What would you suggest to improve the school-university partnership model?
Teacher: Aside from forcing you to stay all year? I am not sure, it worked out really nicely I don’t have any real suggestions.

ELL Case Study - Observations

The Writing Activity

I worked with my teacher (Devorah B) to come up with a writing activity for Yakov. We decided to create a book “Yakov Yakov What Do You See” based off of “Brown Bear Brown Bear” by Bill Martin. We were going to build up to this activity, first Yakov needed to get the basics of reading and writing English. We planned for the activity to take place in the middle of November (A little less than 9 weeks from when we started)

Observation 1

I sat with Yakov as he worked in a small pull-out group with the ESL teacher. There were six students in the group. The teacher was working on the CVC pattern to write new words, review old, and combine both the form sentences. Yakov had been taught short vowel sounds but had difficulty enunciating some of them especially the “E” and “I”. He had been taught the consonant sounds but had trouble differentiating between the B and D. He attempted to read words that the teacher had on a chart, such as pin, pen, and pan. He really worked on it, finally said them, wrote them, and drew a picture for each. The teacher had a color chart with each color word written in that color. Yakov was able to say each color. I was not sure which clues used to say the color, but I believe it was the visual clue of the color itself.

The teacher had sentence strips, each child worked with a partner to read the strips quickly. Such as “Yakov had red pens. Felix has blue pins” were read. Each child then took two sentence strips from the pile, Read it, wrote it in his notebook, and illustrated it. Yakov completed this task happily. The teacher then gave out more complicated sentence strips. Some examples “The six green pens are on the yellow Pan”. Once again small group work was done. The teacher went to each group questioning the children. I observed that Yakov was able to write English with minimal level of proficiency since he was using restricted vocabulary and difficulty pronouncing the vowel sounds. At this point I completed the first SOLOM proficiency assessment and the first writing rubric.  Yakov was at the beginning level on most of the language skills. His listening skills were a little beginning; he was able to comprehend individual words and some common simple short sentences that the teacher said. He can understand simple commands and relied heavily on visual clues. He did understand what he had learned before, but when the teacher began a few minutes on a new topic, he had trouble. The ELL teacher began a new book an introduction to the book “To the Rescue” by Cecile Schoberle; she was beginning a unit on rescue and safety. She introduce the word rescue, demonstrated how she saved a stack of books from falling. She showed how she rescued or saved a boy from tripping over a garbage can.

Observation 2

I sat alone with Yakov we did a walk-through and picture walkthrough of the book “Brown Bear Brown Bear” by Bill Martin. After much repetition he was finally able to say brown bear brown bear what do you see? and I see a... It took a while for him to really understand the picture of the bird, when I told him “ptitsa” (bird in Russian, thank you Google Translate) he smiled, repeated ptitsa and said bird. For the word duck I said quack quack he was not sure about a duck but he said the word “duck”. I then used my laptop to show him the new vocabulary. Repetitive structure made it a perfect book for Yakov. I also showed him a short video of the book on YouTube which was a song by Greg & Steve (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTva3KkhxUA)  with the words on the screen.  He pointed to the words as they were sung. I also reinforced the colors that he had learned in ESL. He also listened to the book read on YouTube as he followed from my copy. He was all smiles as he felt success singing along and then reading along.

Observation 3

I continued with the theme from the previous week. Yakov reread the book “Brown Bear Brown Bear…” He used picture clues to say the words that the animal saw and tried to say the colors. I then gave him index cards with just colors in words only written. Another set of cards had the names of the animals. Using the book, he matched the color with the animal. He then illustrated one after he wrote the words. He enjoyed meeting success in the activity

Observation 4

When I worked with Yakov I asked him to review the book “Brown Bear Brown Bear” he was able to recall most of the colors but not all of the animals. The word children he couldn't get and said boys, having used visual clues. The same with mother he said mommy. However there was quite an improvement over our first visit with the book.

Observation 5 and the writing activity

I worked with Yakov to create his own book called “Yakov Yakov what do you see”. Before we wrote anything we worked very hard for him to verbalize something that he saw. Finally he said “I see a cat looking at me”. We then said “cat cat what do you see: and Yakov said “I see a dog looking at me” the repetitive language was great. He then tried so hard to write using the book as a model and wrote the first three parts of his book. He illustrated it; he took his book to all his peers and teachers to proudly read it to them.

Observation 6

I re-administered the SOLOM he had improved so much he had much more confidence and was very willing to try new things.