Navigating the Core Curriculum. Toby J. Karten
1.1 (page 10) illustrates the structure of this chapter.
Teachers must honor diversity with prescriptive and cohesive instructional frameworks.
RTI Variables
A variable is considered an element or a factor that is subject to change. Variables are not always as clear cut and identifiable as the ones in a mathematical equation, such as solving for the variable of x in 5x = 20. However, as with this linear equation, RTI involves knowing how to isolate variables to figure out the solution. When teachers collaboratively problem solve, they can identify and isolate RTI variables. RTI’s academic and behavioral equations require looking at variables that include learner performance levels and the discrete steps of required tasks. Teachers analyze these variables to determine which academic and behavioral skills require introduction, reinforcement, reteaching, and maintenance. Administrators, teachers, students, and families are ultimately the human variables who continually collaborate to support interventions.
Two of the most important RTI variables include classroom dynamics and teacher expertise, which we explore in the following sections.
Figure 1.1: Plan for opening doors for all learners.
Administrators, teachers, students, and families are ultimately the human variables who continually collaborate to support interventions.
Classroom Dynamics
Planning student-specific, multitiered instruction is one way teachers positively influence classroom dynamics. Classroom dynamics include physical ones, such as the lighting, seating, and available resources, but emotional classroom dynamics are more important. These dynamics include setting up a classroom to value students as individuals within an accepting, trusting, and emotionally safe learning environment. Classroom dynamics value diverse interventions and multiple entry points for students at their instructional levels. Delivery should not frustrate students with learning that is too difficult or not within their prior knowledge base.
Just as navigation has several tools designed to increase movement, administrators should provide teachers with RTI supports, tools, and resources. This includes time to collaboratively plan, assess, tweak, and reflect on instruction.
Some students require additional instruction to hone skills with letter-sound correspondence, phoneme segmentation, fluency, word definitions, contextual clues, reading comprehension, mathematical practices, and behavior. Letters, words, sentences, numbers, shapes, motivation, attention, and good study skills are building blocks that allow students to understand, own, and apply concepts.
Teachers who realize that each student possesses different skill sets value not only the curriculum but also the student diversity present in every classroom. Depending on students’ skill sets, teachers must adapt. Classroom dynamics affect the structured interactions between students and teachers.
Successful educators need to know their subjects. Subject knowledge goes beyond the content to knowing students as the most closely studied subjects. This includes knowing student backgrounds and interests. The first day of school is generally the first time we are introduced to our students, but the days that precede that encounter offer valuable instructional data. Each student brings his or her own backpack packed with strengths, weaknesses, and many prior home, school, and life experiences that shape him or her. This includes exposure or lack of exposure to vocabulary through conversation, reading, and real-world and multimedia experiences.
Successful educators need to know their subjects.
Students do not come to us as clean slates. Most students come to us with positive and negative academic, social, emotional, and behavioral experiences. These events comprise the baseline core academic and behavioral levels we must identify. As students enter each grade from preschool to high school, we learn to recognize the many scripts that precede that first day of school.
When teachers communicate and students believe that they are malleable and able to learn the core knowledge, additional progress occurs, despite the challenges presented. Successful academic outcomes are influenced by resiliency and the belief that change is possible (Yeagar & Dweck, 2012). Positive mindsets influence academic achievements. Some students have uphill journeys to achieve the core knowledge, but that is when teachers collaboratively provide the appropriate scaffolding to help students succeed, despite their learning, behavioral, emotional, social, communicative, sensory, or physical differences. In modern classrooms, diversity is the norm. In turn, multiple engagements and personalized learning experiences with tiered instruction also must be the norm.
Everyone has a backstory, but students are more likely to achieve success when teachers plan for, prepare, and deliver solid instruction, positive attitudes, and multiple curriculum entry points. This includes motivating lesson plans that offer diverse, step-by-step interventions for the whole class, small groups, and individual students. Lesson objectives must honor the academic core knowledge and also the class dynamics of the teacher’s audience—a diverse cast of characters known as students.
Teacher Expertise
Programs do not teach, but teachers do. Teacher expertise begins at the early stage of preservice at the university level and continually expands in school settings. A teacher’s development and expertise never stagnate. Universal screening and progress monitoring yield the appropriate selection of interventions for core instruction, but teachers need to make effective choices to honor an alternate way to identify students who need more intensive instruction or intervention (Wehman, 2013).
Programs do not teach, but teachers do.
After appropriate screening, teachers plan how abstract concepts are solidified in students’ working memories. Teachers must introduce and then reinforce concepts. The strategies they use go beyond direct instruction to involve cooperative learning and developing collaborative partnerships with other teachers, intervention specialists, instructional leaders, families, and students.
However, before any instruction occurs, teachers must conduct accurate assessment. According to William Bender (2012), “Assessment tools in the differentiated class should be selected by the teacher to specifically target discrete skills on which a student is struggling” (p. 111). Teachers must be able to identify the skills with which students need more assistance, and then choose the appropriate, evidence-based materials to implement Tier 2 and 3 interventions.
Teachers should use RTI as a vehicle, with formative assessments in the front seat to guide instructional decisions and interventions. They offer students assistance in RTI tiers, but it is important to note that the interventions are not exclusively teacher owned; students must learn to own their strategies. Once teachers determine that interventions are effective, they can modify and adapt them based on the data from both formal and informal assessments. Some students may need increased interventions, while some may require decreased interventions as time goes on. If students continually master the core curriculum, then teachers should be cognizant of how interventions are helping, not enabling, students.
Evidence-Based Practice
RTI includes evidence-based practices, but there is no universal definition for RTI based on a one-size-fits-all approach, since one size basically fits none. Although teachers often use evidence-based literacy and mathematics resources as part of the interventions, RTI is not a neatly packaged program (Scanlon, 2013); the multitiered levels structure classroom instruction. The following sections describe the basic tenets of RTI: cohesive framework, prescriptive and responsive instruction, and contextually engaging tasks.
Cohesive Framework
The RTI framework is cohesive, multitiered, and research based. Cohesiveness includes organization and structure. Core instruction, student-specific interventions, screening instruments, progress monitoring, and data analysis are integral to RTI (Gersten & Vaughn, 2009). Progress