Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Response to Intervention


 

Response to Intervention (RTI) Approach
Dawn Stevane
EDU645: Learning & Assessment for the 21st Century (MRB1231B)
Instructor:  Richard Newman
August 6, 2012

 
           Response to intervention is a system that uses assessments, instruction, and decision making to help students with and without special needs. It is made up of three tiers of an intense intervention for those students who need help. The first and largest tier is where about eighty percent of the students, they will stay at this level throughout their schooling. The second tier is where those students who had trouble with tier one will be helped more and this is usually about fifteen percent of the students in the school. The third tier is when the student is still having trouble and will be refereed for a full evaluation to see if the student is qualified for special education services. The students will go back to tier one if they understand and if not then they will stay in tier two until they get the information, if not then they will move to the third tier and be evaluated.

            Tier one is the first is when all students are tested to see which children are need help in the specific academic areas. If after the children finish the testing and they are not in need of any extra help the will go back in to the regular class. The children that still need help will go in to the second tier. The second tier is for the students that need a little more help, they will receive more help and take tests again to see if they made any progress. If they made progress they will go back to the regular class. If they did not get it then they will go to the third tier of the program. At this stage the children have individualized help depending on what they need help with. Like for example reading, math, and speech.

            Implementing RTI in the classroom is a challenge and is not as hard as you think it is. First you have to figure out what the child needs by making a plan to figure out what services that child needs help with. It is also important to make sure that the implementations at culturally responsive and evidence based assessments that will be easy to understand. Making sure that you have ongoing meetings like ppt’s, to discuss the child’s progress and if they are getting it and need more help. If they need help then you can change the plan to help them understand it or help them move ahead. There is lot of benefits from using the RTI approach, one of them is the early detection of children with special needs. It also helps the children that enter school that have trouble reading and speaking English as well. Once they identify which students are struggling, they would be monitored to see if they understand and then they can move up in their education if they are understanding. RTI is an education reform that is starting to be used in the classrooms all across the world. RTI helps determine the difference in the poor instruction to a students learning delay. The RTI model will help suggest that a student’s disability may need special education programs and services.

            The challenges that the teacher face with the RTI approach is; that they think that some children will be misdiagnosed that they have a disability they not even have one. Another challenge is when the people that implemented the RTI approach move on to another school and the teachers just go back to what they used to do and say that every child had disability and the really didn’t when they used the RTI approach. Ways to overcome the challenges is to keep using the RTI approach and don’t stop using it when the children are doing better.  Also I would just make sure that the teachers understood that the RTI approach is a good thing and if we keep using it, it will help both students with disabilities and children without disabilities. The children without disabilities will be helped on areas that they are falling behind and that they don’t understand. For the students with disabilities they will get help and they will not be misdiagnosed while using the RTI approach.

            There are three main reasons why early intervention in a child’s education is very important to get a child ready to be able to do well in their society. A child learns more and develops quickly when they are in pre-school. This is the best opportunity to give them all the knowledge as possible because their brain is absorbing it. Timing is a very important part of early intervention in a child’s education. If a teacher doesn’t take advantage of this the child will have difficulty learning a skill at a different time.

            The children will also have a higher self-esteem when they learn and depend less on people helping them. Education is very important aspect in a child’s life as they grow older and become a productive part of the society. It will also open up a great a lot of great opportunities for you as well. RTI approach will help a child have more knowledge that will help them to solve any problem that comes their way. The teachers will also be able to have a smooth running classroom if every child feels comfortable in the classroom, they will learn better and not make the classroom as stressful.

            Is early intervention really cost effective? That is a good question some people will say yes and some would say that it is up what you resources you know and if you know how to use them properly to get what you need. The highly specialized, comprehensive services necessary to produce the desired developmental gains are often, on a short-term basis, more costly than traditional school-aged service delivery models (Kidsource). A study showed that children that start out as early as preschool will not need as much special education if they start early with help on the areas that they need help in.

             There are also three critical features to make sure that early inventions programs are effective. The three program features are: (a) the age of the child at the time of intervention; (b) parent involvement; and (c) the intensity and/or the amount of structure of the program model (Kidsource). Like I said before the earlier that you start with the diagnosis and the intervention the better the child will receive his/her education. Having the parents involved in the child’s education is very important and it also will help the parent because they can get ideas and suggestion on how to handle certain things at home. Also by doing this this will make the stress on parents and this will make the children more comfortable in the classroom.

             The RTI teachers should be open to change in how students are identified for intervention; how interventions are selected, designed, and implemented; how student performance is measured and evaluated; how evaluations are conducted; and how decisions are made, members of the observation team when the child’s learning problems involve reading, service providers in the RTI process, sharing expertise with the other professionals on the team, suggesting interventions that are integrally connected with the core reading program used

in the classroom, and be willing to adapt a more systemic approach to serving schools, including a workload that reflects less traditional service delivery and more consultation and collaboration in general education classrooms (reading.org).

            When the RTI specialist is serving the children they should be patient and provide them with a fun and relaxing environment to learn in. The specialist should also get together with the teacher and parent to start early intervention in the school as well as at home. It is also important to observe the children in the home as well as in the school. The ways to improve and keep RTI going is easy to do but you need the right people who care about the children. The first way is for the teacher and or specialist makes sure that he/she evaluates the achievement of the student. Make sure that the student receives the help that the need until they are not needed anymore. Make sure that the plan change as the children grows and doesn’t need that plan anymore.

           

           

           

References:

Kubiszyn, T. & Borich, G. (2010). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.



 

 

 

 

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