Lake Myra Elementary School * July 2009 (brief) RTI OVERVIEW & BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT TRAINING: Kindergarten MEASURING STUDENT PROGRESS IN YOUR PLC Before we train you on your grade level benchmark assessments, we want to spend about 10 minutes talking a little educational philosophy and research and giving you a brief “what and why” about Response to Intervention and how it can help you in your PLC. Lake Myra Elementary School * July 2009

Intervention Alignment ….IA Response to Intervention…RTI …. is a collaborative learning process of providing differentiated research based data driven instruction and intervention to both high achieving & struggling learners to predict, measure & evaluate academic growth. Why? Why are we doing this? I’m going to tell you why I’m telling you why. How many of you are wondering what happens in a PLC meeting? Who knows what to talk about in a PLC meeting? Who has been at a PLC school, but knows that the PLC conversations are not really centering about student learning for 60 minutes or around DuFors 4 questions? RTI, Ultimately, puts student learning and student data at the center of PLC conversations, by starting with school-wide benchmarking of all students, to drive instruction and differentiation of the curriculum. So we take their temperature, all of them, and then look at the data and say, are they all where they should be? We then decide together, now what do we do for those kids that are there? Show of hands, fist to fingers, 0 – 5, from never heard of it to come up to have done universal screenings, interventions and progress monitoring?….Heard of RTI, IA…..been on RTI or IA teams before LM at other schools? Lake Myra will also be an RTI school…..with this working definition for now, we may tweak it in the future. WCPSS Initiative -Intervention Alignment NC Initiative -Response to Instruction, National Initiative – Response to Intervention Because Response to Intervention is really all about teaching children the core essentials outlined in the Standard Course of Study, which in reading we also know as the Big 5, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. Then, taking a dipstick measure 3x a year to make sure they are learning the core essentials and responding immediately if they are not. Prevent reading struggles by early identification.

Universal Core Instruction Benchmark Assessments PLC Collaboration Tiers of Intervention Progress Monitoring Response to Intervention – RTI – this is what we are going it here at Lake Myra – it all boils down to these 5 components – this is the big picture. This is a 3-5 year process. We know this is huge, we know this is a lot, but we are going take this process one component at a time….., right now, Phase 1, we are only focusing on the benchmark assessments, and that’s what we are going to do today.”

RTI Pyramid Tier 1 – Universal Core Instruction Tier 3 – Intensive Individualized Instruction Tier 2 – Small Group Targeted Instruction Increasing Intensity In RTI, the levels of instruction are provided in layers called Tiers. The benchmark assessments are given to all students in the school/district 3 times per year and that is a function of Tier 1 – anything that is done to ALL students is Tier 1 – it’s UNIVERSAL. Tier 1 – Universal Core Instruction

Desired Outcomes After Today After Week 1 After Week 2 After Week 3 Know how to administer and score the Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) benchmark assessment. Administer and score 5 students, then at the end of week 1, come back together for a troubleshooting and debriefing check-in. Administer and score 5 or more students. Check in at the end of the week if necessary. Complete and score rest of class and meet to enter data at early release day. So, what are we going to accomplish today? Whenever we talk about timelines, it’s per your track! When will we check in at the end of the week? Friday am? Planning time? 5 min? 15? *

Benchmark Assessments General Outcome Measures “Predictors” “Indicators”of reading achievement Big 5 Areas – LNF assesses Phonics Standardized Research based Time Sensitive Short for “do-ability” CBM – Curriculum Based Measurement General Outcome measure – for example, Wall Street measures a company by the price of their stock, a lot of other things factor into getting that score, but getting that score is a dipstick on the company’s overall health, sales, marketing, production, etc. McDonald’s measures how many hamburgers they sell, etc. – it’s an overall indicator. General Outcome measures are collected quarterly with most companies because they are simple, accurate, and inexpensive, ongoing, and frequent, they shape and inform important decisions. GOM-General Outcome Measures Are designed to serve as “signs” of general reading achievement They don’t measure everything, just important things – big 5 Standardized administration, testing environment, directions, rules, scoring, time…..also known as fidelity of assessment Over 25 years of research for reliability and validity Sensitive to small improvements in short periods of time Assessment is short as possible for “do-ability” based on research, AIMSweb…like a thermometer, do we need to leave it in the child’s mouth for an hour to get more reliable results, no, 1 minute is just as reliable. Assessments are easily linked to decision making for interventions in general education CBM-Curriculum Based Measurement is a method of monitoring student progress through direct, continuous assessment of basic skills – again, getting a reading on the overall health of the company, are most of the students doing well to the and learning the basic skills in reading – these assessments will indicate that.

Early Literacy – Letter Naming Fluency Things You Need Before Testing Student Copy of Letter Naming Fluency (not numbered) Examiner Copy of LNF (scoring booklet) Clipboard Stopwatch – 1 minute assessment Class list Pencil K- F W S 1- F

Things to Consider - LNF 3 second Rule Self Corrects Dialect and Articulation Incorrects are: substitutions, omissions, stops Skipped Rows I and L font confusion Scoring = total # of letters read correctly – ] after 1 min. number of errors = letters named correctly http://www.aimsweb.com/uploads/files/LNF%20PE%201.mov – Practice Video 1 http://www.aimsweb.com/uploads/files/LNF%20PE%202.mov – Practice Video 2 Do you feel like you need to practice this? Page 18

Next Steps What does the benchmark assessment data tell us? How does the benchmark assessment data fit into the PLC conversation?