I have worked at two different schools and it seemed like both schools struggled with RTI. There was tons of repetitive paperwork and often what was acceptable in one meeting for one child…somehow didn’t work for another child and another meeting. I think this is because it is a really confusing process in general- for all parties: parents, teachers, counselors and administrators.
While I have no magical guarantees of how to make RTI seamless for you and your school, I *do* have some suggestions on to help teachers stay organized while collecting data. Last school year I had several students on the RTI tiers and collected LOTS of different data. It could have been a paper work nightmare! And it was…until one night I stayed late, developed a system and got myself organized. And it worked like a charm.
I wish I had photos of it, but I chose not to photograph it on purpose. I was afraid that much of the information was confidential since it did have student’s names and data.
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Then I created sections. I was too cheap to buy dividers (or even find construction paper to make my own) so I simply cut tabs from post it notes and stuck them on pieces of paper to hang out like flags. On each of these post it notes, I wrote the student’s name that I was tiering. Since I already knew what strategies I was using, I went ahead and prepared several copies of worksheets or the materials I needed for that student. Then I hole punched the papers and put them behind the students name post it.
I wrote down each child’s name and then all the dates I met with the child to work with them and also assess with a probe. Some children may have had more concerns so they may have had more than one strategy (like Suzy). If that was the case, then I wrote down both strategies on the check list and dated them.
1.) It was an easy way to track when I worked with students and I could easy double check dates( and not look like a fool in meetings).
2.) Since I had several students on RTI, it became a running check list of who I needed to meet with next. I could simply look at the dates in boxes and know who I needed to pull.
3.) It was also an easy way to check to see if a student was ready for the next tier. If I had 6 weeks worth of data noted, and the student was still not making progress, I moved them to the next tier.
Since I was the general ed teacher in a co-taught classroom, my co-teacher and I decided Fridays would be data collection days. Instead of guided reading groups, we pulled individuals and small groups and worked with them on various things and collected data.
On Fridays, I would pull a student, open to their section of the binder, pull out the activity and complete it with the student. Then I would date my check list, put the now completed activity in my binder, look at my check list, and pull the next kiddo. This binder helped me keep my sanity. This system may not work for everyone, but it certainly helped me.
One area I struggled with for data collection was math reasoning because I couldn’t *FIND* anything to use for a probe. So I decided to create something :).
specific number on all the probes.
this will make data collection for RTI much more organized! I just added it to my store and it is only $3! I intend on making one set of these for each quarter!
organized. I hope this makes the RTI process a bit less stressful!
It is listed in my store for $7.
I hope these ideas help!!
Great organizational tip. I am on tier 3 team and will be sharing your idea. Thanks!!
Thanks so much for sharing, I always love your ideas. Definitely going to pin this and go through it as I get ready to think about how to organize myself with RTI students. We had a big push on them this year and were required to keep a lot of data on them.