It is always refreshing to spend a day working with teachers dedicated to their students’ academic success. This school year, I am excited to work with a school recognizing successful MTSS implementation begins with a strong Tier 1 foundation. And what did we do to jump start MTSS this school year? Dove into data!
Using data to make instructional decisions honors students’ learning readiness and respects teachers’ precious time. One way to use data is to look at past performance on skills required for a future lesson and reteach those skills before students will need to use them. Teachers may find that the whole class would benefit from this additional instruction- or just a small group of students. Either way, teachers are using data to make proactive instructional decisions.
How do we determine if a skill is taught as a classwide intervention or small group intervention? As a general guideline, if over 50% of students are not proficient in a skill, teachers should implement a classwide intervention to reteach that skill. If only a small portion of the class is not yet proficient at a skill, small group intervention is more appropriate. Essentially, assessing students proficiency on skills BEFORE students need to apply them in a new lesson or with a new skill allows teachers to determine if it is necessary to support students by reteaching skills during classwide intervention. Pre-Reteaching saves time, energy, and frustration during grade-level lessons. Check out what the Science of Math says about classwide interventions here.
As always, connecting concepts and procedures by teaching with manipulatives and representations (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE number lines! Check out an interactive online number lines tool here!), building fluency, and using worked examples are great ways to reteach important skills and concepts. It was great to see teachers share evidence-based resources to support classwide interventions. I am excited to see what this school year brings!
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