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E-zine

Vol. 3, No. 3

The Response to Intervention (RTI) Approach:
Strategies and Interventions for Underachievers That Really Work

What should teachers do to meet the needs of all the students in their classrooms, including those who seem to be struggling academically or behaviorally? What can regular classroom teachers do to help underachievers so that they don't fall behind? How do we know when interventions are not working? How do we decide that it is best for such students to be referred for special education services?

The need for prevention strategies in the regular classroom is emphasized in the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It recommends intervention services and the use of best practices and strategies in the regular classroom before a referral for special education services. This approach is known as Response to Intervention (RTI). It provides a framework for responding to the needs of all students in the regular classroom.

The RTI approach gives students with academic delays or behavioral problems one or more research-based interventions and monitors their progress frequently to see if the interventions are helping each student succeed in school. The approach should include both student assessment/monitoring and specific interventions appropriate for that child. In the RTI approach, schools are likely to have:

  • Academic and behavioral screening for all students
  • Targeted interventions aimed at addressing individual students' problem areas and needs that were identified during the screening process
  • Frequent monitoring of student progress in order to assess how well a specific intervention is working

There should be a number of tiers or levels to the interventions. This is how the determination is finally made concerning whether a student has a learning disability or not.

 

Academic and Behavioral Interventions

Interventions should include both behavioral/classroom management strategies and academic/ instructional strategies depending on the needs of each student. It is important to determine why a specific student is a low achiever in school. What factors are causing poor academic performance?

Link student needs to specific interventions. It is important to select the right interventions to meet the needs of each student. Some students need interventions to deal with specific academic skill deficits. Others need motivation or organizational skills or help with appropriate classroom behavior.

For example, thinking strategies and interventions can be used to help students who need help in reading, writing, and math. Students who are behavior problems need strategies in self-discipline and behavior management.

Try positive preliminary intervention strategies first. These are generally good classroom management strategies. Be aware of different learning styles and differentiate your instruction to meet individual student needs.

Collaborate with other teachers. Follow a structured problem solving process to discover the best interventions for specific students. Use multi-disciplinary teams &endash; sometimes called student assistance teams or student support teams &endash; to work together brainstorming specific strategies and interventions for success.

In my books Motivating Underachievers and Encouraging Achievement you can find a multitude of strategies and interventions that will work with individual students. Some of my ideas are listed below. Use this list or the strategies delineated in both of the above books to generate ideas for specific interventions for each student. You may also want to reference my book Becoming an Achiever. This book is for the student and is filled with practical activities that give a structure to and implement each intervention.

  • Maintain contact between home and school. Use parent interviews and conferences, home visits, notes, e-mail, school websites, newsletters, phone calls, instant/text messaging and any other available communication tool.
  • Have a school level meeting to plan and coordinate interventions to help the family as well as the student.
  • Help parents to develop realistic, related, predetermined consequences and realistic expectations for their child. Show parents the value of imposing immediate consequences with their children.
  • Help students develop strategies for independent learning. Teach them specific skills to move from dependence on you (or another adult) to independence in learning for themselves.
  • Hold all students accountable for actions, behaviors, materials and work. Structure classrooms for good classroom and behavior management. Most underachievers need direction, rules, guidelines and boundaries.
  • Help underachievers identify their areas of strength. Use checklists in Motivating Underachievers and Becoming an Achiever to identify and monitor growth in these areas.
  • Use various forms of assessments. Checklists, rubrics, criteria cards, portfolios and performances should be used to assess and monitor progress at least as often as paper/pencil tests.
  • Plan lessons that involve all of the Multiple Intelligences, a variety of learning styles and modalities and/or all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
  • Use interdisciplinary learning to motivate students and allow them to see connections between school and "real life".
  • Provide hands-on experiences for students. Many underachievers are concrete random learners and benefit greatly from this.
  • Go from isolation to collaboration. Use the expertise of other teachers when deciding on strategies and interventions to use with your underachievers.
  • Encourage underachievers to pursue areas of special interest both within and outside of school.
  • Rediscover the importance of memorization. Teach students how to memorize information they don't already know. Target memorizing academic vocabulary. This skill increases achievement!
  • Be intentional about and have a specific plan for teaching study skills.
  • Use various technologies as much as possible in all aspects of teaching. However, monitor student usage because new communication technologies can be a detriment to learning as well as an asset.
  • Focus on strategies to develop personal learning. Underachievers are often weak in these skills.
  • Use sports analogies to encourage and emphasize goal setting. See chapter on goal setting in Becoming an Achiever.
  • Use "An Achiever Rubric" from Becoming an Achiever to guide students and for student self-assessment.

 

RTI Progress Monitoring

Using specific strategies and interventions with individual students is only the first step. Because the RTI process involves gathering and evaluating assessment data, you must also monitor the interventions. Use pre-assessments before beginning any academic activity to determine individual student needs. Create a form showing the problem areas for an individual student and the interventions tried.

Measure student progress often during the intervention process. Close monitoring will let you know if the intervention is working or not. Use daily or weekly report cards for student behavior, academic gains, work habits, effort and organization. Use rubrics with rating scales that show progress toward a goal. Use checklists for behavioral goals such as organization, staying on task, paying attention, completing work, etc.

Be specific about the criteria you are using to decide if the intervention has been a success or not. Assessments of progress and ways to determine a stopping point for the intervention or interventions are both important. 

 Coil, C. (2009). The Response to Intervention (RTI) Approach. E-Zine, Vol. 3, 3. www.carolyncoil.com.