It's only half way through our summer break here in Upstate New York, but my RTI team and I are already planning for the upcoming school year. We sat down this week to schedule meetings for our students that are active in the RTI process. This was not exactly how I wanted to spend a Tuesday morning in July, but I know it will make things go smoother in September and October.
Our Response to Intervention "system" is definitely a work in progress. We have focused a lot of time and energy on improving RTI over the last two school years. However, I know when you mention RTI to the teachers in my building, they have a lot of mixed emotions about the process and how far they think we've come. So before I sat down to write this post, I did a little search for RTI memes. I think these reflect the feelings of some of the teachers I know, especially me!
Sometimes we feel like we've heard the same information about RTI a million times, especially when someone feels the need to explain why we can't move through the process any faster.
Or when your days are filled with data collection and your weekends are filled with writing reports for upcoming meetings, you may start to feel like every student you work with is in the RTI process.
And when you start to feel discouraged or you feel like you're drowning in RTI data and reports, it would be nice if Ryan Gosling was there to remind you what a great job your doing.
Response to Intervention never seems easy. It's a process. It takes time. It takes collaboration, cooperation, staffing, and hard work. Many of us feel like we don't have all the components we need to be successful, but thankfully we don't have to go it alone.
In September, our RTI team and the AIS providers will be meeting with classroom teachers to provide information on their students who received interventions last school year. I'm so glad I took the time in June to make data sheets on all my RTI kids. I can't imagine trying to recreate that in September after not seeing those students all summer. My forms include the students name, my name, last year's classroom teacher, which tier the student is in, reading level, and intervention data. There is also space for notes on goals and interventions.
I've tweaked the form a little bit to make it more universal, since our district uses an intervention developed by staff from our BOCES. Here's what the form looks like now.
I'm sharing this with you in case you're in need of a simple form for reporting RTI information. You can click this link to download from my TpT store. I hope you find it useful. It's in PowerPoint and completely editable, so feel free to make it your own. The only thing I ask is that you don't revamp it and sell it as your own!
