Progress

My first grade RTI group currently consists of three very wiggly and active boys.  They also scored the lowest of all first graders on the PASI.  Yesterday we were learning onset and rime.  My most impaired little guy said with great confidence, "Hey, I know this.  These words rhyme!"  The look on his face said it all.

Did you ever have a time when the answer was there in front of you all the time but you just didn't or couldn't see it?  Well, that's exactly how I feel about RTI and the 4th grade kids I'm working with.  After three weeks of  looking at test scores and seeing the areas that need remediation, it hit me!  What these students need is an intervention for math vocabulary.  We assume that the kids understand the vocabulary because we use it all the time, we give examples on the board, we have them do math boxes in which we speak the vocabulary to them.  But in reality, they're just pretending to understand. They're not willing to take the risk to say I don't get it in front of their peers, and so they say nothing at all.  They take the math test and fail woefully and we wonder why.

Upon analyzing the test questions that are most often missed in this group of kids it suddenly became apparent that everything they miss is vocabulary based.  These few kids need more time to process the new vocabulary words, try them out for size, see how they work and how they interrelate with the math terms they already know.  It is my job to make it more user friendly for them.

Thank goodness for You Tube.  I have found some wonderful resources on You Tube that I can take and mold into appropriate activities for my groups, which by the way are mostly boys.

I found a very cute video with kids singing a song for perpendicular and parallel lines.  I realized that my boys would NOT go for that so my aide and I changed it into a chant, along with some arm movements and they love it.  Here is the chant (minus the arm movements)

Perpendicular
Parallel
These are the lines we know so well.
Intersecting lines
They cross
Know this and you won't get lost.
Lines have two ends
Rays have one
Line segments have two
Now you're done!

The kids like it, we do it every day for now...and soon we'll be moving on to "I Am A Parallelogram"  You can see on YouTube.

In the process of learning RTI, I have begun to learn how to use The Phonological Awareness Screener for Intervention™ (PASI™) and Phonics Screener for Intervention™ (PSI™) .  These two diagnostic screeners pinpoint specific skill deficits and facilitate teachers’ grouping of students for focused intervention based on the screener results..  I have been practicing giving these tests to the students in my classroom with some eye openings results. 

Yesterday I gave the PASI to one of my 3rd grade students who has many decoding skills but a very low fluency rate of 25 WPM.  I discovered she is not able to remember a three word phrase and repeat it back to me with any accuracy.  She is able to repeat and retain two word phrases but not three words or more.  She also has difficulties in substituting one letter or syllable in a word for another letter or syllable.   For example say cupcake.  Change cup to pan.  What's the new word?  She said cuppan.   Finally she is struggling with segmentation.  She is able to do some basic segmenting such as /m/ /a/  /p/ for map but she is not able to segment blends at the beginning or end of a word.  These are skills that should be mastered in kindergarten, first grade at the latest.  

I love that I can take these screeners and pinpoint exactly where I need to step in and add focused instruction to help her become a more fluent reader. 

After studying the picture the 95% Group sent us, I proceeded to organize my kit in a like manner only to discover that I do not have enough dividers to replicate their picture.  My kit has 12 dividers...their kit appears to have about 30....humm.  So did they forget to stick some dividers into my kit or what?

The top picture shows how we finally decided to arrange the phonics awareness manipulative kits.

However, one of my co-workers sent an email to the 95% Group asking them exactly how people arranged the kit and they sent us the photo on the left.

Interesting how a group of people can look at  the same exact items and organize them in a totally different manner.  Clearly we could not visualize the best way to do organize all our materials. Notice in the top picture we only have 20 separate boxes  with much less materials in that box.  The bottom box has every item that needs to be in the box - in the box!  We didn't know what to do with the sets we couldn't fit into our storage box, so we put them into zip lock bags and then stored them in another plastic tote.  We knew it wasn't efficient or correct but we were stumped.  Thank goodness for digital photography and email!

The 4th grade RTI math groups are really enjoying working with markers and small white boards.  We are re-teaching lines, line segments, rays, parallel lines and congruent lines.  The kids are motivated and engaged!  It's exciting to see them being successful.

Today I was trying to assemble one of the RTI kits we got from the 95% Group.  It seemed like a relatively simple job, separate the perforated pieces, sort them and put them into a storage box. I also have to assemble the storage box and add sticky labels for each lesson.

The first thing I wondered was where exactly do I put the labels?  The dividers have ridges like corrugated cardboard with no window in which to apply the sticker.  If I place the label in the bottom I will obviously be unable to read which skill level is in the box.  There is no other obvious place to put the label.  I also have to decide where exactly to place the divider.  Thus far I haven't a clue.  Everywhere I have placed them has been wrong, I've moved them more than once, and I'm pretty certain they're still not in the correct place.

One would think that sorting the cards would be easy since each card clearly has a skill level on it as well as a set number.  Except, when you sort them and think that you have all of one set, you discover, nope you don't.  There are so many different shapes and sizes of manipulatives it is hard to know how to sort them and where to put them.

Even more frustrating, or perhaps more comforting, is the fact that I am not alone in this endeavor....2 other staff members are also trying to figure out how to organize these materials and they're having no more better luck than I am.  Hopefully we will get it figured out soon.

4th grade scheduling is a nightmare.  Just when we think we have the groups equally divided into a M/W group and a Tue/Thurs group, we find out that speech/social work has scheduled more than half of the RTI group for that time frame on Tuesday mornings!  So now we  have a M/W group and a Thurs group?  Not sure how that is going to work.  Does intervening one day a week count?

Working with three easily distracted 1st grade boys is a challenge.  The boys were ready to learn, ready to improve their reading skills but unable to attend for any length of time.  Fortunately the lesson moves rapidly and allows the boys to actively participate.  Unfortunately moving at the pace that kept their rapt attention caused me to finish ahead of the allotted 30 minute time frame.   Tomorrow I will work to keep the pace slow enough to try to meet the time frame yet still have 3 boys engaged in the activity.

It turns out eleven fourth graders were qualifying for the 1st intervention group.  11 is too large a group for quality intervention so we have decided to divide the group into 2 smaller groups and have one group meet on Monday/Wednesday and the other on Tues./Thurs.  We are unable to meet on Fridays because of the 4th grade schedule so this may work quite well.

Tomorrow I begin working with my small group of 3 boys in 1st grade on phonemic awareness.  I am excited to be working with the neediest kids.  I have been told that these 3 are quite busy and can be a challenge.  Time will tell.

I will also begin working with a group of 4th graders on math skills.  Specifically we will work on lines, rays, parallel lines, perpendicular lines and counting by 3's and 4's.  This group will larger than the 1st grade group.  Optimum size for an RTI  group is 5 students, but this group has 7.  I am going to begin with a YouTube video on parallel lines.  Music often helps children to memorize facts and I'm hoping this video will work its magic on these 7.