What to Expect During Your First Year of Implementation

Giancarlo AnselmoSchool Psychologist/RTI Coordinator

Cleveland County Schools

Carolinas Innovations Conference 2008

Wrightsville Beach

Two Major Things You Can Expect

• Number 1– Starting a process that tries to match the

correct level of instruction with the level of need for every child in your school

• Number 2

My Goal

• Show you some areas that we made mistakes

• Show you some remedies

• Discuss other examples of what you might expect during early years of implementation

Cleveland County Schools

– Roughly 17,000 students– 4 high schools, 4 middle schools, 2

intermediate schools, 16 elementary schools– 13% of population is EC

Overall Implementation and Expansion

• 2006/2007 school year RTI procedures were piloted in two elementary schools– One large school (700 students) Springmore– One small school (400 students) Casar

• 2007/2008 implementation expanded into two more large elementary schools– Fallston Elementary (600 students)– Union Elementary (600 students)

• 2008/2009 two more small elementary schools started implementation

• 2009/2010 first middle school with an additional two to four elementary schools

School Wide Support For Process

• Showing how the Discrepancy model was probably not the best model in order to catch students early

• Studies done at local level showing legitimacy of Curriculum Based Data

3rd Grade EOG Comparison to ORF

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Words Read Per Minute On DIBELs ORF

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Cleveland County Schools EOG/CBM data 2007

1st Year Implementation

Teacher Supports

• Teachers have been trained on all tiers of process

• CBM training• Teachers each received intervention

notebooks • Intervention training• Teachers are assigned case colleagues from

the Problem Solving Team to help with procedures, paperwork, or interventions starting at Tier I

Case Colleagues

• Every grade has a case colleague

• Case colleagues help teachers with paperwork, interventions, moral support, and scheduling of meetings

• Case colleagues meet with teachers on a weekly basis

Roles of Case Colleague• Case colleague will meet with teacher at

the beginning of Tier I/Tier II to help with paperwork, interventions, and answer any other questions that arise

• Case colleagues also meet with teachers every other week to check in on progress

• Case colleagues will also meet with teachers at the end of Tier II

• Case colleagues will be in charge of setting up PST Team meeting if moving to Tier III

How PST Team ChangedLast Year

• Parent• Principal• School Psychologist• EC teacher• Diagnostician• Teacher of student• Regular ed teacher• Title 1 reading specialist• Counselor • Social worker

This Year• Parent• Principal• School Psychologist• Case Colleague• Title 1/Interventionist• Teacher of student• Others used as needed

MISTAKES

What is the Best Way to Train a Problem Solving Team

First Year Training

• Consisted of training teams using PowerPoints from state training

• Trained teams from two schools at once

Second Year Training

• Trainings consisted of sitting down with each PST team and going over case studies

• Cases from their own schools were used to help them go through the process

MISTAKES

Students Entering Tier 1

First Year

• K-2 Students entered Tier I in reading based on DIBELS data

• All other subject areas and grades 3-5 where based on teacher discretion

Second Year

• All Children K-5 went through screening process at RtI schools

MISTAKES

Screening All RTI Schools K-5th Grade

• All students are screened three times a year using either DIBELS, Skill Builder probes, or Aims Web Maze Fluency probes

• Teachers have been shown data and given recommendations on who needs to enter Tier 1

• Teachers have been shown what skill to teach and what to use to progress monitor each child

Timelines

• Beginning of the year benchmark assessment• Targeted students enter Tier I based on

information from class and assessments• Plan is written with help of parent and

sometimes the Case Colleague• Teachers intervene in specific area for 4-6

weeks or longer• Dialogue continues with Case Colleague• Process will repeat with Tier II except more

people are generally involved

Ways to Handle Interventions

• Each grade level has an intervention period built into the daily schedule

• Fluid time when any student in that grade level can go anywhere in the school to receive intervention

• Students not on intervention plan receive challenge enrichment activities – gifted teacher can consult with staff about activities

• Can be hard to schedule but has great results and great teacher feedback

Fidelity and Integrity checks

• Case Colleague meeting form

• Interventions are observed before a child moves to a new tier– Intervention observation form is used

Questions?

mail.clevelandcountyschools.org/~ganselmo