Finding Our Place: Librarians and Response to Intervention

1. Finding Our Place: Librarians and Response to Intervention Floyd Pentlin, Jenny Robins, Sandra Jenkins, and Pat Antrim University of Central Missouri AASL - October 29, 2011

2. Introductions • Jennifer Robins • Floyd Pentlin • Sandra Jenkins • Patricia Antrim • Back Channel supported by Sandra and Twitter Feed, #AASL2011rti

3. RtI is. . . • Response to Intervention (RtI) is a school-wide, three-tiered model of instruction and instructional intervention. • It incorporates: • Data-driven decision making, • Research-based instructional strategies, • Student-centered personalized instruction, • A high level of collaboration among school personnel

4. Definition: RtI Response to Intervention (RtI) “The Organizational framework for instructional and curricular decisions and practices based on students’ responses” (Mellard, 2010). Components include • Screening • Progress Monitoring • Tiers of Instruction • Decision-Making Rules

5. RtI is. . . • RTI is a component of No Child Left Behind • It is supported with funds from IDEA. • It is a required component of Race to the Top • It is mandated for schools AYP targets. • Little is available in the research literature about the role school librarians play in RTI schools. • Researchers in the LIS program at UCM asked: • How is RtI implemented in MO? • What is the role of school librarians?

6. The RtI Conversation • Is the librarian involved in the RtI conversation? • How do librarians support student learning in an RtI school? • How do librarians support teachers in an RtI school? • Where can librarians learn more about how to engage in RtI?

7. Why RtI and Reading are linked: • 5% of children learn to read effortlessly • 20-30% learn relatively easily once expose to reading instruction • For 60% of children, learning to read is a much more formidable task • For at least 20-30% of children, reading is one of the most difficult tasks that they will have to master • For 5% of students even with explicit and systematic instruction, reading will continue to be a challenge. (MacKenzie as cited in Harris)

8. Connections • RtI integrates assessment and intervention within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement • RtI seeks to prevent academic failure by catching issues early and providing individual students the supports they need • In Missouri RtI is also associated behavior management decisions • RtI is often a school-wide initiative, changing the work of everyone in the school (or district)

9. History RtI grows out of a history of • Public Health Prevention as applied to Education • Prediction • Inoculation • Tiered Intervention (triage) • School-wide Reform Efforts • Reading First, NCLB, & Race to the Top • Data-driven Decision Making • Special Education strategies to identify disabilities

10. Advantages • Students • Get help when they need it • Receive good instruction • Avoid future academic difficulties • Teachers • Receive useful feedback on their instruction • Work together with other teachers, not in isolation • Make instructional decisions based on data about individual students • Parents • Receive better information more frequently about their child’s progress

11. Benefits • Avoid the burden of catch-up growth • Some students start out ahead; others behind • And the gap widens over time • Use prevention rather than remediation • If instruction is $5,143 per student per year, remediation is an additional $5,000 per year (Kennewick, Washington, School District) • Provide best possible instruction for all students • How do we know? Assessment Data! • Teachers use data the same way surgeons do. • Teachers use the best available teaching practices • Teachers continually monitor for improvement of their own teaching practice.

12. The Model DESE. http://dese.mo.gov/3tieredmodels/rti/

13. Levels of Instruction • Tier 1: Regular instruction // Target  about 80% of population • Tier 2: Standard Treatment Protocol // Target about 15% of population. May be scripted, structured, and explicit or not. Small groups or individuals. • Tier 3: Problem-solving Intervention // Target  about 5% who have failed in two previous protocols. Requires a high level of expertise and creativity. Individualized instruction

14. Implement with Fidelity to Benefit Students • Accountability • Link interventions to improved outcomes • Specificity • Definitively describe operations, techniques, and components • Consistency • Clearly define responsibilities of specific persons • Create a data system for measuring operations, techniques, and components • Authority • Create accountability measures for non-compliance

15. Our Study • Last Spring • Early responses from a four-question survey • 67 Respondents • 24 Respondents indicated little or no involvement in the RtI process; 40 described varying levels of involvement • This Fall • Follow up interviews with several respondents • Analysis of interviews for themes and patterns

16. Results In this section we provide details about what we discovered in our survey and in interviews with librarians embedded in RtI schools.

17. RtI -7 Processes

18. Getting Started • Lots of gurus • Mike Mattos, Pat Quinn • District administrators went to 5 meetings with DESE in Jeff City. District tested RtI in her school. • Multi-year implementation: • Started last year to prep for this year. • In the 2nd year building piloted RtI for the district. • District made up a paper trail of how to keep track of process.

19. Training – District Level • The preparation is done: The district has the pyramid and the learning plans laid out. • There are PD days devoted to RtI and there is an online course available. • Small group trained at first to try it out, then the entire group of teachers are trained. • The PLC joins with the PD committee to determine how to do RtI.

20. Training with the Librarian • Show teachers how to enter data and how to run reports. • Teach all teachers and students to search for readings by Lexile levels. • “Textbooks are written at 1200 – 1400 level.” • Recommend support programs, provide bibliographies of readings that might work • Offer suggestions for how to teach units for all 3 tiers: Present plans to staff then share ideas • Work with teachers to brainstorm interventions

21. Planning – When does it happen? • Takes time: Plan periods, PLC & Team meetings “Two times a month teachers meet with their grade regular levels.” • Impromptu - Take advantage of opportunities, • Hall conversations & lunch • Email teachers and tie in with what they are doing in class • “Plan time is often 10 minutes in the hall.” • “The library is in the area where the specials classrooms are and teachers have to walk by the library when they take classes to specials. This is a time for impromptu planning.” • “I Go to grade level chairs and ask about pacing guides to align library activity.” • “Teachers know and trust each other. They know what each one brings to the table. So short planning times can work well.”

22. Planning & Librarians • Part of professional learning communities (PLCs) “I work with teachers on reading progress and goal setting. Serve on district and building level committees with teachers. “ • Plan with grade teams at elementary level in all reading, math, and writing to improve learning “I match students and teachers on spreadsheet” • Librarian meets with Title and LD teachers • Librarian meets with administrators and specialists, “Music teacher collaborated too and taught poetry and choral reading, repetition, rhymes, fun. The next year the students were reading on grade level.” • Collaborate with other librarians

23. Assessing Students • Plan, resource, and monitor programs like: • Reading Counts, AR and Star, Study Island, AIMSweb • Reports allow for benchmarking and progress monitoring • “We use tools to diagnose difficulties” • “We conduct universal screening 3 times a year” • HS librarian gets a list of reading levels from 8th grade teachers. • 6 week intervention, test, repeat as necessary. • Review student progress • In PLCs and other collaborative teams

24. Assessing Students – Librarian’s Role • She has an AIMSweb manager acct and could get into everyone’s records and reports (the Principal is the other person with a manager acct). • She doesn’t enter data. She teaches teachers to enter data and print reports. • The librarian meets with teachers monthly to share data •  The Principal has her print reports from STAR reading and math and every qtr. • Tutors collect data for librarian. Librarian makes charts. All students see charts with progress.

25. Scheduling – Time/Time of Day • RtI time is 30 minutes in the morning. • 30 minutes late morning. • The librarian She started taking T2 kids at the end of the day last year. • The librarian took high end 2nd graders for 20 minutes at 3PM • Tutors and students meet together for 20 min per day during advisory or home room. • Co-teach 30 minutes a day • Every other week, weekly class, 3 times weekly, every day “Wed changes each week.”

26. Scheduling – with Students • Librarian uses an Outlook calendar • This year she is going to have one time with higher kids for a few weeks, then have a T2 or T3 group . • Usually groups consist of 3 teachers, but librarian started taking 4th grade students last year. • Sometimes the librarian works with a whole class and sometimes with a small intervention group. • Sometimes teacher requests help for students. “Teachers plan, I appear and help her” • Librarian, “likes to float.”

27. Implementation – in the Library • Reinforce literacy/ reading skills. • Provide interventions or enrichment for any group assigned “I do author studies with above grade level readers.” • Develop alternative assignments • Find resources around a theme, readers’ advisory, homework help • Just right reading materials • “I collect high interest, low level books.” • “ I assist with program (ie: PALS and RtI) book selection.” • Library has lots of leveled readers. • Librarian “looks closely at books to see students aren’t overly challenged.”

28. Implementation –with Librarian • Repeat back to LMS, work on fluency and comprehension, listen to them read, have them reread. • Worked on comprehension and depth of knowledge. • She did more mentoring talking with them and having them to critical thinking, but nothing was assessed- instead concentrated on choice, enrichment, having them take a risk. • They use very scripted, quick reads. • First students learned their reading levels. • She also integrates Web 2.0 tools in classrooms, those tools allow for creating graphic representations this can align with RtI model as well.

29. Evaluation • Staff need to see if interventions are working “No data on how this is working. Hopefully the school will make AYP next year.” • Review teacher interventions “There are a hodgepodge of what works for a targeted skill. • Compare strategies that help students learn • We need to “work collaboratively to continually evaluate what is working to find out what works.”

30. Evaluation Getting Started Evaluation

31. Issues • Many tools have not been mastered yet. • “Teachers feel they can’t raise objections.” • The librarian would “like to have the right books (that interest them) but this is a pipe dream because there are over 200 red-flagged kids.” • “Everyone has a different idea of how RtI is supposed to run. People don’t agree on who should be the interventionist within the tiers. “ • Specials teachers are trying to figure out where they fit in.

32. Issues - continued • Some librarians were used mainly for testing or data entry. • “I’m not asked to be a part” • “Basically the librarian is ignored.” • “I’m given no directions on what to do with them so I treat them as a gifted and talented group.” • “This is a rung on an evolutionary ladder in education. It won’t go away for at least 3 years.” “Teachers question how long RtI is going to last.”

33. Benefits • It has increased the value of the librarian’s position • The librarians is more aware of the range of reading levels • The librarian has more contact with students • RtI promotes reading • “I’m glad we are being held accountable.” • “This Something we didn’t do in the past – we are making data on kids available. • “Before in a regular day, you couldn’t give that individual attention to students.”

34. Benefits - continued • The librarian can use higher level books for RtI. “ Students are more willing to take a risk and read something different.” • “ The teacher believed in it [the need to know students Lexile levels] once he saw it.” • Now the librarian knows who the struggling readers are because she recognizes students with T2 and T3 because she’s seen them before. “Now she knows which kids struggle she tries to let them spend more time with the librarian.” • “T2 is more private. Other students don’t know what goes on, so they are not looked down on. Small groups help each other out and support each other.” • “RtI opened my eyes to the absolute need a lot of these kids have. “

35. Implementation( Take away –can be mapped to the 7 processes) • Plan for a multi-year implementation process (Getting Started) • Build consensus (getting started) • Build components to support staff and students, • PLCs (Planning) • Time for data analysis and collaboration, (Planning) • Time for Tier 2 and 3 instruction (Scheduling) • Plan for generous professional development in support of individual sense-making, behavior, values, attitudes, norms, and expectations (Training) • Conduct a needs assessment, policies, procedures, technical assistance, and data management system( Getting Started) • Evaluate for fidelity and sustainability (Evaluation)

36. Implementation (Take away – can be mapped to 7 processes) • Elementary grades and sometimes into middle school. RtI is more challenging, but not impossible, to implement in high school (Getting Started) • Supported by Professional Learning Community (PLC) (Planning) • Focused on Reading usually, may also include Math (Implementation) • Strategies used vary from very programmed to more imaginative curricula (Implementation) • Well-implemented programs are supported by intense training for those involved (Training)

37. RtI Resources • Best Evidence Encyclopedia www.bestevidence.org/ • Florida Center on Reading Research www.fcrr.org/ • IDEA Partnership www.ideapartnership.org/ • Center on Instruction www.centeroninstruction.org • Harris, Chris. (2011. Apr 15) “RTI – The Library Role.” Infomancy. 15 Mar. 2006.. http://schoolof.info/infomancy/?p=173 • IRIS Center iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/rti/chalcycle.htm • Mellard, Daryl. (2010) Response to Intervention: Research, Best Practice and a National Perspective. National Center on Response to Intervention. • Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Three-Tiered Models of Intervention and Evidence-Based Practice dese.mo.gov/3tieredmodels/index.html • National Center on Response to Intervention RTI4Success.org Essential Componentswww.rti4success.org/pdf/rtiessentialcomponents_042710.pdf • What Works Clearinghouse ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc