Know-Its: The Link To Reading

A Series of Articles Explaining Response to Intervention: Part 1

Let’s start with a working definition from the RTI Network:

"Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tiered approach to help struggling learners. Students' progress is closely monitored at each stage of intervention to determine the need for further research-based instruction and/or intervention in general education, in special education, or both."

What does this mean for the classroom teacher?

Do your students "freeze" when they come to a long word? Many beginning readers get comfortable reading a certain length of word and when they face a longer word, they don't know what to do. When I worked with fifth grade struggling readers, the students just stopped reading and wanted someone to tell them the word. I asked,"What can you do to help yourself?" They just sat there. . .

The Three-Tiered Model is not the only way to conduct a RTI (Response to Intervention), but it has been widely used and proven to be effective in Reading First Schools. Think of a triangle with the bottom third designated as Tier 1. This tier is general education where about 70%-80% of your students fall.

In Tier 1, students progress in a timely manner without extra help. Teachers should strive to get all students in this group! Many times after a struggling reader receives a little extra help, he/she can move back into Tier 1.

High Frequency Words are words that children should know without having to use decoding skills. Ideally, every word should be automatic, but beginning readers must use many different strategies to get to that point. (See article on Stretching, etc.) Some words are so common (like the words and, the, and of) that children learn these by repetition or simply by using them in context.