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Response to Intervention 2020 — Vasiliki Varvaki/Getty RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION EDITOR’S NOTE CONTENTS Commentary Response to Intervention is a model to identify struggling students and provide 2 The Most Popular 8 MTSS: Where the 14 Student Trauma Is Real. targeted interventions before academic Reading Programs Aren’t Obstacles Are But Connection Can Heal failure. In this Spotlight, learn about obstacles Backed by Science 9 How Do Kids Learn to 17 Do Teachers Need to multitiered systems of supports, explore 5 RTI May Fall Short in Read? What the Response to Intervention? how RTI can benefit teachers, and consider Flagging Certain Science Says 18 Four Steps to Implement the research on best early reading instruction Students RTI Correctly practices. 7 What Are Multitiered Systems of Supports? Response to Intervention / edweek.org 2 Published December 3, 2019, in Education Week’s Special Report: Getting Reading Right The Most Popular Reading Programs Aren’t Backed by Science By Sarah Schwartz readers do use different sources of in- TOP 5 formation to predict what words might here’s a settled body of re- READING MATERIALS say. But studies also suggest that skilled search on how best to teach By Percentage readers don’t read this way. Neuroscience early reading. But when it of Teachers Using research has shown that skilled readers comes to the multitude of cur- process all of the letters in words when riculum choices that schools they read them, and that they read con- Thave, it’s often hard to parse whether well- 43% nected text very quickly. marketed programs abide by the evidence. Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Even so, many early reading programs And making matters more complicat- Intervention are designed to teach students to make ed, there’s no good way to peek into every better guesses, under the assumption that elementary reading classroom to see what it will make children better readers. The materials teachers are using. problem is that it trains kids to believe “It’s kind of an understudied issue,” 27 that they don’t always need to look at all HMH Journeys said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive sci- of the letters that make up words in order entist at the University of Wisconsin- to read them. Madison and the author of Language at Still, teachers may not know that cue- the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why 19 ing strategies aren’t in line with the sci- So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done Reading Recovery entific evidence base around teaching About It. “[These programs] are put out reading, said Heidi Beverine-Curry, the by large publishers that aren’t very forth- co-founder of The Reading League, an coming. It’s very hard for researchers to organization that promotes science-based get a hold of very basic data about how 17 reading instruction. widely they’re used.” HMH Into Reading Classroom teachers also aren’t usu- Now, some data are available. In a na- ally the people making decisions about tionally representative survey, the Edu- what curriculum to use. In Education cation Week Research Center asked K-2 Week’s survey, 65 percent of teachers said and special education teachers what cur- 16 that their district selected their primary Units of Study for Teaching ricula, programs, and textbooks they had reading programs and materials, while Reading Series used for early reading instruction in their 27 percent said that the decision was up classrooms. Source: Education Week Research Center to their school. The top five include three sets of core Even when teachers want to question instructional materials, meant to be letter-sound relationships in a set-out their school or district’s approach, they used in whole-class settings: The Units sequence. In others, phonics instruction may feel pressured to stay silent. Educa- of Study for Teaching Reading, developed is less systematic, raising the possibility tion Week spoke with three teachers from by the Teachers College Reading and that students might not learn or be as- different districts who requested that Writing Project, and Journeys and Into sessed on certain skills. their names not be used in this story, for Reading, both by Houghton Mifflin Har- Phonics is “buried” in many commer- fear of repercussions from their school court. There are also two early interven- cial reading programs, Seidenberg said. systems. tions, which target specific skills certain Teachers might be able to use what’s there students need more practice on: Fountas to construct a coherent sequence, he said, & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention or they might not. Cueing Strategies Persist and Reading Recovery. And frequently, these programs are Reading Recovery, the 1st grade in- An Education Week analysis of the teaching students to approach words in tervention used by about 20 percent of materials found many instances in which ways that could undermine the phonics teachers surveyed, was developed in the these programs diverge from evidence- instruction they are receiving. 1970s by New Zealand researcher Marie based practices for teaching reading or Several of these interventions and Clay. Thirty-minute lessons are delivered supporting struggling students. curricula operate under the under- one-on-one, and generally follow a similar At this point, it’s widely accepted that standing that students use multiple structure day to day. The idea is to catch reading programs for young kids need to sources of information, or “cues,” to solve students early before they need more in- include phonics—and every one of these words. Those can include the letters on tensive intervention, said Jeff Williams, a five programs teaches about sound-letter the page, the context in which the word Reading Recovery Teacher-Leader in the correspondences. What varies, though, appears, pictures, or the grammatical Solon school district in Ohio. is the nature of this instruction. In some structure of the sentence. Students read books they’ve read sev- cases, students master a progression of Observational studies show that poor eral times before, and then read a book ADVERTISEMENT POWERFUL GROWTH Intervention and Instruction for Innovative Reading, Math, and Spanish Literacy Research Based and Computer Adaptive • Formative Assessments • Adaptive Curriculum • Personalized Data Profiles • Teacher Resources • School-to-Home Connection • Professional Development • Proven Results Supporting Educators. Empowering Kids. Changing Lives. info.istation.com/growth @IstationEd Response to Intervention / edweek.org 3 In this sample lesson from Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention program, students are taught to use multiple sources of meaning while they read. One of the goals of this lesson is for students to “look carefully at words and use letter/sound information to solve them.” But in the same lesson, teachers are also introducing strategies that ask students to take their eyes off of the words—like in this example, which asks students to use meaning cues. This lesson is at level A, the first level in LLI, often used with kindergarten students. that they’ve only read once, the day be- tive sentence structure demonstrates that leave some gaps, said Kristen Koeller, fore, while the teacher takes a “running words have consistent meaning, and the the educator outreach manager at Decod- record.” Here, the teacher marks the frequent pictures provide a context to link ing Dyslexia California, who used to be a words that the student reads incorrectly to the words, he said. Reading Recovery teacher. and notes which cue the child apparently He gave the word “hippopotamus” as For example, she said, she might have used to produce the wrong word. an example. By pointing out that “hippo- a student who didn’t know the /ow/ sound, For example, if a child reads the word potamus” starts with the letter “h,” and like in the words “how” or “wow.” Koeller “pot” instead of “bucket,” a teacher could linking that word to a relevant picture would work with the student on that indicate that the student was using mean- and story context, the student can connect sound, but she wasn’t expected to explain ing cues to figure out the word. the word and the meaning of the word. the difference between when “ow” makes During the rest of the lesson, students “When it’s in isolation and we just say the /ow/ sound, like in “how,” and when practice letter-sound relationships, write arbitrarily, ‘This shape makes this sound,’ “ow” makes an /o/ sound, like in “show.” a short story, and assemble words in a cut- that’s a little abstract for little kids,” Wil- Phonics does happen in Reading Re- up story. At the end, they read a new book. liams said. covery lessons, she said. “But it is not sys- The program also requires intensive But other experts say using predictable tematic, it is not multisensory, and it de- teacher training, which is administered text this way teaches young children the pends largely on the teacher’s knowledge through partner colleges. wrong understanding of how the English base and the book that is selected.” Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy language works. LLI does include a scope and sequence Intervention follows a similar lesson “You build this foundation of, English for phonemic awareness and phonics in- structure, but it’s delivered in a small is a language that I have to memorize,” struction. But students enter the program group format rather than one-on-one. said Tiffany Peltier, a doctoral student at at different points, and it’s possible that In both programs, text is leveled ac- Oklahoma University, who studies read- they might need more practice with skills cording to perceived difficulty. Teachers ing instruction. that are deemed below their level—or that are told to match students to books at a But kids don’t memorize words to learn they will exit the intervention before they just-right level, with the idea that this will them.
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