Wiked Topic: Response to Intervention (RtI)

I chose to do my Wiked topic on Response to Intervention (RtI).  There has been a big push in our district for all schools to implement RtI.  In order to properly train teachers to implement RtI, each school formed an RtI committee and then the committees were sent to hear different presenters on the topic.  I was chosen by my principal to be on the committee so I participated in staff developments when Reading Specialists across the district would come to speak as well as the Superintendent of Special Services.   These knowledgeable speakers recommended great books for teachers to read such as The Struggling Reader: Intervention that Work and Evidence Based Reading Practices for Response to Intervention.    I was also sent to listen to W. Alan Coulter from LSU Health Sciences Center- Human Development Center Accountability Data.  From these presentations, I acquired a great deal of knowledge in the field of RtI and it seemed like a great model for some of our struggling readers to achieve success.  These presentations contained great information that helped contribute to my Wiked page.  While researching this topic the RTI Action Network also provided many great articles written by people have first hand experience with Response to Intervention. 

Rti has significantly impacted the schedule in our entire building.  The whole school has extra staff development time blocked out for cross-grade articulation.  We have thirty minutes blocked out everyday to intervene with students.  We also have a Reading Improvement Aid that comes in and takes another group of students.  The classroom teacher pulls the lowest of the low according to our data and the Reading Improvement Aid can enrich some students or pull the Tier II studetns.  While we are pulling groups, the other students are working on their morning stations that coincide with Debbie Diller’s Literacy Stations.  These stations are independent and require minimal teacher support.

Every grade assesses their students three times a year (fall, winter spring).  With grades second through eighth, students write goals based on MAP scores.  Since Kindergarteners and first graders do not take the MAP test, their goals are based on the Illinois Snapshot of Early Literacy (ISEL) and their Fountas and Pinnell running records.   With the implementation of RtI, our school has seen significant improvement in students being able to reach their goals.  Since our school and district has seen such success, I would like to advocate the RtI model to other teachers.  In my wiked page in the section “Applications in Classroom and Similar Settings,” I use specific examples of how it can be implemented in K-6 settings and hopefully that can help teachers get started on using the RtI model. 

It helped me gain a wealth of knowledge while contributing to other pages.  I was able to add my personal views while reading interesting points from other contrinbutors.  While contributing to other pages, I really enjoyed adding to the personal testimony page.  It was enjoyable reading about how others agreed or disagreed with the topic or how they implemented the ideas in their classroom.  It felt like an open forum where everyone could share their ideas without any judgment from others. The topics I contributed to in the Personal Testimonies sections include: Cram School, Early Elementary Science Education, Year-Round Schools, Morning Meeting, Phonemic Awareness, Co-Teaching and Multiple Intelligences.  The topic I was especially interested in was multiple intelligences because our whole building incorporates multiple intelligences into our daily routine.  

Being an advocate of multiple intelligences and learning styles, I am aware of my different intelligences and my learning styles.  I know I am a visual learner and visual learners learn best by enlarged pictures, graphic organizers, and diagrams.  While I was adding my personal testimony to the topic of Morning Meeting, I noticed there were no pictures depicting what Morning Meeting could look like; therefore I inserted an image.  For me, it helped organize the Description section of the topic.  I thought to myself that this could be very beneficial for other readers who are visual learners like me.  I inserted images for the sections: Morning Meeting, 123 Magic, Rudolph Flesch, Reuven Feuerstein, and Leila Christenbury.  For me, it really helped me create a better connection to the topic. 

The area of reading is a passion of mine and it is important to me that my students know all components of reading.  For emergent readers, proficiency in phonemic awareness is crucial so I spent some time on the Phonemic Awareness page.  I clicked through all of the websites and some of the websites no longer existed so I deleted a website and added a new website that our school uses frequently.  Another big component of reading is Guided Reading.  In my classroom, I meet with a small group everyday during literacy block.  In each guided reading group there is approximately three to five students.  In the guided reading section, I added an image of a teacher teaching guided reading under "Description'," I also added in "Applications in Classroom Settings", contributed two helpful websites and a book by Debbie Diller that has helped numerous schools throughout our district create work stations so other students are working actively while the teacher is meeting with a guided reading group under "References and other Links of Interest."

Websites are a fast and simple way for people to gain information about new topics.  There is so much information on the Internet now that you must screen the source to make sure if it is a good source or not.  Using the Wiked pages is a great way to gain facts from hopefully trusted resources.  In the areas of Year Round Schools, Teenage Pregnancy, No Child Left Behind, Word Wall, Charter Schools, Co-Teaching,  Six-Trait Writing, I added websites that would be beneficial to the readers.  I am interested in year round schools because my roommate teaches at a year round school.  From what I hear from her, I can definitely understand the benefits of students attending year round schools.  At my school, I often hear about the middle level kids discuss their relationships with other students.  This is an age that is unfamiliar to me because I teach Kindergarten and First Grade.   One of the sixth graders started dating and eighth grade student and she was scared he would want to have sex so I wanted to do more research on teenage pregnancy and relay the facts back to her to let her know she does not have to have sex with him.  With teaching Six-Trait Writing, the website that I provided allows teachers to print out visually pleasing posters for other teachers to hang up in the classroom.  I have found these posters are extremely beneficial to students and help them determine which writing trait they are focusing on.  You access my contribution list from here.

While creating my Wiked page, I shared knowledge that I already knew and in the process of researching my topic, I also gained new knowledge.  It was really interesting for me to read what other professionals had to say about different topics in the education field.  I definitely benefited from the contributions of other people and I hope my work has some impact on others too.