MTSS Monday

I've been wanting to start blogging about what I'm doing during MTSS (Multi-Tier Systems of Support) formerly RTI (Response to Intervention) formerly tutoring that teachers did on their own before someone felt the need to dictate exactly what they need to do and how they need to do it...WHAT?

Did I digress?

I know myself well enough not to commit to doing this every Monday but hopefully I will be able to share what I'm doing in MTSS at least once a month.

I actually enjoy MTSS.  We do it every morning for 30 minutes, school-wide.  In the past we have had to split every single student in all 8 classes on our grade level.  Splitting up 135 students right after you get them settled into the school day was, as I'm sure you can imagine, pure chaos, and not very effective.  Now we are able to do it in our classrooms with our own students.

Instead of collaborating over which student needs to move up or down a tier and how each of our students are doing in all 7 of the other classes they are spread amongst we actually get to share activities and how each of us are addressing specific needs.

We hold our grade level meetings and PLC's in different classrooms each time so we can see each others system for running MTSS (as well as literacy and math centers).  I don't know about you but sometimes I can get more out of visiting another teachers classroom than I can an entire Professional Development workshop.

We decided to have a general form of data tracking so that when an administrator comes in our room they will see the same thing.  I'm going to share it here for free.  I've already changed it 3 times and I've got a couple of new elements I'm thinking about adding so when I update it I will repost it in another MTSS Monday post.

You can grab these tracking forms here for FREE!

At this time I don't have any Tier 3 students.  I do have 4 Tier 2 students and the other 16 are Tier 1.  I split Tier 1 up into a medium and high group.

The students in the high group are working on enrichment and high order thinking activities.  My medium students are provided extra practice with skills and concepts we are working on in class (they are the biggest group, of course).

The Tier 1 recording sheet is pretty basic, I just list the activity they are doing, Readers Theatre, for example, the students names, materials they need and there is a place for notes.

Finally the Tier 2 students are given activities for remediation in areas that I have identified a deficiency.  For example, we spent about 3 weeks working on Kindergarten high frequency word identification.

In the Intervention Focus I wrote KG HFW.  I listed their names with their baseline scores 12/20 (meaning they were able to identify 12 out of 20.  Each week, after retesting, I recorded their new scores 15/20 then 19/20.  Once students show good growth or achieve the standard I move onto another area of focus.

I like this system because I can also throw in a couple of Tier 1 (medium) kids who need a little extra practice as we remediate different skills.

I have our MTSS time set up like centers so I am free to work one on one with students or in small groups.  I try to meet with each group once a week and my Tier 2 students one on one and in a small group once a week during our MTSS time.  I will post more about all of that another time.

*Please note-I created the MTSS tracking forms because they are useful to me and my colleagues.  If you have any suggestions I'm open to hearing them.  I'm considering separating Tier 2 and Tier 3 and adding a chart to Tier 3 with Time, Program and Frequency.

For more information about MTSS check out these Educator Resources!