8 Dos and Don’ts for RtI

Response to Intervention (RtI) can be a beast to manage. From identifying needs, to scheduling appropriate interventions, it’s a process that can be very confusing.

All Texas public schools have some level of RtI in place to support students and fill gaps. This has become more important after the educational damage caused by COVID. Below are eight do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when structuring RtI.

Do you identify students as early as possible. Don’t pull kids from core instruction for intervention. No amount of intervention will take the place of what they missed in tier one. Without a solid tier one, the student will never be on track.
Do look at students’ data compared to everybody else in their class. Don’t ignore the overall class average. It doesn’t matter if you are teaching your heart out if the students are learning the material.
Do small groups in your classroom and track that as an intervention. Don’t expect your students only to get intervention during pull-out. If you aren’t doing small groups with your students, you aren’t reaching all of them.
Do communicate with parents early on. As soon as you’re working with them in intervention, let parents know what you’re doing in the classroom. While it’s important also to send intervention materials home, don’t expect parents to be the ones to provide intervention. Some parents won’t do this or won’t know-how.
Do you set a specific goal for your intervention. Don’t start intervention without baseline data. If you don’t know where you start, you’re not going to know how far the kid has come or lack thereof.
Do use research-based interventions. Don’t change the focus of your intervention every other week. Identify an area and focus on that area until they’ve met their goal. For older kids, if they have multiple areas of need, start with the root of the problem. If reading comprehension is low and the student can’t read, you have to start with reading skills.
Do you track progress. Don’t forget to document if the student misses intervention sessions for any reason. If the student is making progress after three weeks of consistent intervention and then, for whatever reason, misses two weeks and backslides, that’ll make your intervention data more useful.
Do you track your interventions. Don’t get hung up on paperwork. It would be best if you had a baseline, the research-based intervention you’re doing, how long you’re doing it for, and the student’s progress.