In addition to working with students in tier II and tier III interventions, I am blessed to be a support for teachers. I teach whole group lessons in classrooms, help plan units, reteaching lessons and classroom interventions. I love being the building go-to person for resources and ideas.
As a teacher author, I create supports for struggling students, assessments, data trackers and differentiated lessons and activities.
My past experience is in fifth grade where I platooned and taught math a three times a day, fourth grade (more platooning) a 3/4 split classroom which was my best year ever. Finally, interventionist!
I have been married for 23 years and have 2 adult children. My son is nearly done with his studies in culinary arts at one of the top 10 culinary schools in the country. My daughter is making her way in business and loves scents, soaps and perfumes.
My future holds blogging (You are here!), creating more materials for struggling students (desperately needed) and leveled activities to reach all learners.
Thank you for visiting my blog!
Hi! I am wondering what are your thoughts on progress monitoring? What kind of benchmarks do you use in your school? How do you track progress within intervention- assessments? I am about to start as a math interventionist!
ReplyDeleteHi Ingrid! Thanks for contacting me. Interventions in my school district are a work in progress even after 3 full years. I definitely progress monitor weekly and have a pre/post test for the topic I am working on with the particular student or group during the 4 or 6 week intervention (based on need and progress). My school uses a standardized test called Star Math (Star Reading also). Star math is the first filter for identifying students for intervention. Should a student score poorly on the Star test (given online about 3 times a year) I will further assess to see if the score is due to true need, attitude, student timing out on questions, etc. From there I will form a group and use that pretest to guide my instruction. I have created, revised, and field tested all of my assessments and plan to post them on TPT throughout the year. Good luck to you in your new and very exciting job. I'd be happy to be a support for you on your new journey!
DeleteThank you, I appreciate your support! Our school uses district-created universal screens given three times a year to act as what you call the "first filter". There are no cut-off scores though, the math interventionist(now me) meets with the grade level teachers to discuss individual students and whether or not a child should be further tested, watched, or go to intervention. It's a very subjective situation with everyone sitting around one table! On the other hand, it's nice to look at the child as a whole and get the valuable input that a diagnostic test doesn't give you. The district, though, has expressed concerns that math intervention is not as concrete as reading intervention is. We also have no set tools for progress monitoring in math, which we have plenty of in reading. So, I'm interested in learning about the tools other interventionists find successful. I think it's great that you created assessments and I look forward to you posting those! Thanks again!
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DeleteHi again, Ingrid! I am very interested in hearing from you about the growing field of math intervention. Thanks for sharing about your district and where they are going with things. There are both good and bad things about a concrete intervention program. The good is you know what to do. Day 1, day 2, day 3...The bad is every child is different. Some, a quick fix and some need many, many days of the same thing. Sometimes the program runs out but the kid needs more. And even then, some can't hold onto it. You move to a new topic and reassess the old one 4 weeks later and it is gone! Another thing we do in my district is keep a minimum of 6 weeks of data from our intervention sessions. If a child does not show growth, we rethink the intervention with that child and take their case to a meeting at the round table called SAT (Student Assistance Team) where we discuss the child with a team (district psychologist, principal, teacher, special education team, interventionists...) and look at the big picture- home life, medical history, prior success/failure, behavior...and decide what to do next. Sometimes (last resort) it is a referral to be tested for special education services. It almost sounds like your district does that prior to intervention or maybe just a smaller version of that.
DeleteAlso exciting, you will see, is that the classroom teachers love the extra help. When I was in the classroom there was no one to give needy kids extra support so...onward I forged trying to do tier III in any little bit of time I could, during transitions, library, computer lab, and if the child was willing to miss a few minutes of gym/music/art, I'd grab a few minutes here and there. My (Title I) building has a 30 minute intervention block built into the day for each grade level. Makes things nice for scheduling. All support fights over the kids during that 30 minutes of dedicated time though- special education, speech, reading intervention, math intervention, ESL, social work...sometimes we are all trying to get our hands on the same kids and we have to take turns.
Well, nice to hear from you again! More later
I, too, will be working an a math interventionist after 13 years in the classroom. Our school uses STAR as a universal screener, then it's up to me to drill down further to identify exactly where students' problems are. I want to be sure I am using appropriate diagnostic tools. I would be interested in your thoughts about using AIMS Web for progress monitoring. I look forward to checking out your TpT store!
ReplyDeleteHi Ann and congrats to you on your new position. It sounds like you will be a pioneer, as I am in my district. That's exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time as intervention minutes are so limited and therefore precious. I do not have experience with AIMS Web. My district really does not have anything they have purchased for me for progress monitoring. We use LLI for reading intervention but no set program for math intervention.
ReplyDeleteI began my position using the RTI/MTSS "kit" assessments included in our math program (enVision) for further diagnostic and pre/post testing. After using them for a year I found great weaknesses in the assessments and created my own. I needed assessments that diagnose students on a scale. By that I mean I have a third grader scoring in the urgent category on STAR math. From there I need to see how bad it actually is. Can he/she count/skip count to 100? Count write and read larger numbers to 1,000? Can he/she tell what is 1 more/less, 10 more/less...I am sure you get the picture. My first year I felt I'd give the grade level RTI assessment and then I'd have to back up. Next give the assessment from the grade before and if that did not go well, back up again. How does that look to a kid? He/she just failed everything and finally you can find what they can do? Now I say, count for me...and start with kindergarten skills no matter how silly and the kid is pumped because he/she was formerly frustrated and is being asked to do EASY stuff. They LOVE that. When you find the spot where their learning haulted, you are good to go.
Such an exciting position. Keep in touch! I have a goal to post some of my assessments this month. We go back to school in September here in Michigan. I appreciate you finding my site and writing to me. Good luck!