Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#96: Unlocking Reading Success: The Power of MTSS in Supporting Struggling Learners
Are standardized intervention programs failing your struggling readers? Join me, on this enlightening episode of the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we uncover how the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) can be the game-changer in boosting reading skills. We emphasize the critical role of phonics in the Tier 1 curriculum to establish a robust foundation for all students. Learn how universal screeners are the key to pinpointing struggling readers and seamlessly transitioning them to Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions. This is particularly crucial for older students in middle and high school, who need targeted, intensive support to catch up and succeed.
Discover why one-size-fits-all programs often fall short and how tailoring interventions to meet specific needs can make all the difference. I'll share tried-and-true strategies for effective progress monitoring, including how to record and graph data to derive actionable insights. Plus, we discuss the importance of structured MTSS meetings with clear agendas to ensure timely and efficient implementation of interventions. Our ultimate goal? To equip you with the tools and strategies to provide the most effective support, ensuring every student achieves reading proficiency. Tune in for a comprehensive guide to making MTSS work for your struggling readers!
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5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
So last week we talked about MTSS as a whole system that covers everything, just the overarching system, and the fact is MTSS serves students struggling in reading, writing, math and behavior. The system as a whole is set up to focus on the skills specifically within reading, writing, math and, of course, behavior. It could cover science and social studies and things like that. But let's be honest, we're not covering the basics right now, just the very basics of reading, writing and math and behavior, of course. So we got to cover those first. We got to get that going before we even think about adding more to the system of MTSS. Today we're going to focus on just MTSS as a system for supporting students in their reading.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:So the system for supporting students through MTSS in their reading mirrors exactly the overarching MTSS system that we talked about last week. If you missed it, you might want to go back to last week's session, just to you know, refresh your mind. I might go through some of the stuff a little bit quicker today for reading, but the overall system is the same. It very much mirrors the overarching system, because I mean it has to. So we'll start with Tier 1. And in reading specifically, tier 1 is the overarching curriculum that every student has. If you're involved in education or have been in the last two or three years, you know that a big focus has come back into the reading talks and that is phonics. We weren't teaching phonics for a while there and we've found now through lots of, quite frankly, trial and error. You got to teach phonics so that the kids can learn the actual skill of reading. But we haven't been doing that in our Tier 1 curriculum for many years. We've been focusing on comprehension. Well, the comprehension is the last step in reading. It's the last thing that happens. Unfortunately, that is one of the big reasons that we have so many students in our Tier 2 and Tier 3 reading groups for MTSS because we didn't teach them, unfortunately, the basics. Well, at this point this is now 2024, we're finishing up the 23-24 school year we know that we should be teaching phonics. So any school that isn't, or any school district system that isn't teaching directly teaching phonics as a skill to teach reading, quite frankly, you're wrong. That's all there is to it. There is no softening that blow. You're wrong. You have to teach phonics. So your tier one curriculum is what everybody is getting and it should include phonics. If it doesn't, you're not teaching your students how to read. For those students who are struggling with reading, you would move them to a tier two group. The way that you figure out the kids that need to go to tier two, obviously, if you're in the upper grades and the kids are not able to read a grade level text, they should probably be in tier two or tier three period. End of sentence. That's just where they should be. If the kids can't read and comprehend a grade level text, they should be in tier two or tier three. Now, unfortunately, if you're teaching high school and you're teaching regular classes, you're not teaching honors or AP. Unfortunately, the statistics all say that most of your students really struggle reading a grade level texts. So unfortunately, we're in a bit of a pickle when it comes to the upper grades, and I'm going to have talk about what to do specifically with middle and high school students in this, in this category, in a few more weeks.
Speaker 1:But what needs to happen, no matter what the grade level? Now? Obviously the kids in the middle and high schools. We got to do more to catch those kids up. But everybody, as a start, needs to first of all use universal screeners to identify the early gaps, to figure out what are the baseline skills that the students are missing. Honestly, for a majority of our students, it turns out it's phonics. It turns out that the kids are missing the sounds, being able to identify the sounds that letters or groups of letters make, and that we need to start doing phonics screeners for our students who are struggling in reading so that we can identify exactly where we need to start and then we can focus our goals and our interventions on that baseline skill.
Speaker 1:I've said it I don't know a thousand times at this point that we have to build the foundation for our students. You wouldn't buy a house that doesn't have 100% of the foundation ready to go. So when we're talking about tier two. We have to start with those baseline skills, figure out where do the skills start to drop off and fix those first In reading.
Speaker 1:Tier two isn't going to be enough, especially because they're in the upper grades and they are, you know, reading well below their grade level. Well, they're going to have to be in tier three also because they've got quite a bit of catching up to do and they need more intensive interventions. That doesn't mean we're mean, that doesn't mean that we're, you know, singling them out, but we definitely need to have a stronger focus. They need more intense learning time to get those foundational skills, to get those foundational skills, get those gaps filled in and then move on further. That means that they need a smaller group. That means that they need more individualized attention because, quite frankly, they have to have the individualized attention so that they can get the skills that they need as quickly as humanly possible, so that they can move forward as quickly as possible. That doesn't mean we're skipping skills anymore. We've already done that. That doesn't work. But it means that for especially those middle and high school kids, we really have to spend the resources, the time, resources, especially on them to get them those skills that they need, because once they have those foundational skills, they move through the upper skills very quickly.
Speaker 1:I know this from personal experience. I have worked with middle schoolers. One in particular example is a student who started with me and he wasn't able to identify all of his letter sounds consistently. Well. A year later he was reading at a third, fourth grade reading level in a year. That's what we were able to do and that was working. 30 minutes two or three times a week and that's not consistently. That was pretty inconsistent. It can be done, but we have to spend the time and the resources we have to dedicate that to these students so that they can make that progress.
Speaker 1:Let's talk for a minute about the interventions. When you have interventions, a lot of times schools, school districts, will have a list of interventions and they say these three interventions are for elementary, these three are for middle and this one is for high school, if they have anything dedicated for reading in high school. You need to have a process of choosing, not just the intervention. What are you going to do within it? You have to have the skills. You have to focus on the skills that the student is lacking and use that to choose what intervention you are going to use. It doesn't make sense to say X, y and Z is for elementary and A B is for middle school. You don't know. Every intervention program has its pluses and minuses. They're all dandy and wonderful in their own little way, but they focus on different skills and you have to make sure that the student's skill deficits are what you use to determine what the intervention is going to be.
Speaker 1:A perfect world, yes, it would be fantastic if the specific intervention that was bought for your school or your you know grade level is perfect for whatever it is that that student needs. But the reality is that's probably not the case. The other thing to think about is if you have a student who's struggling in blending CVC words, sounding them out, working on sight words during that time that the student is supposed to be blending CVC words is not going to help the child learn to read. If your student is unable to identify vowel digraphs, be able to read words with vowel digraphs, diagraphs, be able to read words with vowel diagraphs Again, sight words and sight word fluency is not going to help that child learn to read, and I know that a lot of the reading interventions they kind of fall back on we're going to do five minutes of this and five minutes of this and five minutes of this. That is not the best use of your student's time.
Speaker 1:If you have identified that your student is struggling with letter sounds or CVC words, whatever it is, spending five minutes 10 minutes on sight words and fluency or comprehension is a waste of that student's time. You've already identified what the problem is. Stop wasting their time with this intervention program that doesn't meet their needs. The intervention programs that are out there, by and large, are standardized, meaning they have this. Okay, if the student is at this level for CVC words, they should be learning these sight words and they should be fluencing at this level and they should be reading comprehending at this level. And they're standardized. Guys, if the standardized curriculum was working for the student, they wouldn't be in interventions, they wouldn't be in tier two or tier three.
Speaker 1:We have to get out of our brains this idea that this wonderful, amazing intervention program is going to solve all of our problems and it'll tell us everything that we need to do. No, we're teachers and we're amazing and we know our students. We know that we're wasting student time, we know that, but for some reason we have all bowed down. We've been forced to, but we have bowed down to the curriculum makers and we just accept that they know better than us, they don't, they know better than us, they don't, they don't, and the scores tell us that. So I want to encourage you, I want to encourage all my rebel teachers out there, that if you know that your student is struggling in phonics, don't waste 10 minutes doing sight words. Spend that 10 minutes working on the stuff that the student needs to work on and help them advance more quickly through the curriculum, through what they need, so that they can be on grade level, because the fact is that 10 minutes is does add up. That 10 minutes makes a big difference for our students, especially when we're talking about our students who are so far behind. They need that extra 10 minutes two or three times a week to help them get where they need to go.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, with MTSS for reading, we have to progress monitor. Make sure that you have a process for presenting and recording and graphing and reporting all that information. So we know that for the overarching MTSS system, we have to identify what are we going to use for progress monitoring For when we're working with our students, we have to again identify what we're using to progress, monitor, to test to see if what we're doing is working. Make sure that you have all of that already laid out and make sure that you have a system for recording it. I, when I first started, was terrible about post-it notes. I used post-it notes all the time and I lost my data or well, I didn't ever lose the data completely, but I had to go searching for it and it was a pain in the neck. So make sure that you have a better system than I did. You can pick up some data charts that I used. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Have a system for recording that data and graphing it. It sounds like another crazy, ridiculous extra work step to graph the data, but believe me, graphing gives you some fantastic insight and I encourage it. I absolutely encourage graphing it and having that ready when you have your MTSS meetings, your data chats and all that reporting what's going on, because the fact is, the numbers don't lie and you know your students. The numbers are just a way to back you up. The graphs are just a way for you to be backed up as a teacher going in and saying I need X, y and Z support, I need this different intervention program or these resources or we need another aid to come in and help with this group of kids or whatever it is. It's really it's much more difficult for higher-ups, whether you're an administrator going to the district level or you're a teacher going to administrators. It is very difficult for higher-ups to argue a need that you are showing graphically and that you can back up with data.
Speaker 1:For MTSS, obviously the overarching system, we have meetings. The meetings are usually weekly. Every single meeting should have an agenda and to make sure that you're covering all the concerns and, of course, part of that agenda should be when you're going to be meeting again. If you know that you're going to be meeting on this student in six or nine weeks, you know that you have to have that intervention data starting this week or next week. You know that you need to have whatever the intervention is that the group decided on, that's got to be ready to go. That helps you me as the teacher or as the administrator to say no, there's a time crunch on this. We need to make sure that that person gets what they need, so that the student gets what they need, or our data is not going to be worth anything and we've just wasted time. Use those meetings and an agenda, especially to show that you're using your time wisely and to make sure that we're not getting off track. Every single MTSS meeting should have an agenda, even if it's the same agenda for everybody.
Speaker 1:Finally, determine your red flags for tier two and tier three when you're moving a student from Tier 2 to Tier 3 or Tier 3 to testing and then the opposite direction. As a, you could do it at the grade level, you could do it for the subject area I'm talking about reading right now, but I strongly suggest that you have some points where, hey, if a student, for example, has been at tier two for two iterations and so two, six or nine week periods and the student isn't on grade level yet, okay, we need to have a strong discussion about whether that child should also be getting tier three support. If a student has been at tier three for, let's say, a full school year or whatever you're deciding, again, it depends on grade level. It depends on a lot of different things. If the child's been just hanging out in tier three for a really long time, we need to talk about testing for possible special needs. If what we're doing isn't working. We need to talk about upping the services, upping the supports that the child is getting. Now, of course, that very much has to depend.
Speaker 1:Again, these red flags they should not be a trigger meaning, oh, the child's been in tier three for a full school year, okay, now we test them. No, that's not how that works. That should be a red flag of. We need to have a very serious discussion. Has the child been in tier three for so long because they were so far behind? But they're making really good progress and we believe that they can be on grade level in a reasonable amount of time. Then we keep them at tier three and maybe we look at tier three and we figure out how can we make tier three more intensive, how can we speed them up even further. Maybe we hold off on asking for testing. Have some red flags where, if a student reaches that red flag specifically, you're having a very intense conversation about what's going on, all right. So I hope that that discussion about MTSS for reading was helpful. Tune in next week we're going to talk about MTSS for math. Until then, may your coffee be strong, your students calm and, of course, your summer fast approaching. Bye.