RTI and the Common CoreA Compilation of Resources for All Students Within the Three Tiers of Instruction

“Realizing Opportunities for English Learners in the Common Core English Language Arts and Disciplinary Literacy Standards”, George C. Bunch, University of California, Santa Cruz, Amanda Kibler, University of Virginia, Susan Pimentel, StandardsWork®, 2012

ELL components of a high achievement ELA program for each and every student requires regular and intensive practice to:

1. Secure Foundational Skills in K-3: Solidifying and strengthening foundational skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening and language. This will provide the platform for independent reading success for every student.

2. Develop Academic Language: Ensuring that all students are proficient with academic language, including complex sentence structures and academic vocabulary expressed orally and in writing.

3. Engage in Word Study: Developing a systematic approach to K-12 word study, going beyond the meaning of words to a close study of their spelling, pronunciation and structure. Closely related to text complexity—and inextricably connected to reading comprehension—is a focus on academic vocabulary: words that appear in a variety of content areas (such as ignite, combine and causal). An effective word study program raises students’ awareness of the power and beauty of words.

4. Reading Fluency: Ensuring that all students read grade level complex text with appropriate rate, expression and accuracy based on type of text and purpose. This focus must include awareness that fluency can be a possible cause of difficulty at any given grade, not just in the early grades.

5. Reading aloud complex text to build knowledge: Systematic and frequent read alouds with texts that are rich and beyond grade level in complexity is an imperative in the foundational grades (K-3). Texts read aloud—especially in the early grades—must contain more complex vocabulary and syntax than texts students can read independently. The focus should be on asking text dependent questions and including repeated oral readings of difficult sections in order to develop strong aural comprehension, enhance knowledge, and support learning of academic words and complex syntax.

6. Close Analytic Reading: Frequent teacher-led, close reading of rich complex texts must be a regular part of student experience. This means emphasizing questions that can only be determined from the text and which combine focused word study and attention to syntax with writing, listening and speaking about text in order to develop deep understanding. This regular practice in analytic reading will build student capacity to read carefully and independently.

7. Volume of Accountable Student Reading: Radically increasing the volume of text students read. In order to develop a rich and essential store of word and background knowledge, students must read more and be held accountable for doing so. The means should include: increasing the amount of reading in the content areas; independent reading programs; literature studies; reading multiple texts of increasing difficulty about one topic; and any other means that increases accountable student reading.

8. Evidence Based Writing and Speaking: Regular and systematic evidence based writing and speaking from sources integrated across the curriculum. Shifting from an emphasis on narrative writing and speaking about self to placing a premium on students writing and speaking to sources: using evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. Students must learn to work together, express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt speech to context and task.

A consideration of students’ second language proficiency, literacy backgrounds, and background knowledge can also inform instructional efforts to enhance the strategic moves students can apply to engage successfully in independent reading across the curriculum—especially when called upon to read texts beyond their English language proficiency levels.

Such instruction can do the following:

• Induce readers to consider (or even research) the topic at hand using more accessible texts (including those in a students’ L1 for ELs who read in their first languages) in preparation for reading more difficult texts as part of the same lesson or unit.

• Assist readers in deciding which words in a given text are critical for particular uses of the text and which can be skipped.

• Focus readers’ attention on meaning-critical grammatical structures (and how those might compare with how grammar is used to make similar meaning in students’ first languages).

• Build on and expand readers’ knowledge about how different kinds of texts are structured.

• Focus readers’ attention on specific features of text complexity by choosing authentic and original texts that emphasize one or two features at a time (such as a linguistically more accessible text that features multiple meanings, a lexically dense piece with a simpler grammatical structure, or a text in the students’ native language that includes the challenging text structures of an unfamiliar genre).

• Integrate a focus on vocabulary-building with meaningful activities centered around texts.

Several instructional strategies hold promise for ELs in meeting the Writing Standards. Overall, such strategies focus on developing what is called for by the Standards (e.g. writing different text types for different audiences and purposes and presenting knowledge gained through research) rather than ELs’ production of mechanically and grammatically “flawless” writing.

Accordingly, writing instruction can do the following:

• Maximize the use of ELs’ existing linguistic and cultural resources by ensuring that students have meaningful ideas to write about, allowing them to use their home languages or varieties of language

during the writing process, employing technology that students already use, and drawing upon their background knowledge, practices, and experiences.

• Provide ELs with meaningful exposure to the types of texts they will be writing, guiding students through the linguistic and rhetorical patterns found in different genres.

• Ensure that writing instruction creates meaningful opportunities to communicate rather than mechanical exercises for text production. These opportunities include interactions with peers and teachers about ELs’ writing and sensitive yet substantive feedback about the content of their writing at multiple points throughout the writing process.

In relation to research skills specifically, instruction can:

• Encourage students with L1 literacy backgrounds to draw upon this resource to help them locate, evaluate, and analyze information.

• Assist students in selecting reading and drafting strategies appropriate for varied research tasks.

• Provide explicit guidance on the conventions of textual ownership and citations in U.S. academic settings, alongside clear yet critical explanations of the purposes these conventions serve.

• Create opportunities that allow ELs to learn research processes by participating in teacher guided and collaborative endeavors before attempting research independently.

For ELs to realize opportunities presented by the Listening and Speaking Standards, teachers across the curriculum can support students by offering a wide variety of classroom discourse structures. Many of the interactive structures conducive to building knowledge and discussing ideas also hold promise for language development.

Teachers can do the following:

• Engage students in individual, small group, and whole-class discussions that move beyond traditional initiation-response-evaluation structures to “bridging discourses” that encourage ELs to produce extended oral discourse and engage with academic registers.

• Develop collaborative tasks that require effective and linguistically rich discussions.

• Allow ELs to collaborate in their home languages as they work on tasks to be completed in English

• Teach ELs strategies for using their still-developing English language proficiency to engage in different communicative modes. For example, listening comprehension activities can help ELs to “arrive successfully at a reasonable interpretation of extended discourse,” rather than to process every word literally, which is impossible even for native English speakers to do.

“The Common Core State Standards and Reading: Interpretations andImplications for Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities”Diane Haager, California State University, Los AngelesSharon Vaughn, 2013

GUIDELINES FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS K-5 CCSS:

Special education teachers will need to develop a thorough understanding of the K-5 CCSS in order to facilitate access for students with disabilities within general education classroom, to assist classroom teachers in making appropriate adaptations and accommodations, and to design interventions that best prepare students to achieve competency across a wide range of literacy skills. Following are suggestions to keep in mind as schools move forward with implementation of the standards framework.

1. Develop a thorough understanding of the grade-level expectations and general education curriculum and determine needed adjustments for students with learning disabilities.

2. Seek out professional development that will provide the depth of knowledge you will need to advocate for your students as they access general education instruction. You will also need this knowledge base to design your specialized instruction to meet students’ standards-based IEP goals.

3. Consider whether students are provided adequate opportunities for intensive interventions in reading to promote their access to both foundation skills as well as text-based comprehension.

4. Establish a plan in collaboration with general education teachers and other professionals to ensure appropriate instruction for students with LD. The best way to ensure that your students will have access to the challenging standards is to establish a concrete plan for how and when students with disabilities will be included in general education English Language Arts instruction and what they may need beyond that.

5. Advocate for time to collaborate with your general education colleagues to make an initial plan as well as structured ongoing planning time and procedures for assuring that students are provided the specific and intensive interventions needed as well as the appropriate differentiated instruction required

6. Use the K-5 CCSS in Foundational Skills to guide small-group instruction to meet students’ individualized needs. Use appropriate assessment tools to identify your students’ specific needs within the Foundational Skills and group students strategically to provide targeted skills-based instruction. As you examine students’ data, use the Foundational Skills standards as a guide in selecting curricular materials and lesson planning. Teach toward mastery of the needed skills.

7. Provide opportunities for guided practice in integrated lessons. Your students are likely to experience English Language Arts lesson that are multifaceted and integrate several skills within the context of a particular lesson focus. These lessons will more often involve informational text from science, social studies or other technical subjects and are likely to promote problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills. Students with LD will more often be required to produce complex written or oral responses to text. It may be beneficial for your students to provide them with opportunities to practice the types of listening, speaking, reading and writing activities they will encounter in the general education environment, using text that is at an accessible level.

This may represent a divergence from “business as usual” special education instruction that is often solely targeted on isolated skills.

GUIDELINES FOR GENERAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

1. Maintain a focus on continuing high impact practices associated with improved reading outcomes in Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction. Assure that the effective practices you are currently implementing that are effective for Tier 1 instruction as well as for intervention (Tier 2) are continued. Many of the essential foundation skills in reading (e.g., phonics, fluency, vocabulary) that have been previously addressed are maintained in the K-5 CCSS and can be emphasized.

2. Provide all students with appropriate instruction so that you minimize skills gaps for students who may later be assessed and placed into special education. Students with LD are often identified beyond the primary grades, but their need for supplemental support modes of presenting are some of the research-based ways that general education teachers generally provide options for students.

3. Provide students with a range of text types to assure students spend adequate time reading texts that they can read successfully. While high level texts for each grade are required and examples of such are provided, students with learning disabilities will not make adequate progress in reading unless they have ample opportunity to read passages that they can read successfully. This means that while students with LD, are likely to be expected to read very difficult passages with support from their teacher, they will also need adequate time to read passages at their reading level.

Range and Complexity of Text Reading for Students with Learning Disabilities

1. Provide texts for students to read that represent a range of genres. The common core requires students to acquire reading proficiency in a range of literary genres, poetry, and access to knowledge through information texts.

2. Select texts for students to read that represent a range of reading levels including reading levels above grade level. Students are expected to read texts that are on their grade level and above. Students with reading disabilities will require opportunities to read text they can read successfully. This is likely to mean off-level text. Additionally, when required to read text that is too difficult for them, teachers can promote their access to this difficult text by:

a. Reading the segment aloud first and then asking them to read,b. Pre-teaching difficult words and reading the sentences with these words with the

student before they read the passage, andc. Providing a better reader to support their reading.

3. Select Texts that support learning in social studies and science. Students are expected to have opportunities to read texts that cut across genres including narrative, story, poetry and also information text that relates to building background knowledge and academic vocabulary. Special education teachers can support implementation of the common core standards by selecting science and social studies texts that align with the knowledge being taught in these content areas and using these as sources for students’ reading.

4. Select Texts that support Tier 2 vocabulary development and academic vocabulary. Tier 2 words are words that are important, useful in the immediate future to read and understand

text, require instruction to learn, and will help the student understand the concept or idea in the text.

5. Encourage students to ask questions and respond to questions while reading. Ask students to read a designated sentence or passage. Select the length of text to be relatively brief initially and then longer as the students’ reading skills develop. Ask students a question about an idea from the text and a question about a detail from the text. Support students in locating the words or sentences from text that support their answer.

6. Teach students to develop questions related to text. A critical element of successful reading involves learning how to use text as a source for answering questions. As students advance as readers, they are also expected to use text as a source for asking questions. Most experienced teachers recognize that learning to formulate a question related to text is difficult for many students and will be particularly challenging for students in second and third grades.

7. Provide students with opportunities to identify the main characters in the story and to discuss what they know about the characters. Students are likely to encounter characters in both information and narrative texts. Initially, students can learn to tell the main character and later to describe the character. Be sure to encourage students to use the text as support for their answers about the character.

8. Read texts that give students opportunities to determine characters’ responses to events and challenges. Through both teacher read-alouds and student independent reading, assure students encounter texts that include characters who are responding to critical events and life challenges. Ask students to identify the challenge or event. Ask them to use text as a source to describe how the character responded. Use graphic organizers to demonstrate who the main characters are, what the challenge is, and how each character responded to the challenge.

9. Read texts that describe or imply characters’ traits, motivations, and feeling. Ask students to describe the “traits” of characters in their texts. Encourage them to find the words in the text that explicitly tell them about a character. Also, guide them to locate words that “infer” traits about a character. Learning more about characters also means learning about their motivations and intentions. Encourage students to consider what the character is trying to accomplish. Ask students if they can determine the characters’ goals. Graphic organizers are available focusing on characters.

10. Describe and Compare and Contrast characters, settings or events from text. When students read information text they have many opportunities to describe in detail the settings or events that are relevant to understanding the text. For example, using the text as a source to answer such questions as:

(a) What details are used to describe the setting and how does this influence the action in the story?

(b) What traits do the two key characters have that make them alike?

(c) What traits do these characters have that make them different?

(d) How do these traits influence what they do?

(e) What is the key event in the text and how does the author describe it?

NYS Common Core ELA CurriculumCopyright © 2012 by Expeditionary Learning, New York, NY. All Rights Reserved.

Curriculum and Instruction

Research on high quality instruction reveals some common elements. High quality instruction:

• Focuses on rigorous, relevant and real content;

• Activates students’ prior understandings;

• Provides multiple opportunities for metacognition;

• Differentiates instruction within the core curriculum;

• Ensures effective feedback based on formal and Formative assessment;

• Cultivates in depth inquiry leading to higher cognitive demands;

• Incorporates active and exploratory strategies;

• Provides explicit and systematic practice;

• Monitors student progress regularly;

• Integrates 21st century skills explicitly throughout all academic areas; and

• Establishes a classroom culture that values student participation, questions, contributions, and ideas.

Teachers offer high quality instruction of the Common Core State Standards in Tier 1 (primary) and provide targeted intervention within the classroom setting for students who have displayed a need. If the targeted intervention in the classroom is not sufficient students may need (Tier.2/secondary) and/or intensive (Tier.3/tertiary)

Lessons that involve highly complex text require a great deal of scaffolding. Many scaffolds are excellent for all types of learners—English Language Learners (ELLs), students with special needs and/or students who are just generally challenged by reading.

Scaffolding becomes differentiation when students access or have access to scaffolding only when needed. Scaffolds that are provided to the whole class might be appropriate and necessary, but whole class scaffolds are not differentiation.

FRONT-END SCAFFOLDING

Front-end scaffolding is defined as the actions teachers take to prepare students to better understand how to access complex text before they read it. Traditionally, front-end scaffolding has included information to build greater context for the text, front-loading vocabulary, summarizing the text, and/or making predictions about what is to be read. Close analytical reading requires that teachers greatly

reduce the amount of front-end scaffolding to offer students the opportunity to read independently and create meaning and questions first. It also offers students the opportunity to own their own learning and build stamina.

Examples of front-end scaffolding that maintain the integrity of close reading lessons include:

• Using learning targets to help students understand the purpose for the reading

• Providing visual cues to help students understand targets

• Identifying, bolding, and writing in the margins to define words that cannot be understood through the context of the text

• Chunking long readings into short passages, (literally distributing sections on index cards, for example), so that students see only the section they need to tackle

• Reading the passage aloud before students read independently

• Providing an audio or video recording of a teacher read-aloud that students can access when needed (such as SchoolTube, podcasts, ezPDF, or GoodReader)

• Supplying a reading calendar at the beginning of longer-term reading assignments, so that teachers in support roles (special needs, ELL, AIS) and families can plan for pacing

• Prehighlighting text for some learners so that when they reread independently, they can focus on the essential information

• Eliminating the need for students to copy information—and if something is needed (such as a definition of vocabulary), providing it on the handout or other student materials

BACK END SCAFFOLDING

Back-end scaffolding, on the other hand, is defined as what teachers plan to do after students read complex text to help deepen understanding of the text. When teachers provide back-end scaffolds, they follow the “Release-Catch-Release model,” allowing students to grapple with hard text FIRST, and then helping students as needed.

Examples of back-end scaffolds include, but are not limited to:

• Providing “hint cards” that help students get “unstuck” so they can get the gist—these might be placed on the chalkboard tray, for example, and students would take them only if they are super-stuck

• Encouraging/enabling students to annotate the text, or—if they can’t write directly on the text—providing sticky notes or placing texts inside plastic sleeves (GoodReader is an app that allows students to mark up text on an Ipad. Adobe Reader works on a wide variety of electronic platforms)

• Supplying sentence starters so all students can participate in focused discussion

• Placing students in heterogeneous groups to discuss the text and answer text-dependent questions

• Providing task cards and anchor charts so that expectations are consistently available

• Highlighting key words in task directions

• Simplifying task directions and/or create checklists from them so that students can self-monitor their progress

• Placing students in homogeneous groups and providing more specific, direct support to the students who need it most

• If special education teachers, teachers of ELLs, teaching assistants, etc. are pushed in to the ELA block, teaching in “stations” so that students work in smaller groups

• Designing question sets that build in complexity and offer students multiple opportunities to explore the answers:

* Students discuss the answer with peers, then write answers independently and defend answers to the whole class.

* Provide time for students to draft write responses before asking for oral response.

• Identifying and defining vocabulary that students struggled with

• Using CoBuild (plain language) dictionaries

• Providing partially completed or more structured graphic organizers to the students who need them

• Providing sentence or paragraph frames so students can write about what they read

• AFTER students have given it a shot:

* Examine a model and have students compare their work to the model and then revise.

* Provide a teacher think-aloud about how he/she came to conclusions and have students revise based on this additional analysis.

* Review text together as a class (smartboard or document camera) and highlight the evidence. First, make your thinking “visible” to students. Use “think-alouds” to demonstrate how you approach problems, reflect on text, answer questions, or give yourself feedback. Say, for example, “Before I read this text, I see that it will be difficult to understand. First, I look for key words. I see three words in bold that I don’t know, so I write them down to see if I can figure out what they mean when I read the text. Second, I look at the title, the headings, and the questions at the end of the text. I think about what this text is going to be about, and I try to make connections while I’m reading. Third, while I read, I stop to see whether I have learned any information to help me answer the questions at the end of the text.” One way to integrate self-monitoring into academic learning is by teaching students to ask themselves questions to determine if they are working well and making progress. For example, when reading, ask students to stop and think about whether there were any words or ideas they did not understand. Then ask students to reread and figure out how to “repair” their problems. Similarly, when solving word problems, students should ask themselves whether they understood the problem. If not, show them how to paraphrase it—put it into their own words—underlining important parts of the problem, and visualizing or drawing a diagram that represents relationships among all important problem parts. Making inferences when reading

sentences, paragraphs, and multi-paragraph texts can also enhance self-monitoring. Ask students to read the text aloud and think about what the author is saying. If students have trouble figuring out the author’s intention, ask them questions about previous or subsequent text and show them how to put ideas together to make an inference. You can do much of this work through questioning and think-alouds.

Connecting RTI and the Common Core: Teacher as Intervention 'First Responder'Jim Wright, 2012www.interventioncentral.org

RTI and Common Core: Commonalities

Both RTI and the Common Core Standards focus on setting and achieving ambitious expectations for students.

Both RTI and the Common Core Standards assume that the general-education classroom is where the most important instruction and intervention happen.

Both RTI and the Common Core Standards acknowledge the power of strong ‘direct instruction’ and recognize that learners need to be held to high expectations.

Both RTI and the Common Core Standards recognize that not all students learn the same way and that some need research-based interventions to help them be successful.

2011 The Meadows Center for Preventing Education Risk, University of Texas AustinThe CCSS do not define the following:

The intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above the grade level expectations.

The full range of supports for ELLs and students with special needs, though the standards stress that all students must have the opportunity to learn and meet the same high standards.

Solutions for Students with Disabilities, RTI and CCSS

Strengthen Instructional Delivery:

1. Curriculum aligned instruction2. Differentiated instruction3. Ongoing data collection and data based decision making4. Effective, intense interventions that embed standards-based content instruction (skill recovery

vs. grade-level instruction)5. Standards-based IEP’s6. Appropriate accommodations