Bridging the Way Back Into RTI Tier I

On this RTI journey, we have learned a lot of things.  We meet as a committee after each cycle to decide whether students have made enough progress to move back into the classroom for Tier I instruction.  Sometimes that decision is clear and an easy one to make...sometimes not so much.  

If the student has made good progress in Tier II, scored well on the our reading assessment (DRA 2), and is performing in the classroom we want them to go back into Tier I.  But sometimes our committee has difficulty removing RTI supports from students because they do not want them to slide back into needing more help.  

This year, we have begun a program I call Bridge Kids.  Bridge Kids provides a "bridge" back into the classroom, but still continuing some of the supports of RTI.  A few times a week during RTI, the classroom teacher provides instruction for the bridge kids in the areas they are working to improve.  For example fluency.  Then once a month, instead of the Tier II and III once a week, I provide an assessment for the Bridge Kids to take to monitor their progress.  I try to provide as much as I can to lessen the load of the classroom teacher, but still provide the student with SOME support.  As Bridge Kids improve, they will be moved on to the next skill.  If they are not improving, I will meet with the teacher to decide what we need to make adjustments in...different teaching methods, change the intervention, increase the time, etc...  This is going to really help our students that were on the bubble of being able to handle having less support!

We've been having fun with our sight words!  You may remember seeing this game in the past with hiding a monster.  This month we played Where Are the Hearts?  Hearts or whatever monthly picture you want to use are hidden behind sight word cards.  Students choose a word they can read & lift the card to see if the hidden heart is behind it.  They love this game!

Both of my RTI groups are off to a good start.  We are a week into it and showing progress.  Here are the resources pictured above.  Click on the pictures to be taken to the resources.