Styrofoam Snowman & RTI Binders

Christmas decorations are everywhere, students are excited and teachers are feeling frazzled!  But December is such a fun month!  The teachers have completed RTI tiers II and III and have turned in their RTI graphs.  We've been very busy decorating our doors and our school is looking very festive!

With a little help from a friend we got our snowman built from styrofoam cups made.  The snowman looks amazing and the kids have loved seeing him grow from the bottom up and each detail like the eyes and nose and hat being added. The snowman pieces were made by hot gluing the cups together to make a circle.  Then cups were added on top of that ring, continuing to add rings until it was filled in.  We used 3 different sizes of cups.  It took a lot of cups!

Then trees were added by rolling square construction paper into a bit of a funnel shape and hot glued to the door.  The students made snowflakes from coffee filters too.  

Now, back to RTI.  At my school, teachers keep weekly graphs of each student's RTI data.  It is so important to test to check if the interventions are working and plot that out against a goal line.  If a student's data points are keeping up with the goal line, they are on track to reach their goal by the end of the RTI tier that they are in.  Teachers turn in these graphs, two per student, to me at the end of the RTI cycle.

I also like to have each student keep their own graph of their progress.  After each weekly assessment, they color in their graph and I discuss with them how they are progressing.  

One of the easiest ways to stay organized with RTI and all the different graphs, rubrics, parent letters, etc...is to have an RTI Data Binder.  RTI papers are too valuable to take a chance on losing or miss placing them.  

Now that RTI is completed for the first cycle, I go in and do universal screenings on the students to check if all the interventions have helped improve their overall reading skills.  I use ESGI for a lot of my screenings.  This system has made my job 100% easier to manage.  The students are entered and then I assess them 1 on 1 in the areas needed.  For kindergarten, I assess on letter identification and sounds and phonemic awareness right now.  As students gain more skills, I assess on a whole range of phonics skills.  ESGI generates reports on all this information, creates flashcards for students to take home to practice and you can even print out parent letters!  

The other piece in our universal screenings is assessing with the DRA and IRI.  These assessments truly test if the students can apply what they have learned in  RTI interventions to reading.  After all the scores have been turned in, our RTI committee will meet on each student to look at the progress shown on each graph and their new universal screening scores to determine what action needs to be taken next to help each student find success!

Be sure to head over to my other blog- Spark of Inspiration- and enter to win some holiday classroom resources!  There is a giveaway each day for the 25 days of Christmas!!