WEBVTT

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I am Carol McDonald Connor,
and I am an associate professor

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at Florida State
University in the Department

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of Developmental Psychology.

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Teachers ask me all the
time, "Why do we have

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to do progress monitoring?

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Why is it important?

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We've screened the children;
we know how they're doing."

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And what we tell them is
that children vary greatly

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in their response to
the instruction they get

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in the classroom
from the teacher

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and also the small-group
interventions that teachers

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or other professionals might
be doing as part of Tier 2.

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If we don't do ongoing progress
monitoring, we won't know (1)

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when a child is doing very
well and they can be moved

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out of Tier 2 or (2)
they're not responding

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to the intervention that's
supposed to be helping them.

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An important thing to
remember about RtI [Response

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to Intervention] is that
these tiers are permeable,

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they're flexible, and that
children should be moving

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between the tiers.

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We don't want to fall into what
we call the "tracking trap."

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That means that children are
put in Tier 2 and they are left

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in Tier 2 all year long

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when Tier 2 may not be
the best place for them.

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This happened in the old
days where children were put

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into the blue bird
group, for example.

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And even if they were
showing great progress,

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they stayed in the
blue bird group

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because our expectations
for them were low.

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The idea with RtI
is our expectations

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for all children are high,

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regardless of where
they're starting out.

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And all it means when a child
is starting below grade level,

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for example, is that we have
to work that much harder

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to get them to grade level
by the end of the school year

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by frequent progress
monitoring and by regrouping,

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so that children are
grouped according

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to the skills we want
them to improve on.

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All children are going
to make the kinds

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of progress we want
them to make.

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The important thing
when we think

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about progress monitoring is
that we're monitoring the skills

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that are important for the
child at the grade level.

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As you move from
kindergarten through the grades,

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the basic skills are really
important in terms of phonics,

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phonological awareness,
and fluency.

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As you move up the grades,

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fluency becomes increasingly
important.

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We want these decoding
skills to become automatic,

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so that children are reading
without thinking about

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"How do I sound out this word?"

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As they continue to move up, the
vocabulary and the comprehension

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and the writing skills become
increasingly important.

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Frequently, the school
district will have access

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to progress monitoring measures.

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There are many, many
good measures out there

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that assess phonological
awareness, letter name,

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letter sound, oral reading
fluency, non-word reading,

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which is a great way
to measure decoding.

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There are fewer vocabulary

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and comprehension progress
monitoring measures,

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but there are a number
of informal measures

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that can give really
important information.

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One way to do this is to
have children read text

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that is slightly above
their comfort zone,

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slightly difficult for them.

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Don't give them any help,
don't give them the words,

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and see how they go
about reading this text.

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What do they do when they get
to a word that they don't know?

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Do they look at the
teacher and say, "Tell me"?

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Do they try to sound it out?

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Do they look at pictures
and try to guess?

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All of these are good
indications of what's breaking

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down when a child reads and
what we need to help them with.

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What do we do when
we have a child

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that just isn't making the kinds

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of progress we would hope even
though they're getting Tier

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2 interventions?

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In that case, it's time
to think about moving them

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to even more intensive
Tier 3 intervention.

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Frequently, in Tier 2 we
are using fairly scripted

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off-the-shelf interventions

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and they may not work
for some children.

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Tier 3 allows us to offer much
more individualized, tailored,

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intensive interventions
that really should be able

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to help these children.

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We typically encourage the
very best professionals

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to provide the Tier 3:
the reading specialist,

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the literacy coach, the
speech language pathologist.

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And it is likely that these
are the children that will need

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to be referred for
special education.

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What we're hoping is that by
providing this intensive Tier 3

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intervention, they won't need
special ed, that this level

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of still general ed, Tier 3
intervention, will be enough

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to keep them off and
out of special ed.