Practice Guide Summaries: Assisting Students with Reading: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades

1

Screen all students for potential reading problems at the beginning of the year and again in the middle of the year.

1. Create a building-level team to facilitate the implementation of universal screening and progress monitoring.
2. Select a set of efficient screening measures that identify children at risk for poor reading outcomes with reasonable accuracy.
3. Use benchmarks or growth rates (or a combination of the two) to identify children at low, moderate, or high risk for developing reading difficulties.

2

Provide time for differentiated reading instruction for all students based on assessments of students’ current reading level.

1. Provide training for teachers on how to collect and interpret student data on reading efficiently and reliably.
2. Develop data-driven decision rules for providing differentiated instruction to students at varied reading proficiency levels for part of the day.
3. Differentiate instruction—including varying time, content, and degree of support and scaffolding—based on students’ assessed skills

3

Provide intensive, systematic instruction on up to three foundational reading skills in small groups to students who score below the benchmark score on universal screening.

1. Teach students to blend letter sounds and sound-spelling patterns from left to right within a word to produce a recognizable pronunciation.
2. Instruct students in common sound-spelling patterns.
3. Teach students to recognize common word parts.
4. Have students read words in isolation & in text.
5. Teach regular and irregular high-frequency words so students can recognize them efficiently.
6. Introduce non-decodable words that are essential to the meaning of the text as whole words.

4

Monitor the progress of tier 2 students at least once a month.

1. As students read orally, model strategies, scaffold, and provide feedback to support accurate and efficient word identication.
2. Teach students to self-monitor their understanding of the text and to self-correct word-reading errors.
3. Provide opportunities for oral reading practice with feedback to develop uent and accurate reading with expression.

5

Provide intensive instruction on a daily basis that promotes the development of the various components of reading proficiency to students who show minimal progress after reasonable time in tier 2 small group instruction (tier 3).

1. As students read orally, model strategies, scaffold, and provide feedback to support accurate and efficient word identication.
2. Teach students to self-monitor their understanding of the text and to self-correct word-reading errors.
3. Provide opportunities for oral reading practice with feedback to develop uent and accurate reading with expression.