Common Professional Development Sessions
Requested During 3-Tier/RTI Scale-Up
Vocabulary:
• How to provide explicit instruction (modeling, practice opportunities with
examples and nonexamples).
• How to choose the words that students need to learn (in narrative or expository
text).
• Implementing strategies that teach students how to use context clues to confirm
word meanings.
• Engaging students in oral language activities that help them internalize concepts
and acquire vocabulary.
• Use of graphic organizers as a strategy to help students organize knowledge.
Small-group Instruction:
• Implementing the features of effective instruction.
• Discussing videos that illustrate small-group instruction.
• Analyzing data to group students for instruction (Tier I and Tier II).
• Differentiating instruction to meet student needs identified by data.
• Flexible and dynamic grouping.
• Progress monitoring (instruments, teacher observation, curriculum-based
assessment, etc.).
• Modeling for teachers and among teachers on how to conduct small-group
instruction (Tier I and Tier II).
Literacy Centers:
• Identifying the characteristics of effective literacy centers.
• Analyzing centers to gauge their effectiveness.
• Modeling activities in whole group before placing in centers.
• Teaching students the logistical procedures for moving to centers (i.e., transition
procedures, management procedures).
• Creating an accountability system for students’ work (rubric, graph).
• Using data (beginning of year [BOY], middle of year [MOY], end of year [EOY],
and progress monitoring) to group students in centers.
• Forming heterogeneous and homogenous groups.
Comprehension:
• Teaching comprehension strategies (before, during and after reading).
• Identifying the structure of the text (narrative/expository) to help students
determine types of strategies they will use as they are reading.
• Using prior knowledge as a way to encourage students to make connections and
enhance comprehension.
• Using graphic organizers to teach comprehension strategies as a means to
organize thoughts.
• Using “think-alouds” to self-monitor comprehension.
Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk
©2008 University of Texas System/Texas Education Agency
Grade-level Data Meetings:
• Meeting during grade-level planning times.
• Analyzing class- and student-level data to identify specific skills to be addressed.
• Identifying grade-level instructional priorities and strengths to collaborate and
plan instruction.
• Using data to group students for Tier I small-group instruction.
• Making decisions for grouping students for Tier II intervention (based on
entry/exit criteria and BOY, MOY, EOY assessments).
• Revisiting data to monitor students’ academic progress.
• Writing individual student goals to monitor progress and help students achieve
grade-level benchmarks.
• Using data to determine professional development needs.
Fluency:
• Using strategies to improve fluency (i.e., word fluency, phrase fluency).
• Implementing partner reading (corrective feedback, graphing words per minute).
• Modeling fluent reading during read-alouds.
• Connecting fluency to comprehension.
Comprehensive Reading Instruction:
• Overview of the five research-based components of reading.
• Incorporating the features of effective instruction.
• Analyzing the critical elements of a core reading program.
• Managing classrooms during small-group instruction.
Reading Assessments:
• Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)/Indicadores
dinámicos del éxito en la lectura (IDEL).
• Refresher practice.
Overview/Review of 3-Tier Reading Model
Facilitating Leadership Team Meetings and Campus Action Plan Development
Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk
©2008 University of Texas System/Texas Education Agency