Finding Our Place:
Librarians and
Response to Intervention
Floyd Pentlin, Jenny Robins, Sandra Jenkins, and Pat Antrim
University of Central Missouri
AASL - October 29, 2011
Introductions
 Jennifer Robins
 Floyd Pentlin
 Sandra Jenkins
 Patricia Antrim
 Back Channel supported by Sandra and Twitter Feed,
#AASL2011rti
RtI is. . .
 Response to Intervention (RtI) is a school-wide, threetiered model of instruction and instructional
intervention.
 It incorporates:
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Data-driven decision making,
Research-based instructional strategies,
Student-centered personalized instruction,
A high level of collaboration among school personnel
Definition: RtI
Response to Intervention (RtI) “The Organizational
framework for instructional and curricular decisions and
practices based on students’ responses” (Mellard, 2010).
Components include
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Screening
Progress Monitoring
Tiers of Instruction
Decision-Making Rules
Tiered
Instructional
and
Behavioral
System
Screening
Databased
Decision
Making
Progress
Monitoring
RtI is. . .
 RTI is a component of No Child Left Behind
 It is supported with funds from IDEA.
 It is a required component of Race to the Top
 It is mandated for schools AYP targets.
 Little is available in the research literature about the role
school librarians play in RTI schools.
 Researchers in the LIS program at UCM asked:
 How is RtI implemented in MO?
 What is the role of school librarians?
The RtI Conversation
 Is the librarian involved in the RtI
conversation?
 How do librarians support student
learning in an RtI school?
 How do librarians support teachers in an
RtI school?
 Where can librarians learn more about
how to engage in RtI?
Why RtI and Reading are linked:
 5% of children learn to read effortlessly
 20-30% learn relatively easily once expose to reading
instruction
 For 60% of children, learning to read is a much more
formidable task
 For at least 20-30% of children, reading is one of the
most difficult tasks that they will have to master
 For 5% of students even with explicit and systematic
instruction, reading will continue to be a challenge.
(MacKenzie as cited in Harris)
Connections
 RtI integrates assessment and intervention within a
multi-level prevention system to maximize student
achievement
 RtI seeks to prevent academic failure by catching issues
early and providing individual students the supports
they need
 In Missouri RtI is also associated behavior management
decisions
 RtI is often a school-wide initiative, changing the work
of everyone in the school (or district)
History
RtI grows out of a history of
 Public Health Prevention as applied to Education
 Prediction
 Inoculation
 Tiered Intervention (triage)
 School-wide Reform Efforts
 Reading First, NCLB, & Race to the Top
 Data-driven Decision Making
 Special Education strategies to identify disabilities
Advantages
 Students
 Get help when they need it
 Receive good instruction
 Avoid future academic difficulties
 Teachers
 Receive useful feedback on their instruction
 Work together with other teachers, not in isolation
 Make instructional decisions based on data about individual
students
 Parents
 Receive better information more frequently about their
child’s progress
Benefits
 Avoid the burden of catch-up growth
 Some students start out ahead; others behind
 And the gap widens over time
 Use prevention rather than remediation
 If instruction is $5,143 per student per year, remediation
is an additional $5,000 per year (Kennewick, Washington,
School District)
 Provide best possible instruction for all students
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How do we know? Assessment Data!
Teachers use data the same way surgeons do.
Teachers use the best available teaching practices
Teachers continually monitor for improvement of their
own teaching practice.
The Model
DESE. http://dese.mo.gov/3tieredmodels/rti/
T3
Levels of Instruction
T2
T1
 Tier 1: Regular instruction // Target  about 80% of
population
 Tier 2: Standard Treatment Protocol // Target  about
15% of population. May be scripted, structured, and
explicit or not. Small groups or individuals.
 Tier 3: Problem-solving Intervention // Target  about
5% who have failed in two previous protocols. Requires a
high level of expertise and creativity. Individualized
instruction
Implement with Fidelity to
Benefit Students
 Accountability
 Link interventions to improved outcomes
 Specificity
 Definitively describe operations, techniques, and
components
 Consistency
 Clearly define responsibilities of specific persons
 Create a data system for measuring operations,
techniques, and components
 Authority
 Create accountability measures for non-compliance
Our Study
 Last Spring
 Early responses from a four-question survey
 67 Respondents
 24 Respondents indicated little or no involvement in the RtI
process; 40 described varying levels of involvement
 This Fall
 Follow up interviews with several respondents
 Analysis of interviews for themes and patterns
Results
In this section we provide details
about what we discovered in our
survey and in interviews with
librarians embedded in RtI schools.
RtI -7 Processes
Evaluate
& Revise
Get
Started
Implement
Intervent.
Train
Schedule
Intervent
Plan
Assess
students
Getting Started
 Lots of gurus
 Mike Mattos, Pat Quinn
 District administrators went to 5 meetings with DESE in
Jeff City. District tested RtI in her school.
 Multi-year implementation:
 Started last year to prep for this year.
 In the 2nd year building piloted RtI for the district.
 District made up a paper trail of how to keep track of
process.
Training – District Level
 The preparation is done: The district has the pyramid
and the learning plans laid out.
 There are PD days devoted to RtI and there is an online
course available.
 Small group trained at first to try it out, then the entire
group of teachers are trained.
 The PLC joins with the PD committee to determine how
to do RtI.
Training with the Librarian
 Show teachers how to enter data and how to run
reports.
 Teach all teachers and students to search for readings
by Lexile levels.
 “Textbooks are written at 1200 – 1400 level.”
 Recommend support programs, provide bibliographies of
readings that might work
 Offer suggestions for how to teach units for all 3 tiers:
Present plans to staff then share ideas
 Work with teachers to brainstorm interventions
Planning – When does it happen?
 Takes time: Plan periods, PLC & Team meetings
“Two times a month teachers meet with their grade regular
levels.”
 Impromptu - Take advantage of opportunities,
 Hall conversations & lunch
 Email teachers and tie in with what they are doing in class
 “Plan time is often 10 minutes in the hall.”
 “The library is in the area where the specials classrooms are and
teachers have to walk by the library when they take classes to
specials. This is a time for impromptu planning.”
 “I Go to grade level chairs and ask about pacing guides to align
library activity.”
 “Teachers know and trust each other. They know what each one
brings to the table. So short planning times can work well.”
Planning & Librarians
 Part of professional learning communities (PLCs)
“I work with teachers on reading progress and goal setting. Serve on
district and building level committees with teachers. “
 Plan with grade teams at elementary level in all reading, math,
and writing to improve learning
“I match students and teachers on spreadsheet”
 Librarian meets with Title and LD teachers
 Librarian meets with administrators and specialists,
“Music teacher collaborated too and taught poetry and choral
reading, repetition, rhymes, fun. The next year the students
were reading on grade level.”
 Collaborate with other librarians
Assessing Students
 Plan, resource, and monitor programs like:
 Reading Counts, AR and Star, Study Island, AIMSweb
 Reports allow for benchmarking and progress monitoring
 “We use tools to diagnose difficulties”
 “We conduct universal screening 3 times a year”
 HS librarian gets a list of reading levels from 8th grade
teachers.
 6 week intervention, test, repeat as necessary.
 Review student progress
 In PLCs and other collaborative teams
Assessing Students – Librarian’s Role
 She has an AIMSweb manager acct and could get into
everyone’s records and reports (the Principal is the
other person with a manager acct).
 She doesn’t enter data. She teaches teachers to enter
data and print reports.
 The librarian meets with teachers monthly to share data
 The Principal has her print reports from STAR reading
and math and every qtr.
 Tutors collect data for librarian. Librarian makes
charts. All students see charts with progress.
Scheduling – Time/Time of Day
 RtI time is 30 minutes in the morning.
 30 minutes late morning.
 The librarian She started taking T2 kids at the end of the day
last year.
 The librarian took high end 2nd graders for 20 minutes at 3PM
 Tutors and students meet together for 20 min per day during
advisory or home room.
 Co-teach 30 minutes a day
 Every other week, weekly class, 3 times weekly, every day
“Wed changes each week.”
Scheduling – with Students
 Librarian uses an Outlook calendar
 This year she is going to have one time with higher kids
for a few weeks, then have a T2 or T3 group .
 Usually groups consist of 3 teachers, but librarian started
taking 4th grade students last year.
 Sometimes the librarian works with a whole class and
sometimes with a small intervention group.
 Sometimes teacher requests help for students.
“Teachers plan, I appear and help her”
 Librarian, “likes to float.”
Implementation – in the Library
 Reinforce literacy/ reading skills.
 Provide interventions or enrichment for any group assigned
“I do author studies with above grade level readers.”
 Develop alternative assignments
 Find resources around a theme, readers’ advisory,
homework help
 Just right reading materials
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“I collect high interest, low level books.”
“ I assist with program (ie: PALS and RtI) book selection.”
Library has lots of leveled readers.
Librarian “looks closely at books to see students aren’t overly
challenged.”
Implementation –with Librarian
 Repeat back to LMS, work on fluency and comprehension,
listen to them read, have them reread.
 Worked on comprehension and depth of knowledge.
 She did more mentoring talking with them and having them to
critical thinking, but nothing was assessed- instead
concentrated on choice, enrichment, having them take a risk.
 They use very scripted, quick reads.
 First students learned their reading levels.
 She also integrates Web 2.0 tools in classrooms, those tools
allow for creating graphic representations this can align with
RtI model as well.
Evaluation
 Staff need to see if interventions are working
“No data on how this is working. Hopefully the school will
make AYP next year.”
 Review teacher interventions
“There are a hodgepodge of what works for a targeted skill.
 Compare strategies that help students learn
 We need to “work collaboratively to continually evaluate
what is working to find out what works.”
Evaluation
Getting
Started
Training
Planning
Implementing
Assessing
Scheduling
Evaluation
Issues
 Many tools have not been mastered yet.
 “Teachers feel they can’t raise objections.”
 The librarian would “like to have the right books (that
interest them) but this is a pipe dream because there are
over 200 red-flagged kids.”
 “Everyone has a different idea of how RtI is supposed to
run. People don’t agree on who should be the
interventionist within the tiers. “
 Specials teachers are trying to figure out where they fit in.
Issues - continued
 Some librarians were used mainly for testing or data
entry.
 “I’m not asked to be a part”
 “Basically the librarian is ignored.”
 “I’m given no directions on what to do with them so I
treat them as a gifted and talented group.”
 “This is a rung on an evolutionary ladder in education.
It won’t go away for at least 3 years.”
“Teachers question how long RtI is going to last.”
Benefits
 It has increased the value of the librarian’s position
 The librarians is more aware of the range of reading levels
 The librarian has more contact with students
 RtI promotes reading
 “I’m glad we are being held accountable.”
 “This Something we didn’t do in the past – we are making
data on kids available.
 “Before in a regular day, you couldn’t give that individual
attention to students.”
Benefits - continued
 The librarian can use higher level books for RtI.
“ Students are more willing to take a risk and read something different.”
 “ The teacher believed in it [the need to know students Lexile
levels] once he saw it.”
 Now the librarian knows who the struggling readers are because she
recognizes students with T2 and T3 because she’s seen them before.
“Now she knows which kids struggle she tries to let them spend more
time with the librarian.”
 “T2 is more private. Other students don’t know what goes on, so
they are not looked down on. Small groups help each other out and
support each other.”
 “RtI opened my eyes to the absolute need a lot of these kids have. “
Implementation( Take away –can
be mapped to the 7 processes)
 Plan for a multi-year implementation process (Getting Started)
 Build consensus (getting started)
 Build components to support staff and students,
 PLCs (Planning)
 Time for data analysis and collaboration, (Planning)
 Time for Tier 2 and 3 instruction (Scheduling)
 Plan for generous professional development in support of
individual sense-making, behavior, values, attitudes, norms,
and expectations (Training)
 Conduct a needs assessment, policies, procedures, technical
assistance, and data management system( Getting Started)
 Evaluate for fidelity and sustainability (Evaluation)
Implementation (Take away – can
be mapped to 7 processes)
 Elementary grades and sometimes into middle school. RtI is
more challenging, but not impossible, to implement in high
school (Getting Started)
 Supported by Professional Learning Community (PLC)
(Planning)
 Focused on Reading usually, may also include Math
(Implementation)
 Strategies used vary from very programmed to more
imaginative curricula (Implementation)
 Well-implemented programs are supported by intense training
for those involved (Training)
RtI Resources
 Best Evidence Encyclopedia www.bestevidence.org/
 Florida Center on Reading Research www.fcrr.org/
 IDEA Partnership www.ideapartnership.org/
 Center on Instruction www.centeroninstruction.org
 Harris, Chris. (2011. Apr 15) “RTI – The Library Role.” Infomancy. 15 Mar. 2006..
http://schoolof.info/infomancy/?p=173
 IRIS Center iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/rti/chalcycle.htm
 Mellard, Daryl. (2010) Response to Intervention: Research, Best Practice and a
National
Perspective. National Center on Response to Intervention.
 Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Three-Tiered
Models of Intervention and Evidence-Based Practice
dese.mo.gov/3tieredmodels/index.html
 National Center on Response to Intervention RTI4Success.org
Essential
Componentswww.rti4success.org/pdf/rtiessentialcomponents_042710.pdf
 What Works Clearinghouse ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc