Response to Intervention: Strategies for Success
By Karen Grites, M.S.
Educators are constantly seeking effective ways to meet the needs of all learners so that every student can experience success. For many students with unique learning challenges, strategies for achieving success can include special education services in addition to accommodations and interventions provided by the classroom teacher. For almost four decades I have worked to understand, assess and educate students with unique challenges. Through dedication and commitment, my colleagues and I have devoted our professional lives to helping special needs students learn and achieve in the classroom and life.
Understanding, Assessing and Educating Students
Understanding students as learners begins in the general education classroom.
Classroom teachers are in the best position to observe, analyze and respond to the learning needs of students. The reauthorization of the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004) brings this point to the forefront by focusing attention on Response to Intervention (RtI), a consultative approach to improving the academic achievement and performance of children. The services available through RtI provide timely and targeted support for struggling students, rather than waiting for students to fail before intervention begins. RtI provides an opportunity for general and special educators to work closely together to best understand and meet the learning needs of students.
1
The use of a structured, problem-solving process is a requisite component of RtI.
Such a process assists in the identification of student learning needs and includes the basic components of
(1) identification of the problem
(2) analysis of the problem to form hypotheses about why it is occurring
(3) development of a plan to address the problem
(4) evaluation of the student’s response to the intervention/plan selected
Additionally, a structured, systematic problem-solving process assists in the identification of groups of students with similar learning needs and concerns. A structured approach allows the resources of the entire educational system (at both district and building levels) to function as an integrated system to support student learning needs and increase student achievement. The framework of tools for assessing performance must be increasingly sensitive to detect subtle changes in achievement in student performance as assessments move from screening to diagnostics to progress monitoring.

Schools Attuned: A Strategy for Response to Intervention
The delivery of services for RtI is based on a tiered model. The Schools Attuned
Program, a professional development and service delivery program from All
Kinds of Minds, provides the knowledge and tools to support educators in providing intervention services at each tier.
Response to Intervention
Tier 1: Core Instructional Interventions
• based on a core curriculum that should be effective for 80-85% of all students in a school.
• Proactive group interventions are implemented for all students through high-quality instruction and curricular decisions.
• Foundational curricular, instructional, and school structure decisions should be responsive to student performance and needs
• May vary from school to school. 2
Tier II: Targeted Group Interventions
• designed for the ~15% of students who are at-risk academically or behaviorally
• Intensive services and interventions are provided in a small group setting
• Targeted interventions are in addition to classroom curriculum and instruction
Tier III: Intensive, Individual
Interventions
The Schools Attuned Program
Application of the AKOM Philosophy,
Framework and Management by Profile to:
• establish a climate that values a diversity of learning strengths and weaknesses
• leverage resources across the school, including parents, teachers, specialists, and school leadership, particularly when these individuals share a common language for understanding and talking about learning
• analyze the demands of curriculum requirements
• make strategic instructional decisions at the classroom level to meet the needs of diverse learners
• prepare students for the demands of assessment practices
Application of the AKOM Philosophy,
Framework and Management by Profile to:
• teach students about the learning process and about themselves as learners
• identify the potential breakdown point for a student – the point at which the student’s profile is misaligned with the demands of the task
• engage in the Student Learning
Partnership process, or, in some cases, the Attuning a Student process, to understand why a student is struggling with a particular task or skill
• focus the use of strategies based on an understanding of the demands of the task (e.g., reading decoding)
Application of the AKOM Philosophy,
Framework and Management by Profile

• intended for the ~5% of struggling students who need specific individual support
• interventions are based on outcomes of assessment
• occurs over longer duration than other tiers to:
• select from a toolbox of protocols and processes that provide (1) different levels of specificity and depth of understanding, (2) a range of individuals participating in the process, and (3) varying degrees of documentation
• form Student Learning Partnerships with struggling students to better understand their learning needs and to identify strategies that are most effective for the student.
• form alliances with students and parents through the Attuning a Student process to deeply understand the student’s profile of neurodevelopmental strengths and weaknesses and the impact of that profile on school performance
RtI and Schools Attuned Result in Student Success
Recently, I had an opportunity to assist a classroom teacher in taking two
Kindergarten students, Sarah and Brittany, through the three tiers of Response to
Intervention using research and tools from the Schools Attuned Program as a guide.
Sarah struggles with foundational reading skills. School-wide testing on the
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) found her to be at the
Beginning Preschool level with regard to Initial Sound or Onset Fluency.
Brittany is a young Kindergartner with a birthday in August. She attended a preschool program that was developmental in nature and as such, she did not receive much direct instruction in pre-reading skills. Contrast this with some of her classmates who were in parallel preschool programs that spiraled through tasks that taught phonemic awareness and sound symbol correspondence.
When she began to struggle it was not clear as to whether she simply had not had exposure to learning these skills or if she had neurodevelopmental weaknesses.
Sarah and Brittany’s RtI Journey
Tier 1: In Sarah and Brittany’s classroom, we began by considering alternatives to how the students might be taught and ultimately learn the skills and knowledge for any given subject area. Intervening at the whole class level early in the process brings greater impact to making the content of lessons easier to learn for students, particularly those students whose neurodevelopmental profiles are not well matched to the demands of the content.

Using the Lesson Analysis protocol from Schools Attuned, the teacher and I explored the curriculum objectives and instructional methods for a lesson on pairing sounds and symbols. As a result, we identified additional adaptations and accommodations for students who struggle with pairing sounds and symbols, such as adding handson and multisensory approaches to the teacher’s instructional repertoire. The teacher could also consider starting the lesson with graphic organizers, a strategy that could be particularly helpful for the struggling students who do not seem to “get it” from the teacher’s instructions or class discussion.
Additionally, we employed the Schools Attuned Management Resources Binder as well as lesson plans, accommodations and interventions found on the Schools
Attuned Web site to offer a variety of additional activities to the entire class.
Tier 2: At this tier, a Student Learning Partnership, or SLP, can focus the teacher’s observations of a student’s engagement with a particular task or skill, target that student’s specific struggle with a best practice strategy, and document when that strategy begins as a next step. A key value of the SLP is the conversation with the student that encourages him/her to evaluate the success of any given strategy. In this way the student has a role in addressing their learning issue and committing to identifying what works or what does not. Based upon observations of strengths and weaknesses that are guided by a neurodevelopmental framework, a strategy is identified that mitigates the weakness and taps into the area of strength. Chances are the strategy could also be helpful with several of the other students in the class. Therefore, a small group intervention occurs that employs an identified best practice strategy and offers it to several other classmates as well.
At this point, Brittany has made progress moving to Strategic-Additional
Intervention on the DIBELS. Based on this data, she is placed in a targeted program designed to support struggling readers.
Sarah’s limited progress indicates a need for more intense intervention. She is placed in the same reading program as Brittany. Sarah’s teacher implemented the reading program using the Lesson Analysis protocol from Schools Attuned to make adjustments to her instruction that would support the weaknesses she saw within the girls’ neurodevelopmental profiles.
For Sarah, however, the teacher decided to also implement the Student Learning
Partne rship (SLP). Through this process, Sarah’s neurodevelopmental profile

began to take on greater definition of her strengths and weaknesses, leading the teacher to clearer implications for how to adapt and accommodate reading lessons. Her teacher found the following suggestions from the Schools Attuned
Web site tools:
Targeted Weakness or Skill
Use this activity to help students who are having difficulty identifying letters, recalling letter formation and graphically forming letters.
Automatization Drill
Gestalt Closure Alphabet - a binder containing the letters of the alphabet drawn with pieces missing - the pages are inserted into plastic sheet protectors. The student uses a dry erase marker to daily go through the binder "fixing the broken letters. You may want to include a model of the letters in the bottom corners or on a separate sheet of paper for further scaffolding and self-correction. As the student becomes skilled at the activity modify it by redrawing the letters leaving out more and more pieces until the student is drawing the whole letter independently. phonological processing, long-term memory, decoding
Each student builds a Word Family
(WF) notebook, divided up into SVa,
LVa, SVe, LVe, etc. Review previous pages and add a new one each day.
S arah’s initial SLP meeting resulted in a set of specific strategies and a plan for recording the results and progress. Documentation forms were dated and several
SLP meetings were held over the next 8 –12 weeks. The use of the Student
Learning Partnership for this Tier 2 intervention allowed for increasingly targeted and an ultimately effective set of strategies to evolve for Sarah.
Tier 3: At this point, Sarah had made progress; moving from beginning preschool levels on the DIBELS to a beginning Kindergarten level. However, the school year was almost over and while progress had occurred for Sarah, everyone else had been moving ahead as well. To bridge the gap that started at the beginning of the year it would be important to accelerate Sarah’s progress. Also, her struggle seemed inordinate for her level of ability in social interactions and motor skills. There were still some unanswered questions and the need for a more comprehensive understanding of her neurdevelopmental profile was warranted.
Sarah’s teacher began the Attuning a Student process, a data-driven process that leverages multiple perspectives to describe a student’s neurodevelopmental

strengths and weaknesses. Among her many strengths and weaknesses, the data indicated Sarah’s strong Neuromotor strengths (particularly her Fine Motor and Gross Motor strengths), as well as her affinities for dance and movement.
This information supported a simultaneously presented multi-sensory approach.
As a result, the school included her in a special reading class while her teacher adapted and accommodated across all regular classroom subject areas and integrated the simultaneously presented multisensory approach all day. Bypass strategies were implemented when
Sarah’s struggle with phonemic awareness interfered with her progress. The teacher kept ongoing records of strategies tried and notations of dates of her attendance in the special reading class. Further progress monitoring would be measured by the DIBELS as a post-test to assess effectiveness across all three tiers of Response to Intervention for Sarah.
RtI benefits from the use and appropriate application of tools from the Schools
Attuned program. This professional development program equips general educators with the knowledger and tools to understand learning profiles and provides the rationale for choosing intervention strategies. This program also provides support for teachers to alter lesson delivery in ways that support all students.
1) Based on a white paper written by National Assoc of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) and
Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) found at http://www.nasdse.org/documents/RtIAnAdministratorsPerspective1-06.pdf
2 ) Information based on a white paper written by National Assoc of State Directors of Special Education
(NASDSE) and Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) found at http://www.nasdse.org/documents/RtIAnAdministratorsPerspective1-06.pdf
and A Parent’s Guide to
Response –to-Intervention from the National Center for Learning Disabilities found at http://www.ncld.org/images/stories/downloads/parent_center/rti_final.pdf
Karen Grites has been with the Children's Health Council (CHC) in Palo Alto,
Calif., for almost 18 years, working as an educational therapist, site director for the All Kinds of Minds' Schools Attuned program, and as director of Educational
Services. Before coming to CHC, she worked in public school settings for 18 years as a Special Day Class teacher. Grites graduated from Illinois State
University with a bachelor's degree in Special Education - Mental Retardation and a master's degree in Learning Disabilities - Emotionally Disturbed and Social
Maladjustment. She is a member of the Learning Disabilities of America and
California Speech and Hearing Association.