MTSS (RTI) Monday

It's been a minute since I've posted about MTSS (formerly RTI) Monday because of the holiday break. I hope you all had a wonderful one!  We went back to school last Wednesday so my students have started a new round of activities for MTSS (Multi-Tier System of Supports).

Tonight I've got a few pictures that I hope will convey how I set up my MTSS activities.  Essentially, I run them as tiered centers.  For almost all activities in my classroom I prefer to have mixed skill levels working together.  MTSS is a great opportunity for my students to work on activities with other students who are operating on similar skill levels.

This is the chart I use to communicate with students what activities they will be working on for the day/week (students names are blurred).  I like to use index cards because I try to keep the groups very fluid and every week or two I'm moving someone to a different group to work on a different skill.  The stars match the bucket they will be using.  I could make it cuter but what-ev!

This is an example of an activity card I use to help them understand what they will be doing.

Below the MTSS chart is this book shelf where the tiered activities are stored.  In the folders there are fluency lists, sight word songs, and books for early finishers to read.

In my first MTSS Monday post I explained that I have 3 groups at this time.  A Tier 2 (REMEDIATION) group, an (ON TARGET) Tier 1 group, and another Tier 1 (ENRICHMENT) group for students working above grade level.  For some reason it's easier for me to think of them as a remediation, on target, and enrichment group instead of which tier they are working on.

I've also got a few pictures and a GREAT resource to share with you tonight that I like to use with my enrichment group.

The first 2 pictures are of the enrichment activity that my students are currently working on.  They chose a story, read it, then draw the characters, setting, problem, and solution.  This isn't a very high order activity but I was trying to ease them into their independent work after two and a half weeks off.  I try to be nice....sometimes :).

I usually prepare a lot of activities at once, paper clip them and then store them in ziplock bags with all of my other activities.

Here are a few activities I have prepared.  I'm looking forward to breaking out the book report and forming questions activities with them over the next month or so!

I got all of these wonderful activities from The Teacher Wife's Reading Comprehension pack!  It's A-MAZING!  There are several games and she provides opportunities for students to predict, summarize, compare, write about the plot and other story elements.  Check it out!

MTSS Monday

I've been wanting to start blogging about what I'm doing during MTSS (Multi-Tier Systems of Support) formerly RTI (Response to Intervention) formerly tutoring that teachers did on their own before someone felt the need to dictate exactly what they need to do and how they need to do it...WHAT?

Did I digress?

I know myself well enough not to commit to doing this every Monday but hopefully I will be able to share what I'm doing in MTSS at least once a month.

I actually enjoy MTSS.  We do it every morning for 30 minutes, school-wide.  In the past we have had to split every single student in all 8 classes on our grade level.  Splitting up 135 students right after you get them settled into the school day was, as I'm sure you can imagine, pure chaos, and not very effective.  Now we are able to do it in our classrooms with our own students.

Instead of collaborating over which student needs to move up or down a tier and how each of our students are doing in all 7 of the other classes they are spread amongst we actually get to share activities and how each of us are addressing specific needs.

We hold our grade level meetings and PLC's in different classrooms each time so we can see each others system for running MTSS (as well as literacy and math centers).  I don't know about you but sometimes I can get more out of visiting another teachers classroom than I can an entire Professional Development workshop.

We decided to have a general form of data tracking so that when an administrator comes in our room they will see the same thing.  I'm going to share it here for free.  I've already changed it 3 times and I've got a couple of new elements I'm thinking about adding so when I update it I will repost it in another MTSS Monday post.

You can grab these tracking forms here for FREE!

At this time I don't have any Tier 3 students.  I do have 4 Tier 2 students and the other 16 are Tier 1.  I split Tier 1 up into a medium and high group.

The students in the high group are working on enrichment and high order thinking activities.  My medium students are provided extra practice with skills and concepts we are working on in class (they are the biggest group, of course).

The Tier 1 recording sheet is pretty basic, I just list the activity they are doing, Readers Theatre, for example, the students names, materials they need and there is a place for notes.

Finally the Tier 2 students are given activities for remediation in areas that I have identified a deficiency.  For example, we spent about 3 weeks working on Kindergarten high frequency word identification.

In the Intervention Focus I wrote KG HFW.  I listed their names with their baseline scores 12/20 (meaning they were able to identify 12 out of 20.  Each week, after retesting, I recorded their new scores 15/20 then 19/20.  Once students show good growth or achieve the standard I move onto another area of focus.

I like this system because I can also throw in a couple of Tier 1 (medium) kids who need a little extra practice as we remediate different skills.

I have our MTSS time set up like centers so I am free to work one on one with students or in small groups.  I try to meet with each group once a week and my Tier 2 students one on one and in a small group once a week during our MTSS time.  I will post more about all of that another time.

*Please note-I created the MTSS tracking forms because they are useful to me and my colleagues.  If you have any suggestions I'm open to hearing them.  I'm considering separating Tier 2 and Tier 3 and adding a chart to Tier 3 with Time, Program and Frequency.

For more information about MTSS check out these Educator Resources!

M is for cat, tomorrow's meat/farm field trip fun!

On October 25th we departed for our annual first grade field trip to Conner's A-maizing Acres!  Check out this year's corn maze!

Here are a few pic's of us getting lost in it!

The bus ride is just 60 short minutes of pure insanity that may or may not have driven me to drink bottle(s) of wine after work.

When we arrived Mr. Conner talked to us about the importance of a farming in America.  The first place we visited was the cow train!

Next we checked out the pedal carts and slide!

 After that we made our way over to the hayless ride and met up with some hungry cows!

Check out that tongue!

We saw this billy goat and everybody kept yelling "Look, there's the 3 billy goats gruff!  Do you see his mustache?!"  There was only one goat and apparently I need to introduce them to Duck Dynasty so they learn the difference between a mustache and a beard :)

Mustache...haha :)

Finally here are a few pictures of them playing on the hay bales!

Before I go I want to update you with a few funny Tomorrow's Alphabet pages that my students created this year!  During MTSS (tutoring) my high performing students have been making their own Tomorrow's Alphabet books.  Check out my original post about this here!  They have been finishing them up over the last week or so and these are the cutest/most twisted pages I've ever seen!

N is for baby tomorrow's Natalie!  Adorable!

M is for cat tomorrow's meat!  WHAT!!!!

Tomorrow's Alphabet

B is for wood, tomorrow's bridge!

Q is for princess, tomorrow's queen!

Have you ever read Tomorrow's Alphabet by George Shannon?

Click here to check it out on Amazon!

Do you struggle with enrichment idea's for your highly performing students?

My "go to" enrichment is usually reader's theatre but that gets stale and this book is a great break from all those plays.

Student books look like this.

After reading the book with your students you can discuss idea's for different letters.  I tell mine to start by writing the alphabet into the first space on each page.  Then to go back and think of idea's for each letter.   Here are a few books we've started this year:

At the top you can see Imani has "A is for egg, tomorrow's alligator!"

"P is for egg, tomorrow's penguin!"

"D is for puppy, tomorrow's dog!"

I love using this high order enrichment activity with my high performing students during MTSS (formerly RTI, formerly 30 minutes of the day where I got to teach an actual subject, formerly a gigantic headache...I lie, it still is a headache).  Pick it up for FREE from my TpT store today and let me know what you think!

Click here to get this activity from my TpT store!

Finally, I wanted to share a new video with you for Fun Friday.  One of my favorite teacher friends found this one after she did the Dino Stomp one day.  We're thinking Flash Mob?!  Enjoy the Sid Shuffle with your class this week!