Re: wait til your district demands the "math workshop model wrot

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On 5/17/09, :-) wait til your district demands the "math workshop model
wrote:
> On 5/16/09, Kinder Gal wrote:
>> I had a feeling that is what the 3 tiers were about. What you
>> just wrote perfectly described this past year. What a
>> nightmare! In our RF program, we had 90 minutes of direct
>> instruction which began with a warm up activity
>> (rhyme/song/poem) daily oral language, phonemic awareness,
>> phonics, high frequency words (fluency) comprehension, robust
>> vocab and writing. The writing was not a part of the 90 minute
>> program, but squished in somewhere in the day. The 30 minute
>> groupings were also squished in somewhere in the day between
>> speech kids going out (my speech kids were the intensive kids)
>> and other specials. Scheduling this past year was a nightmare
>> and I look for next year to be just as intense as this year
>> was. I feel like I didn't get to my top kids at all. When
>> putting kids into their various learning groups, I seemed to
>> spend more time dealing with "outside issues" and maintaining
>> some semblance of teaching tolerance and coping with others than
>> teaching reading skills.
>>
>> Thanks for your input. Enjoy your summer!
>>
>> On 5/15/09, emma wrote:
>>> On 5/15/09, Kinder Gal wrote:
>>>> Pleae, someone please explain the three Tiers that I've
>>>> been hearing about. How does this fit into DIBELS,
>>>> AIMSweb, and reading skils? Is Tier 1 the same as
>>>> strategic?
>>>
>>>
>>> Tier 1 is your Core Reading Program in which you (at least at
>>> my RF school)spend 90 minutes teaching to the entire class.
>>> 30-40 min. are spent teaching whole group reading skills and
>>> strategies from the Basal or Core program. Another 45 minutes
>>> is spent teaching small groups and having literacy stations
>>> going at the same time you have small group instruction. It
>>> is a real juggling act but is a must at RF schools. Tier 2 is
>>> a 30 minute time set aside to teach your struggling readers
>>> who are classified as Strategic and Intensive. I have an
>>> aide (interventionist) to help me at this time or it would be
>>> almost impossible to get to all the children that I need to
>>> focus on. While Tier 2 is going on, Benchmark readers are
>>> going to literacy stations at their level-- another juggling
>>> act and prep nightmare! Tier 3 refers to the 30 minutes set
>>> aside to help the really struggling, at-risk, readers in an
>>> intense tutoring time by the interventionists. DIBELS is our
>>> reading test we use to see where the children are in their
>>> fluency and what areas we need to focus on to get them
>>> reading well. We have to progress monitor our Benchmark kids
>>> once a month, our Strategic kids every 2 wks., and our
>>> Intensive kids once a week. So much testing and prep but it
>>> has brought our schools reading levels up. The only problem
>>> is that the teachers are exhausted, stressed, and we don't
>>> seem to have as much fun in teaching. I feel there's got to
>>> be a middle ground somehow. I like the Tier system a lot but
>>> I hate the prep and the organizational nightmare of so many
>>> literacy stations. It has gotten rid of a few teachers who
>>> were lazy and incompetent but not all of them. Personally, I
>>> can't wait for the pressure of being an RF school to lighten
>>> up.
 

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