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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