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.

Our school will be starting this in the fall. I was wondering how
do your lesson plans look with so much going on? Is reading
intervention time a plan book all by itself?

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