Response intervention proves effective at elementary level

by Brooke Maxson and Carley Bruner

Around the time we came back to school from summer vacation, there were many new things put into effect in the high school, junior high, and elementary. Incorporated with these new things was the response intervention in the elementary section. For those of you who didn’t read the first article introducing the response intervention, it’s simply a program for the students in grades K-5 which is designed to help the students improve their reading and other reading-related skills. According to a number of teachers, this system has proven to be effective.

The response intervention has been working out well for the 3rd graders. “With the kids that are having trouble we spend 90 extra minutes a week and read naturally. They have required reading that they need to do,” 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Sanford explained. “The RTI happens mostly with me and not the other teachers, but it’s showing that it helps the students really learn a lot. There’s a lot of progress. I had one student double their reading speed since the beginning of the year. I think it’s the individual attention that really motivates the kids to do well. Some of them do enjoy the program and some of them don’t, but I think they enjoy seeing success,” Mrs. Sanford shared. Although the program is going well, it’s still early to say a whole lot. “It’s still fairly early to tell; they’ve only been doing it a couple of weeks, so I still have to do some diddling and I’m having them read out loud to see how fast it’s going to be increasing. I think their attitude is a little better when they’re able to read at their own reading level and there isn’t as much frustration that they feel,” said 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Saunders.

The 4th graders seem to be benefiting from the response intervention also. “They’re supposed to make like an 8-10 wpm gain from the beginning to the middle of the year. I’ve had 27, 31, 25, 30, 57, 37, etc. words. Both my boys and my girls, it doesn’t matter. It helps them,” said a pleased Miss Burkhart. The elementary teachers are working on finding fun ways to keep their students interested in reading. “Every 10 lessons it changes to a new story, so one day we’ll start a new story, but continue to add on to the story, so the kids love it. They’re like ‘Oh what’s going to happen next?’ Right now we’re reading one about treasure and gold. They went on a hunt and they were searching for the treasure. Today they have found the treasure and they’re working on getting it back home without people finding it, so they (the students) love that it just adds on and continues and it’s adventurous,” said Miss Burkhart.

I didn’t interview all of the teachers in grades K-5, but I was told that all of the grades are reacting well to this new program. “Yes, the program is working very well. The nice thing about it is we work on the individual level. What one child may need someone else may not. The teachers are on board and the administration is doing very well. It’s successful,” explained elementary principal Mr. Shaw.

With every good thing there are, of course, some disadvantages. From what I’ve heard, there are very few problems with the response intervention, apart from the extra time it consumes. Despite the fact extra time has to be spent, most agree it’s time well spent. “Besides re-juggling your schedule and re-organizing a little bit, I think it’s working really well. We have a lot of people there to help pull out the kids,” said Mrs. Saunders. Another minor problem is student absentees. “We have kids that are absent for a week and that’s the only problem. You can’t delay a whole class to go back,” said Miss Burkhart. These minor inconveniences will hopefully disappear with time. “We made the big changes a while ago and now we’re just working on running the program. We tweak it as we go,” explained Mr. Shaw.

Now you know that the students in the elementary aren’t being deprived of any individual lessons. This may affect you, high-school students, if you have younger siblings participating in the intervention. The response intervention is just one more step towards making Pittsford schools the place people want to send their children and the place current students want to stay.