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Understanding and Implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS)

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support.

One of your most essential, yet complicated, responsibilities is supporting the wide variety of learning needs of all students. Data-driven education practices continue to revolutionize the way we approach learning. Reams of data are only helpful if you can quickly see patterns. You need flexible tools that provide comprehensive, relevant, and organized information.

Students’ needs change frequently. Some students struggle with learning disabilities, some with mental health, and others with physical health. A few students face multiple challenges simultaneously. Sometimes students are doing just fine and then all of a sudden their life spins out of control. A family or personal crisis creates new needs in otherwise stable students.

Deficits are not the only reason students need extra support. Gifted students may need enrichment and acceleration. High achieving students often need encouragement when they experience a setback. Students from wealthy families have educational gaps from travel-related absences.

Supporting special needs can be so overwhelming that some administrators end up neglecting building robust foundational structures and systems. Every student needs a well-designed curriculum, high-quality instruction, and a safe environment. Without those, students end up experiencing academic and socio-emotional stress. Students experiencing stress are more likely to need more intense interventions. It becomes a vicious cycle of reactionary, rather than proactive, education solutions. Monitoring and adjusting for all aspects of student success requires a systematic approach.

To assist educators we’ve created an eBook titled “Understanding and Implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS)” for your reference. Topics include:

  • Understanding the Tiering System
  • Creating an Implementation Plan
  • Software Solutions

Click on the link below to download the eBook:

DOWNLOAD PDF

Implementing the MTSS framework with fidelity takes teams equipped with adequate resources. Without proper analytical tools, you and your team will likely suffer from data overload and give up before seeing the possibilities.

Supporting English Language Learners

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support.

Everyone wants more resources to help English language learners. Harris Education Solutions has two platforms that teachers of ELL students appreciate. Castle Learning and eDoctrina include several tools that support students overcoming language barriers.

Different Tools for Different Levels of English Proficiency

English language learners have widely different instructional needs based on their backgrounds. While not every tool available on the Castle Learning and eDoctrina platforms is appropriate for every ELL student, each feature greatly benefits a particular subset of ELL students.

Plenty of ELL students have lived in the US for years. Many of these students have an advantage over their monolingual peers because multilingualism promotes cognitive development. However, biliteracy takes years to develop, so primary teachers will want to provide consistent support and instruction to promote English proficiency and literacy. Teachers will also want to encourage developing fluency and literacy in the home language whenever possible.

Recently immigrated students frequently need significant, global support. In addition to their academic challenges, they often struggle with culture shock and homesickness. Immigrant students with a solid academic background will transfer their content knowledge and skills, making their transition less challenging than immigrants with minimal formal education.

Whatever the new arrivals’ background, your patience and empathy make adjusting to a new system, culture, and language less stressful. The Castle Learning and eDoctrina platforms decrease the work it takes to meet their academic needs, freeing some time to support their emotional needs.

Helping ELL Students Meet the Standards

The educational goal for ELL students is the same as their native English-speaking peers. Regardless of their background, they should meet the standards in all subjects, including English literacy. To help students succeed, teachers scaffold content lessons and teach English. Students with more limited English proficiency may also need their assignments adapted.

Castle Learning and eDoctrina make scaffolding and adapting easier. The platforms also include resources for teaching English.

Scaffolding means structuring lessons to help ELL students meet the same objectives as their peers. Teachers unfamiliar with scaffolding instruction sometimes make the mistake of choosing activities that require only low-level thinking skills. Watered-down instruction limits English language learners’ access to a quality education.

Adapting assignments and assessments provides a way for some ELL students to show what they know. These adaptations lower the frustration level for immigrant students struggling in a new language.

Follow State Guidelines

Your state provides guidelines for assessing, setting benchmarks, and promoting quality instruction for English language learners. Thirty-five states belong to the WIDA consortium, which provides the comprehensive WIDA 2020 Standards Framework. Notably, California, Arizona, Texas, and New York, which all have high concentrations of English language learners, use independent frameworks. Some districts may supplement the state’s framework.

You will want to use your state’s formal assessment to measure students’ English proficiency for academics. Gauging students’ proficiency levels with informal interactions distorts perceptions. Many students have a higher level of proficiency in social contexts than they do in academic contexts. The distinction misleads many educators into thinking that some students no longer need supports. Sadly, sometimes teachers wonder if a child is “faking” not understanding due to the discrepancy in academic and social language proficiency.

To experience how ELL students often feel reading in a non-native language, you might try reading articles in The New England Journal of Medicine. Notice how much time and concentration it takes to understand text with unfamiliar ideas and words.

Provide Support with Scaffolded Instruction

You could spend years learning to scaffold instruction. Below are a few quick ideas to get you started:

  • Connect prior knowledge to new lessons.
  • Pre-teach and display academic vocabulary.
  • Use graphic organizers and other visual aids to help students organize information.
  • Teach and display sentence frames related to the content. Sentence frames allow students to fill in the blanks with their ideas without coming up with the syntax. For example, a history teacher might teach, “The ______ caused _______ because _______.”
Provide Support by Adapting Assignments

Here are a few ideas on how to adapt assignments and assessments for ELL students needing additional supports. These adaptations are beneficial for students with low to medium levels of English proficiency and literacy.

  • Irregular spelling doesn’t make learning to read English easy. “Enough” and “though” don’t rhyme, but “queue” and “to” do. Students with emerging literacy skills benefit from hearing and reading words simultaneously. Give students audio versions of written text until they read fluently in English.
  • Reading text in a non-native language takes longer to process. Give ELL students enough time to think by individualizing how much time you allow them on assessments.
  • Provide extra practice before tests, so students hear the associated vocabulary more.
  • Allow newly arrived students with minimal English skills to use a dictionary or translation tool to help them understand.
Use eDoctrina and Castle Learning to Teach English, Scaffold Instruction, and Adapt Assignments

eDoctrina and Castle Learning reduce the workload of supporting ELL students. Choose the appropriate features to make your life easier and meet the needs of your ELL students. All features are available on both platforms unless otherwise noted.

  • Share your best assignments with other ESL teachers with a few clicks. Invite them to share their best assignments with you too. Collaborating to create effective ESL resources will help students improve their English proficiency.
  • Supplement your ELA program with a wealth of pre-made English language arts resources.
  • Add explanations to assignments that help ELL students access the material.
  • Upload graphic organizers, videos, and pictures to any assignment to help students visualize ideas.
  • Customize the assessment window for students who would benefit from extra time.
  • Provide assessments in Spanish for newly arrived Spanish-speaking students. Castle Learning has assessments available in Spanish to help you check a student’s understanding of various subjects and place them in the correct classes. You can print these in Spanish or convert them online. Available Spanish translations include NYS Regents exams in Algebra I, Global History and Geography, US History, Earth Science, and Living Environment.  Castle Learning also offers K-12 reading sets that are translated into Spanish.
  • Encourage continued literacy in French or Spanish if that is their home language with Castle Learning.
  • Allow students to use the Google Translate feature to translate a question or passage into their native language. Google Translate is far from perfect, but it is often sufficient for students to understand the content and not spend time translating.
  • Help students overcome some of the obstacles of English spelling oddities by allowing them to use the text-to-speech feature.
  • Preview vocabulary with Castle Learning. Later, when students come across the word in the lesson context, they will better understand what it means and how to use it. Castle Learning has a vast bank of vocabulary questions that you can search by keyword, level, and subject. You can also quickly make digital vocabulary flashcards.
  • Assign Castle Learning’s self-study to direct students to practice in the subjects they need help. The self-study feature provides unlimited practice and instant feedback with vocabulary and language structures.
  • Include audio, video, or text to any assignment using eDoctrina. Students can also answer with audio, so they get practice speaking.
One Lesson at a Time

When you first start teaching ELL students, helping them achieve grade level may feel daunting. However, helping them flourish is one of the most rewarding parts of any teacher’s career. At Harris Education Solutions, we make tools to help you do your best work.

The Real Value of an Early Warning System is Saving Students (and has a Bonus of Saving Time and Money)

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support.

Life is full of early warning systems alerting us of the need to intervene to avert major problems. A child comes to you crying because she fell off her bike, scraping herself. You clean her abrasions, knowing that dirty wounds get infected. Her crying was an early indicator. Your car temperature gauge lets you know when to pull over and add coolant before destroying the engine. By intervening in each situation, you save time and money. More importantly, you also save the child from unnecessary pain. 

Students also signal when they need an intervention. Unfortunately, students’ cries for help often get lost in the noise of a busy school. You oversee many students’ education. Sometimes students’ clues that they struggle are subtle, and you don’t want to risk missing the signs of struggle with even one student.  

With an Early Warning System (EWS), educators notice early at-risk indicators, provide targeted support, and students’ flourish. 

Without an EWS, teachers and administrators do not have the essential tools to support students effectively. They end up spending too much time accumulating and interpreting a dizzying array of data. Teachers who are busy collecting and aggregating data have less time to plan lessons with appropriate scaffolds. They can also feel demoralized because aggregating data typically isn’t one of their core skills. Teachers prefer using an EWS to identify at-risk students over the inefficient  folder system because their training was in planning and delivering targeted instruction 

Likewise, administrators prefer to provide leadership and resources rather than chase data. Educators hunting for data lose time, but hopefully, they see a student’s decline before they get to a desperate place.  

The inefficient use of educator time is not the worst part of not having an EWS. Students suffer when overworked educators miss early indicators of them disengaging. Missing early indicators is likely because educators have a lot to manage. The longer students languish without sufficient students support, the further down the path of disengagement they go. Students who “slip through the cracks” are at risk of dropping out of school. Hopefully, the school notices and provides intense interventions before the students give up because dropping out of school decreases a person’s opportunity in the job market. Delaying these interventions invariably cost more than early interventions. Even worse, students suffer emotional pain during the years they are struggling. 

Early Risk Indicators 

Research shows that students who are starting to disengage show academic struggles, behavioral problems, or poor attendance. Sometimes students have early indicators in all three areas. Tracking data in these three categories has proven to be effective at helping educators provide appropriate early interventions. Some schools also look at factors that affect students globally, such as their health and home environment. You might also consider tracking remote versus in-school learning to evaluate the effect the pandemic had on students. Problems not corrected in elementary school usually become more severe as students progress into middle school and high school.  

In elementary school, look out for the following indicators. 

Academic: 

  • Low scores on achievement tests
  • Significant problems decoding in 3rd grade and beyond. 
  • Poor reading comprehension skills 
  • Below grade level in math 

Attendance: 

  • Chronic absenteeism or tardiness
  • An extended absence 

Behavioral: 

  • Multiple behavioral referrals 
  • Suspensions 
  • Not getting along with peers 

Health and Environmental: 

  • Unstable home life such as loss of parent, homelessness, abuse, and food insecurity  
  • Mental or physical health issues 

In middle school and high school, continue to look for the same indicators as elementary school and add the following indicators: 

  • Below a C in math or English
  • GPA below 2.0
  • Not earning enough credits to graduate
  • Getting in fights
  • Getting in trouble with the law
  • Being the victim or perpetrator of cyber-bullying
  • Becoming parents
  • Substance abuse 

How an EWS works with MTSS 

The edInsight EWS automatically tracks key indicators, aggregates data points, and shows the results graphically. Having it done automatically is especially critical for educators in medium to large schools.  

Each indicator comes from a body of evidence. For example, low reading comprehension would show up in the data as assessment scores, poor grades, and teacher observations.  

Some data points carry more weight than others. For example, unexcused absences can be more heavily weighted than excused tardiness. You can use the default settings for each indicator’s weight or customize them to meet your needs.  

The EWS monitors all the input and creates indicator report cards for each student, ranking them in order of need. These reports guide your MTSS interventions. Students with a lower risk indicator score are your Tier 1 students and will show up as green. Students needing Tier 2 support are highlighted in yellow, and students needing Tier 3 support in red. You choose the cutoff criteria for each tier based on your student population. 

Helping students who are starting to slide from Tier 1 to Tier 2 is as important as seeing those who are slipping from Tier 2 to Tier 3. Their beginning struggles might go undetected in schools without edInsight’s EWS. The edInsight dashboard shows you in real-time who needs what type of help so you can immediately implement interventions. With proactive support, you get them back on track. It feels great to see students’ progress and return to Tier 1. Providing early interventions spares resources and heartache.  

Hallmarks of an Effective EWS 

According to On Track for Success, an effective EWS, such as edInsight, has multiple layers and capabilities. Any decent EWS has the following qualities:. 

  • The dashboard shows students in the different tiers for academics, behavior, attendance, and holistically. 
  • The reports are easy to generate and read. 
  • It integrates with your other systems. 
  • The reports are customizable to align with your MTSS criteria. 
  • It encourages collaboration.
  • It includes progress monitoring.
  • It has built-in workflows, alerts, and process management. 

The edInsight Advantage 

The edInsight EWS fulfills all the criteria as an effective EWS and has some fantastic perks. You can add notes about a specific student, and the dashboard alerts all the educators associated with that student. Teachers like this feature when they have a breakthrough with a student because they can communicate and collaborate about strategies and next steps. 

The EWS works well with other solutions in the edInsight Student Performance Suite. By bringing all your data into one place, you see a complete view of your students. You know the instruction students received with the Curriculum & Lesson Planner Module. Using that knowledge, you can assign interventions using the RTI/MTSS Module. You may also want to build a group and analyze data points in the Data Management Module. 

In addition to using default criteria, we understand each schools’ needs are unique. The edInsight EWS allows you to customize the criteria you track. Customization quickly identifies at-risk students using data points that are especially important in your district. For academic indicators, you can use grades, formative testing benchmark assessments, and standardized assessments to identify and close learning gaps. Use the Assessment Builder Module to build special assessments  for groups at risk. You can customize criteria by grade-level too, so you only see the information you need.  

Administrators like that edInsight tracks district-specific intervention plans and RTI/MTSS Meetings. It improves progress monitoring which helps administrators evaluate the value of various interventions. 

Request a demo of the Student Performance Suite to see how the EWS will save your district time and money and improve students’ lives. 

Help Students Returning to the Classroom Navigate their Emotions

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support.

Ms. Conner guarded the door, which was ajar, so seven-year-old Mark would feel safe changing his rain-soaked clothes.  As Ms. Conner discretely ensured Mark’s privacy, she pondered his destructive tendencies and realized that they were his way of expressing and releasing emotional turmoil. Now his stress and grief were manifesting as a fear of being alone, even for a few minutes. Admitting this vulnerability and asking for help was out of character for Mark. Despite his usual bravado, this little boy needed emotional support as much, if not more, than other students did. Mark is hardly alone in having a big emotion overwhelm his ability to regulate behavior.   

No child escaped repercussions from the pandemic. Some students suffered catastrophic losses. Many students dramatically changed their lifestyle. Every student had to adapt to differences in the community and at school. New thoughts and conversations about safety permeate every aspect of daily life.  

Students returning to the classroom after remote learning or a holiday break will have varying responses.  Returning to school can be an emotional experience, even in regular times. In addition to all the typical emotions, students returning in 2021 may also be suffering grief, depression, fear, disappointment, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, and more.  

No one expects you to act as a counselor. However, your daily interactions provide an opportunity to help students develop socio-emotional skills. The blog Supporting Students Experiencing Trauma During the Covid-19 Pandemic discusses the importance of classroom routines and ensuring students feel a sense of control in their lives. 

Teaching Empathy and Emotional Intelligence 

As discussed in Three Steps to Emotionally Support Students to Promote Academic Success, feeling emotionally safe in the classroom improves learning. As the teacher, you set the tone. However, students affect the emotional climate as well.     

A student who has not experienced stress from the pandemic at home may start feeling it in the classroom. Students likely echo their family’s response to the pandemic, which may be quite varied among different students.  

This convergence of perspectives and feelings offers an opening to explore empathy and emotional intelligence. Without such instruction, many students will be oblivious to the feelings of their classmates.   

Consider the differences between Marie and Mason. Marie had regular social interactions outside of school during the pandemic, including attending group events. Mason stayed home except for a few brief outings in which he always wore a mask and stayed six feet apart from others. At recess, Marie repeatedly invites Mason to play, and Mason continually declines. Marie may inadvertently be pressuring her friend to engage in a way that makes him uncomfortable, and Mason may be unwittingly hurting Marie’s feelings by rejecting her invitations.   

Open conversations about what feels safe to each student help mitigate these types of situations. Reading and discussing literature is another great way to explore different emotional responses. Teaching children to respect the feelings and differences of other perspectives not only improves class culture. Harvard Business School considers Emotional Intelligence essential to a person’s professional success.   

Happy, Sad, Excited, and Nervous – All at Once 

Human emotions are rarely orderly and logical. Students often experience cognitive dissonance because they have conflicting feelings about the same situation. Let students know that an onslaught of coexisting mixed emotions is normal. Mason’s anxiety about the virus does not negate his excitement to see his friends.   

Helping students identify each feeling and its source helps them make sense of how they feel. According to the experts in emotional intelligence at 6seconds.org, naming and admitting fear and anxiety helps people face them. Emotional check-ins also give students practice identifying their emotions and aid in forming a trusting relationship.  

Like learning any skill, learning to identify and cope with tricky emotions requires seeing someone doing it. Some of your students may lack a model of emotional health in their home environment. You could act as the model or invite a guest speaker to address the class. Talking about a time you experienced conflicting emotions normalizes how they feel. The Disney movie Inside Out does a great job showing the purpose of negative emotions and could be used as a light-hearted entry point to the discussion.  

Of course, keep your discussions and resources appropriate for the students’ developmental level and the classroom. As you teach students to identify authentic emotions, including healthy coping strategies will help your students through tough times. These conversations invite your students to increase their awareness and manage their feelings. 

Providing Comfort and Calm 

Even in the calmest, most nurturing classroom environment, students may have emotional breakdowns.  Emotional breakdowns look different in different individuals because emotional expression varies by culture, gender identity, developmental level, personality, and temperament. Whereas Mark often destroyed property, Marie would cry, and Jordan would withdraw. If possible, try these strategies to help the student in crisis.  

Help calm students so they can think clearly. Human touch is healing, and your first instinct may be to hug the child. Now, a simple embrace may not be allowed or safe. Dr. Robert D Keder suggests students hug themselves. The pressure and skin-to-skin contact of a self-hug mimics the feeling of a real hug. The self-hug will release oxytocin to aid in calming the child. He also provides some mindfulness exercises such as deep breathing.    

Once the student relaxes enough to think and talk, ask them what caused the intense emotions. As you listen, help the child find places they can take control of the situation. Unfortunately, there are circumstances where the only thing they have the power to control is their thoughts. Luckily, improving the positivity of one’s thoughts cultivates positive emotional responses.   

In the revolutionary work, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” it says,  

Whether they’re aware of it or not, all people keep a running account of what’s happening to them, what it means, and what they should do. In other words, our minds are constantly monitoring and interpreting. That’s just how we stay on track. But sometimes the interpretation process goes awry. Some people put more extreme interpretations on things that happen-and then react with exaggerated feelings of anxiety, digression, or anger. Or superiority. (p. 215) Carol S. Dweck 

For example, a child who incorrectly answers a question could think, “I am dumb.” or “I need to study this more.” The first thought demonstrates a fixed mindset, whereas the second thought shows a growth mindset. The growth mindset fosters an improved emotional response because it puts the thinker in control of the situation. Dr. Dweck emphasizes the critical role teachers play in helping students develop a growth mindset. There are plenty of growth mindset resources available for the teachers.  

Sometimes an event becomes catastrophized in the child’s mind. For example, a child may touch another child who is fearful of germs. While the event may seem small to an onlooker, the scared student may jump to the conclusion that they now have a fatal infection. The thought induces a panic attack.   

Acknowledge the student’s authentic emotion. The way a student perceives the situation may, or may not, have its basis from accurate information. Either way, the feelings triggered are genuine.  After verbally acknowledging their feelings, you may help the child reframe their negative thoughts and perceptions.  

Enlist Help 

A much as you care for your students, you do not have to shoulder all of their emotional needs yourself. Send families these parent resources  from National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Ask a mental health professional to teach some lessons on coping strategies. Refer children who need it to the next level of support.   

Being back in the classroom may present some emotional challenges for you too. Remember to take time to address your own emotional health needs. In the next blog, we will discuss how administrators can support the emotional needs of teachers and each other. At Harris Education Solutions, our mission is to help schools improve and succeed, thereby helping students succeed.  

Three Steps to Emotionally Support Students to Promote Academic Success

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support, Uncategorized.

The Relationship of Emotions and Academics

“Jesse” got in a car accident on the way to a job interview. He was not physically hurt, but he felt emotionally shaken. Upon arrival, Jesse snapped at the secretary. During the interview, he struggled to retrieve words. These behaviors were uncharacteristic for him and yet, consistent with the effects of emotional trauma and stress. Not surprisingly, he did not land the job.

Jesse’s experience illustrates the relationship between emotions and cognitive functions. You probably see evidence of that relationship in your classroom. A plethora of research confirms that emotional factors influence students’ ability to concentrate, communicate, regulate emotions, and form relationships.

There is a common saying among educators, “Maslow before Bloom.” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs describes what motivates people. Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning describes levels of thinking. The saying “Maslow’s before Bloom’s” means that students must have their physical and emotional needs met before teachers should expect substantial academic progress.

Three Pillars of Supporting your Students’  Emotional Needs

You probably have children in your classes now struggling with emotional trauma and chronic stress. Chronic stress is ongoing, such as prolonged food insecurity. Trauma refers to events, such as the death of a loved one. Some traumas, such as abuse, occur repeatedly.

If a child is acting out and showing a lack of self-regulation, their need for emotional support is evident. However, not every child who needs emotional support shows it externally. The quiet child following the rules may be silently struggling, too, hoping someone will notice. Addressing and supporting your students’ emotional needs requires intentional effort.

Like most teachers, you would fix all the issues in your students’ lives if you could. While you may not own a cape or magic wand, three actions will make you a superhero in the lives of many children.

  1. Build a trusting relationship with all children.
  2. Teach emotional awareness and self-care skills.
  3. Identify children who need more support than you can provide and refer them to qualified specialists.
Building a Trusting Relationship

Your students will probably not tell you about their fears and insecurities on the first day. They must feel that you are a trustworthy person before they allow their vulnerabilities to show. You will earn students’ trust by creating a safe space for them. Give students control of how they share, be available to listen (or read) without judgment, and follow up on what they share.

Tell your students from the beginning that if they tell you that someone is in danger, you must report it. You do not want to breach their trust if that situation occurs.

Students will test your trustworthiness and open up slowly. The kid who starts talking about bickering with their sibling may be working up the courage to confide a more intense problem. That progression is why active listening is vital even when a particular struggle seems trivial.

Remember to follow up on celebrations too! A simple, “Congratulations on scoring a goal!” goes a long way towards your students seeing that you value them as people beyond the classroom walls.

Checking in with your students also contributes toward building a trusting relationship. Daily emotional check-ins give students practice with self-awareness. They also provide opportunities for students to alert you when significant changes occur in their lives.

Daily check-ins do not need to take up much class time. Depending on your learning model, students can do their emotional check-ins using a Google form or paper form. Either way, the students should be able to control who sees it. Forcing them to share their stories and emotions with you or other students will erode trust.

The actual check-in could be as simple as choosing the appropriate emoji to represent their current emotional state. It could be as involved as filling out a quick questionnaire. The questionnaire might ask questions such as, “How are you today?” “What is making you feel that way?” “Do you want to talk more about this?”

In addition to daily check-ins, you may want to incorporate regular in-depth check-ins. These could take the form of drawing, journal writing, and individual conversations. The longer check-ins give students more time to reflect on their feelings.

Teaching Self-Awareness and Self-Care

Your students will likely start by only sharing basic emotions, such as mad, sad, and happy, because they may only be aware of the surface level of emotions. As you build rapport and students become more self-aware, they will communicate a broader range of emotions.

There are many great programs for helping students build emotional awareness. They start by teaching students to identify their feelings. The Zones of Regulation® by Leah Kuypers is a popular program for younger children because it correlates emotion with learning readiness. Other programs use Plutchik’s emotion wheel to recognize opposing emotions, emotional intensities, and emotional combinations.

Students must go beyond identifying emotions to transition from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. They must feel in control of their lives and feelings.

Talk about ways to self-regulate when their emotions overwhelm them. Research shows that engaging in mindfulness practices is key to self-regulation. There are great apps, books, and games to help teach mindfulness strategies. The strategies are often as simple as counting to ten, breathing deeply, and positive self-talk. Remind them that self-care, such as getting sufficient sleep, exercise, and human contact, are vital ingredients to self-regulation too. Edutopia’s list of mindfulness resources for distance learning offers some helpful suggestions.

Identifying and Referring Children 

Some of your students need more than what a listening, caring teacher can provide. They will require action, and the best way you can be a superhero is by connecting those students with the appropriate person. As a mandatory reporter, you must contact child protective services if you hear of abuse. Let professional investigators do the rest.

Teach your students about various resources available to them. Many school communities have hotlines, counselors, and other professionals that students can reach out to and ask for help. Provide a list of community programs to help with food, health, and clothing. Depending on the population you serve, you may want to alert them about which programs require proof of residency.

Academic Rewards are only the Beginning

Students who feel unsafe, unloved, and unworthy often struggle to remember information, understand concepts, apply new skills, or create things. You might say that the “lizard” part of the brain (amygdala) must be calm before the “wizard” brain (frontal cortex) functions optimally. The lizard part of the brain is the part that operates flight or fight responses, while the wizard part drives decision-making, self-control, and creativity.

Of course, emotionally supporting your students helps them in areas beyond learning. Young people need to learn how to navigate complex social relationships too. A teacher that communicates, “I hear you.” “I see you.” “I care about you.” will affect students profoundly and positively. That message has a rippling effect throughout the community.

Data Tools to Implement MTSS and RTI with Fidelity

Written by HES Marketing on . Posted in MTSS & Student Support.

The Daunting Task for Administrators

One of your most essential, yet complicated, responsibilities is supporting the wide variety of learning needs of all students. Data-driven education practices continue to revolutionize the way we approach learning. Reams of data are only helpful if you can quickly see patterns. You need flexible tools that provide comprehensive, relevant, and organized information.

Students’ needs change frequently. Some students struggle with learning disabilities, some with mental health, and others with physical health. A few students face multiple challenges simultaneously. Sometimes students are doing just fine and then, “bam!” their life spins out of control. A family or personal crisis creates new needs in otherwise stable students.

Deficits are not the only reason students need extra support. Gifted students may need enrichment and acceleration. High achieving students often need encouragement when they experience a setback. Students from wealthy families have educational gaps from travel-related absences.

Supporting special needs can be so overwhelming that some administrators end up neglecting building robust foundational structures and systems. Every student needs a well-designed curriculum, high-quality instruction, and a safe environment. Without those, students end up experiencing academic and socio-emotional stress. Students experiencing stress are more likely to need more intense interventions. It becomes a vicious cycle of reactionary, rather than proactive, education solutions. Monitoring and adjusting for all aspects of student success requires a systematic approach.

The Data-Driven Three Tiered Solution

Most states use the Multi-Tiered System of Support framework, or MTSS, for supporting student needs. MTSS is the combination of Response to Intervention, RTI, and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support, PBIS. RTI + PBIS = MTSS.

RTI is the academic component, and PBIS is the behavioral and socio-emotional component. Each tier of MTSS incorporates both RTI and PBIS.

The popularity of the MTSS framework is a direct result of its benefits. Targeted, data-driven instruction increases learning. Consistently gathering data enables educators to monitor students and programs. Monitoring provides information so that you, and everyone on the educational team, offer the right interventions to the right population at the right time. Identifying students with the most intense needs and allocating resources to help them improves student outcomes.

Collecting and analyzing data is the center of identifying needs and providing appropriate interventions.

Educators then use the data to create action plans that include research-backed interventions. For example, “a cute activity from Pinterest” would not fit within the MTSS framework, unless there is evidence showing its effectiveness for the specific population.

Tier One: 

This level offers universal support for every student. A tier one support system might include an automatic notification about absences and follow-up protocol.

Analyzing tier one interventions uses data to answer questions about the strengths and weaknesses of district-wide and school-wide programs and procedures.

These questions might include:

  • Do most of our students consistently come to school ready to learn? If not, why not?
  • What do our classroom teachers do well, and where do they need to grow? Does our professional development align with teacher needs?
  • What gaps do we have in our resources, and how can we fill them?
  • What is our student culture like, and how can we improve it?

Using data to answer those types of questions will help you meet the needs of most students. However, some students will need additional interventions.

Tier Two: 

This level includes additional interventions that 10-25% of students need to succeed. An example of a tier two intervention would be a set of questions that the principal uses when calling home after three unexcused absences or ten excused absences.

The more problems you solve at tier two, the less severe tier three issues will be. Analyzing tier two interventions uses data to drill down into the details of various sub-groups. These questions might include:

  • How do we help the 20% of our children who skip breakfast and do not concentrate well?
  • What extra support would help the 25% of third graders not meeting benchmark standards for reading comprehension?
  • What resources and training do our special education staff need this year?
  • Do advanced readers have access to appropriate books?
  • Why do the same students repeatedly show up in the office for discipline? Are they missing a behavioral support system that we can put in place?

Tier Three:

Tier three interventions are for children experiencing unusually challenging situations. Typically, fewer than 10% of students need tier three interventions. These supports often include individualized interventions that often require the help of a specialist. An example of a tier three intervention would be a home-based tutor for a child with significant health challenges.

Analyzing tier three interventions uses data to answer questions about specific individuals and small groups. These questions might include:

  • The Jackson family continues to have a high rate of absenteeism. Should we enlist the help of social services?
  • Did counseling reduce the number of fights between Sierra and Morgan? If not, what is our next step?
  • Why are Johnny’s grades dropping significantly this semester? How can we help him get back on track?
  • What additional support does Sam, the sixth-grader reading at a first-grade level, and Frankie, the first-grader reading at a sixth-grade level, need?

You can see how useful data collection and organization help create action plans in each tier.

Tools to Effectively Implement MTSS

Implementing the MTSS framework with fidelity takes teams equipped with adequate resources. Without proper analytical tools, you and your team will likely suffer from data overload and give up before seeing the possibilities.

Harris Education Solutions has an ecosystem of software to identify needs, organize data, support analysis, and create targeted action plans.

Castle Learning supplies tier one and tier two RTI support. It makes it quick and easy for teachers to align their content and instruction with assessment data. Teachers have the tools they need to pivot instruction almost immediately after assessments.

eDoctrina provides assessment tools and data aggregation to support RTI at tier one and tier two. District-level administrators use it to identify students and teachers who may need more academic support.

eWalk is a powerful and flexible data-gathering tool useful on large and small-scale improvements. Administrators mainly use it to improve the data collected during walkthroughs. With eWalk’s customizable templates, educators at all levels are discovering that they can use it to help solve various challenges.

edInsight helps schools collect multiple measures and then display them in a color-coded dashboard. Anyone can quickly see who needs tier two or three support. You can then use the software to track interventions and create appropriate individualized education plans (IEPs). It helps you monitor progress and report on intervention effectiveness.  Read their free RTI guide.

If you want to use MTSS, but feel lost among the numbers, we can help. Click on the links to our websites above and request a free demo, or request to be contacted.