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Tanya Yero Teaching

Where Creativity Meets Practicality

Education, Math

The Importance of Data Tracking During The RTI Process – Part 3

January 28, 2019

Welcome back math teachers to Part 3 of my RTI math series!

In Part 1 we went over general RTI info and procedures. In Part 2 we took an in-depth look at the materials you need for each stage of the math RTI process. Now, in Part 3, we’re going to discuss the all important data tracking.

“I became a teacher because I love meetings with parents and administrators.”

So said no teacher, ever.

I don’t know about you, but I became a teacher to interact with my students. But don’t forget that outside of the little world of your classroom are parents and administrators who rightfully want updates on your students’ progress.


Parents’ Perspective on RTI Data Tracking

It’s especially important to understand the parents’ perspective when you have students doing RTI. A parent may be unsettled to learn that their child needs intervention. Some schools require a written intervention plan. Even if your school doesn’t require it, every teacher should make it a standard part of the process. RTI (or anything else) will be far more successful when the parents are fully on board.

Parents also want to know whether the interventions are working. Fortunately, RTI is, at its core, a data driven process. This is especially true in math, where it’s easy to isolate specific skills. You can show proof of your students’ progress or lack of progress. When you come to RTI meetings be prepared with samples and lots of data. Remember that your recommendations and reports will mean nothing if you can’t back it up!

There are two ways to prepare for an RTI meeting. Option 1 is to panic the day before. Then spend hours going through weeks of assessments and practice pages. Finally, try to pull together relevant, organized, meaningful data.

Option 2 is to consistently and carefully record your children’s data before and after each intervention. The night before the RTI meeting, calmly pull the student’s file and look over the data. Then go out to dinner with your spouse.

Does Option 2 seem to good too be true? Not at all. Let’s talk about types of documentation to have in your math RTI students’ files at all times.


Math RTI Data Tracking

Here are 4 types of math RTI data tracking:

1.) Graphs showing a student’s progress –

We’re math teachers so we know all about graphs! Make it a bar graph, a line graph or a scatter plot. It doesn’t matter as long as your students’ data gets recorded for every assessment, quick check, pre-test, and post-test. You’ll want a different graph for each skill that you work on with your student.

2.) Graphs comparing the student with the class –

This is important information for you, parents and administration. When you administer class-wide assessments, chart your RTI student on a bar graph compared to the class average. As the year progresses, this will clearly indicate if your student is keeping up or falling farther behind.

For both types of graphs, do yourself a favor and record the data in real time after each assessment. You’ll save yourself hours later. When I couldn’t find ready-made templates to document my students’ progress, I created them myself. You can check out my data tracking templates in the FREE SAMPLER of my math intervention packs.

3.) Work samples –

Save your student’s independent work. Make a copy of a practice page or worksheet and file it away. Keep an anonymous copy of another student’s work to have as a “control.”

4.) Test scores –

When you start a file for an RTI student, look at last year’s records. You can pull and copy test scores, including standardized testing. The more data you can provide, the better!

As hard as it may seem to keep up with all the data tracking, it will be much harder to start from scratch before a meeting!


Best Practices, Materials, and Data Tracking – Pulling it All Together for Math RTI

Why do we do RTI? We do it because it works. But it only works if we do it right:

  1. Use the three tier RTI structure to ensure that each student gets the level of intervention he needs.
  2. Administer pre and post-year assessments to your entire class.
  3. The right materials are crucial! Choose practice pages that focus on a single skill.
  4. Research proves that CBM is most effective for progress monitoring. Use frequent mini-assessments and quick checks for each skill.
  5. Track data as you go to create a robust file for each math RTI student.

Lots of research has been done on RTI. Originally, most of it focused on reading interventions. Over time there’s been more research on math RTI, too, giving us proven methods and tested interventions. With the right materials and procedures, you’ll find that math was made for RTI.

Check out our math intervention resources in our TpT store so you can get started with intervention in your classroom!

2nd Grade Intervention Bundle
3rd Grade Intervention Bundle
4th Grade Intervention Bundle
5th Grade Intervention Bundle
by Esther Pransky 
Education, Math

The Materials You Need For the RTI Process – Part 2

January 21, 2019

Welcome to Part 2 of my RTI series. In Part 1 I told you all about RTI: what it is, how it works and why we use it. Now, let’s get down to business. Here’s some hands-on talk about the materials you need to implement RTI in your math classroom.

Maybe you’re one of those uber lucky teachers who works in a school that gives you a full suite of practice materials and assessments for every skill level. If you exist, enjoy your good fortune and know that we’re all insanely jealous of you.

For the rest of us, we often have to come up with math RTI materials on our own. You can read all about my journey to create the materials I needed for my students.

Based on solid research and what I’ve learned the hard way, here are the three main types of materials that you need for math RTI.

Beginning of the Year and End of the Year RTI Math Assessments

This is where it all begins. The starting point of any RTI is an initial screening. This screening gives you a benchmark of the students’ skills as a class. It uncovers students with weak points and gaps in their knowledge. Every child should receive this test. You’d be surprised how even the strongest student may have a gap somewhere that could haunt him later in his math career. Once you have that data, you can begin appropriate interventions.

The partner of the initial screening is the end of year screening. Again, every student should take this assessment. You’ll have a clear picture of your students’ progress over the past year. The information you glean will help your students’  teachers the following year. It will also help you discover the strong and weak points of your own interventions.

How do you choose your pre/post year assessments? You need a test that:

  • Is on grade level
  • Aligns with state standards
  • Clearly defines the skill that each question targets

Without those qualities, the test results are meaningless.

Personally, to have an assessment that met my criteria, I had to create it myself. But I don’t want you to have to reinvent the wheel. Sign up here to get my FREE pre and post-year assessments for grades 3 to 5.

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Math RTI Practice Pages

You completed your beginning of the year assessment. You identified which children need help. You know which skills they lack. Now what? Now come the interventions, of course. You’ll be giving individual students or small groups extra instruction and practice.

For the intervention to work, the practice needs to be:

  • Laser focused on a specific skill
  • Repeated and reinforced many times
  • Possible for the student to complete independently.

This means that for every student and for every skill, a teacher needs multiple practice pages and worksheets.

Once again, to have what I needed for my students I had to create it myself. You can check out a FREE SAMPLER of my math intervention packs in my TpT store

Math RTI Mini-Assessments and Quick Checks

This is the third and most crucial category of RTI materials.

Throughout the year, you need monitor your students’ progress and the efficacy of your interventions. The gold standard in progress monitoring is CBM or curriculum-based measurement. This means monitoring and directly assessing specific academic skills and tracking that progress.

How do you do that? You need mini pre and post-intervention assessments that isolate and highlight specific skills. These quick checks take little time, do them a few times a week.

It’s the only way to know that your interventions are working. It’s the only way to know if your student is ready to move on to the next step. It’s the only way to gather the data you need to communicate with parents and administration. (More on that in Part 3!)

Guess what? To find appropriate checks for my students I had to make them myself. They are all included in my comprehensive Math Intervention Packs.

My assessments do more than highlight specific skills. They also indicate whether you are testing procedural understanding or conceptual understanding. Click here to learn more. Knowing the difference is crucial to providing the targeted assistance your students need.

We’ve taken an in-depth look at RTI materials, but there’s still one piece missing from the picture: data tracking. Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series. We’ll cover the hows and whys of data tracking. You’ll learn proven tips and best practices. You’ll see how to use your data to get top results for your students and collaborate with your administration and parents.

You’ll be prepared for whatever the school year brings.

by Esther Pransky 
Education, Math, Teacher Support

What Every Teacher Needs to Know About RTI in the Math Classroom – Part 1

January 20, 2019

One of the most powerful lessons I learned as a teacher was found in a story about a fly. This fly buzzed into a room one day through an open window. After exploring the room he came back to the window ready to leave. Only now the window was shut tight. Desperate to escape, the fly banged its little body against the window repeatedly. It was no use. Eventually, the fly dropped dead from exhaustion.

If only it had turned around and seen the open door on the other side of the room.

As teachers, we’re all that poor fly sometimes. We have the best intentions to help our students succeed. When a method isn’t working, we’ll try harder, putting in more time and resources to solve the problem. Sometimes, though, we need to try smarter instead of trying harder.

That, in a nutshell, is what RTI is all about. For years teachers saw students struggling, but didn’t have an effective system for evaluating and assisting those students.

RTI is that elusive system. It’s a roadmap for assessing students’ skills and then using the data to choose the proper interventions.

What is RTI?

RTI stands for Response to Intervention. Throughout the process, the students are evaluated based on how they respond to the teacher’s interventions. The term became widespread starting in 2004 when IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act) was reauthorized. The goal was two-fold:

  • Make sure that students weren’t diagnosed with learning disabilities before having a fair chance with appropriate teaching best practices.
  • Identify and address weak students before they fell so far behind that they needed special ed services.

Is RTI effective? According to famous researcher John Hattie, the answer is a resounding yes! Hattie’s research concluded that when teachers implement RTI properly students can advance by 2 to 3 grade levels in just one year!

Three RTI Tiered System

The RTI Model has three tiers of instruction:
1. Tier 1 is the strong, core teaching that every student should receive. In this tier, students are assessed two or three times a year to find weaknesses. Within this tier, a teacher will provide differentiated instruction to groups of students with particular gaps. If that strategy doesn’t work within 8 weeks or so, Tier 2 is introduced.

2. Tier 2 is specialized instruction that students receive in small groups a few times a week. Extra help is provided during enrichment activities or electives. That way, they don’t miss out on core instruction. We assess students in Tier 2 approximately every other week to track their progress. By the end of a grading period, a student should either be ready to go back to Tier 1 or moved into Tier 3.

3. Tier 3 is the highest level of intervention. Students receive data based individualized instruction targeted to their weaknesses. These children may be assessed weekly or even daily to make sure that they’re meeting their goals. If a student doesn’t show improvement the next step is an educational evaluation to facilitate movement into the special education framework.

These tiers should be fluid. Sometimes process needs to give way to common sense or parent/teacher intuition. A parent or teacher can ask for a special ed eval for a student at any time.

The Benefits of RTI

Why have educators jumped on the RTI bandwagon? Because it works!

Teachers who use RTI see multiple benefits:

  • Early intervention means that fewer students enter the special education system. This saves the precious special education resources for the kids who truly need them.
  • Students who need help can still receive their core instruction in the general education classroom.
  • A child can get help before they fall so far behind that they need to attend summer school or repeat a grade.
  • If a child is referred for special education services, there’s already lots of documentation about the child’s needs.

Pages and pages of research are available on all aspects of RTI. (If you like data, statistics and meta-analyses, check out rtinetwork.org.) Teachers can use RTI to improve outcomes in reading, math, behavior and more.

How to Implement RTI for Math Instruction

So far, we’ve been talking about RTI theory and concepts.

Now it’s time to get down in the trenches. In Parts 2 and 3 of this series, we’ll be looking at hands-on, practical tips for math-focused RTI.

The success of RTI is directly tied to the quality of the screenings and assessments you use. That’s why Part 2 will be packed with practical information on the materials you need for the RTI process. Look out for tips on how to find the best teacher-tested assessments to monitor and track your students.

Part 3 will focus on another crucial part of RTI: data tracking. We’ll cover the hows and whys. You’ll learn proven tips and best practices. You’ll see how to use your data to get top results for your students and collaborate with your administration and parents.

Stay tuned for more. Sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Pinterest to make sure you don’t miss out on the rest of this series.

by Tanya Yero 
Education, Math

5 Math Manipulatives Every Teacher Should Be Using

January 5, 2019

Manipulatives are physical teaching tools which engage students not just visually, but also physically. These learning tools include anything from coins to puzzles and blocks. The use of manipulatives is becoming more popular because students are actively involved in the learning process.

 By touching and exploring hands-on materials, children use their senses, which allows more cognitive connections to be made with a concept

Although there are dozens of manipulatives that are used to facilitate students of all ages, the pedagogical basis to use each one of them remains the same. Today’s teachers can use these manipulatives to teach math in such a way that students can easily understand abstract mathematical concepts.

Manipulatives assist students as visual models develop children’s understanding. Students are often lost in a muddle of symbols and numbers. For that reason, they need something concrete to understand difficult and complex math concepts.

Let’s take a look at five effective math manipulatives every teacher should be using.

1.      Base Ten Blocks

Base Ten Blocks are designed in powers of ten to represent ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. These blocks are used to teach place value and number concepts. For instance, students can learn about regrouping in subtraction and addition.

Base ten blocks are also used to explain measurement concepts such as volume and area. The materials feature 1-centimeter unit cubes to signify ones, 10-cm rods to stand for tens, and 10-cm square blocks to represent hundreds.

2.      Fraction Tiles

Fraction tiles allow students to learn fractional equivalences and fractions. Teachers can also use these handy tiles to explain the addition and subtraction of fractions. With the help of proportionally sized tiles, students can easily compare fractional values.

3.      Geared Clocks

These handy clocks are made out of plastic, but feature hidden gears to reflect accurate hour and minute relationships. The minute and hour-hands are color-coded to match the markings on the clock face.

Geared clocks are especially helpful for younger students who have trouble calculating elapsed time and telling time on analog clocks.

4.      Pattern Blocks

Pattern blocks are available as a collection of various shapes in different colors. Common shapes include triangles, squares, trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms. Students work with pattern blocks to explore spatial relations.

Although young students tend to copy one another’s designs, they can still enhance their ability to recognize similarities and differences by duplicating another student’s patterns. Students can also be encouraged to talk about their constructions, which can improve their cognitive function as well as self-confidence.

5.      Geoboards

This is a great aid for teaching geometry. You can make different shapes by stretching rubber bands over pegs. Geo-boards are great manipulatives for teaching perimeter, symmetry and angles. The aid makes difficult concepts easier for younger children to understand. 

Some ways to use geo-boards include: 

  • Show a square with a perimeter of 10 units
  • Make rectangles of different sizes
  • Ask your students to find the largest square or rectangle
  • Make a square with 5 square units
  • Make a hexagon and find out its perimeter

Teachers can find a wide range of geo-boards from coordinate boards to isometric boards.

Bonus Manipulative: Coins

Coins provide a great opportunity to explore many mathematical concepts, including decimals and place value. Since each coin and bill have an assigned value, money plays a crucial role as an effective math manipulative.

Teachers can also use dollar bills and coins to explain other concepts such as addition, multiplication, percentage and division. Here are some ways you can incorporate coins into your teaching methods.

Young learners are excited to use coins. Teachers can ask their students to sort coins into piles. Discuss the methods they chose to sort out their coins, once they are done with this activity. You will observe that every student selects a different method to sort out their coins. Some children sort them by pictures whereas others by numbers.

Some students sort them as silver and copper coins. Explain how children can also sort the coins in size order. This way they are able to identify which is worth the least and why. This is a constructive way to learn the values and names of each coin.

You can ask your younger students to count their spare change to put into rolls. They are eager to help if you give them some kind of financial reward. Younger students create piles of 10 or 5 coins, depending on much they are able to count. Teachers can show the students how they can skip count the piles to reach the number they need for their roll.

Coins and dollar bills are perfect aids for teaching place value to students. When your students are learning regrouping, explain them that you need as few pieces of currency as possible. If you have ten pennies, regroup them into a dime to make a dollar bill and so on.

Coins offer a real-life incentive for learning mathematics to both younger and older kids. Emphasize on the importance of learning decimals, fractions and place value to children so they how important it is to learn money management.

Tips for Teachers

It is important for teachers to get the most out of these manipulatives by following these tips:

  • Do not think of manipulatives but as powerful learning tools to build conceptual understanding of math
  • Manipulatives serve as a bridge between concrete and abstract levels of complicated mathematical topics                                                                                                                                   
  • Do your homework and research about how to use each manipulative

Final Thoughts

Using manipulatives offers a way for children to grasp concepts through hands-on experience. Teachers should learn how to use manipulatives so they can successfully engage students in the classroom. You can design a plethora of activities using concrete manipulatives to explain difficult mathematical concepts. Teachers must deliberately and carefully choose all manipulatives being used and pay special attention to the sequence of introducing these manipulatives to maximize effectiveness. There is enough research evidence to believe that using manipulatives over extended periods of time has a positive effect on students’ learning patterns.

by Tanya Yero 
Education, Math, Teacher Support

3 Professional Development Books Every Math Teacher Should Read

January 5, 2019

If you’ve spent any time on my website already, then you know that I am all about conceptual learning and rigorous thinking in math. Research backs it and teachers see that it works.

If you’re like many teachers, though, these concepts are new. It wasn’t how you learned math. It wasn’t how you trained to teach math.

Yet, the stakes are high. Students who don’t understand math lock themselves out of crucial STEM based careers

So, how do you learn to integrate those practices into your math teaching? As a math teacher, you give your students hands-on guidance, examples and real-world applications to understand new concepts.

Here are three of my favorite math professional development books that give you all that and more:

1) Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students’ Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching By Jo Boaler

Most of us have heard about Carol Dweck and her research into the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Jo Boaler applies this idea to learning and teaching math.

We’ve all had students (often girls!) tell us that they’re not good at math. Is that a fixed mindset, or what?

Boaler explains how it’s possible to move children from fixed mindset math thinking to growth mindset math thinking. This includes the many children who experienced “math trauma” and damaging messages in the past. She uses a two pronged approach of better teaching methods and growth oriented messages so that all children can learn and excel at math.

Boaler presents the science behind the theory. Then she offers practical ideas and suggestions for changing our messages, improving our math activities, and overhauling our assessments.

The original book is now expanded as a series, with books dedicated to all different ages and levels.

2)  Visible Learning for Mathematics By John Hattie, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

A math teacher can get lost in the forest of math resources and activities available today. Do I need to cram in more variety? Which approach is right for which student or age level? How do I have time in my math block for it all?

The premise of Visible Learning is that it’s not about which activity you choose. It’s about when you choose that activity and how you implement it. The authors present three phases of learning:

  • Surface learning phase when students learn new concepts on a procedural level.
  • Deep learning phase when students become proficient in the procedures and deepen their understanding to conceptual learning.
  • Transfer phase when students move on to independent thinking and application of the new concept.

Visible Learning is very hands-on. It includes templates, rubrics, charts, examples, and videos. It takes strategies such as vocabulary, meta-cognition, questions types and many more and shows how to use them for the different stages of the learning cycle.

You don’t have to be a math teacher to know that 300 million is a very, very large number. That’s the number of students involved in the research for this book! Like the previous resource, it’s also expanded into an entire series.

3) Reimagining the Mathematics Classroom  (an NCTM publication) By Cathery Yeh, Mark W. Ellis, Carolee Koehn HurtadoBy Cathery Yeh, Mark W. Ellis, Carolee Koehn Hurtado

Setting up math rotations involves more than cutting up flash cards. Successful math rotations depend on the proper use of physical space. With the wrong set-up, Jimmy and Johnny are wrestling on the floor instead of playing math games.

And that’s just one example. How do you create a classroom space that encourages deep thinking and understanding? How do you set up your classroom routines with both structure and flexibility?

Reimagining the Mathematics Classroom is a great resource for these kinds of questions. It gives advice on rules, routines, assessments and integrating technology. The book even includes extensive advice on the elusive goal of parental involvement.

You’ll get loads of examples, pictures and case studies to learn from. Buying the book also gives you access to supplementary materials on NCTM’s More4U website.

These are my top picks for math professional development books to help you help your students with best practices in teaching math.

Any faves of your own? Let me know!

by Tanya Yero 
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