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VANDEVORST EBI M1W1 APP

Dominique Vandevorst
Marygrove College
Application

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Dear

As you know I am studying at Marygrove College for the MAT. Currently I am taking the
evidence-based interventions module which introduces, explains and shows how to use
response to intervention (RTI) in schools. This is a fairly new approach to make sure no child
is left behind in education and that all students who are struggling receive the specific help
they need. I would like to explain a little more about RTI to you through this letter as I think it
would be a very effective process for our school to adopt and use.

Response to intervention is the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions

that match the students specific needs and using students learning rate over time and level
of performance to make important decisions with regards to a students progress. There are
two different aspects to RTI: academic RTI and behavioral RTI. The three tiered RTI process
begins with screening of all students two to three times throughout a school year to see
which students need help and to provide the groundwork for the RTI process. RTI provides a
way to help all students achieve learning outcomes and gives guidelines as to what to do
when students do not progress in their learning. This model of intervention moves
responsibility for helping students to be successful from one teacher to the entire staff at a
school. According to research each school should have a RTI team that collaborates,
gathers and analyzes data and together creates interventions to help students. Students
who do not seem to learn or achieve targets will then receive a series of timely, systematic,
increasingly focused, and intensive research- based intervention strategies. Intensity of
interventions increase the further one goes through the tiers.

Systematically collecting data of a students learning will help determine which type of
services a student needs to reach curriculum goals. Through using RTI, early intervention
can be provided and data can be gathered to see whether students respond or show

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progress. Only if students do not show progress after increasingly intense support and
specific interventions is a student referred for special education services review.

I think that at our school many teachers are aware of the different needs students have but
find it difficult to respond and implement targeted interventions by themselves due to time or
inexperience. From my understanding of RTI this should be a whole staff approach rather
than one teacher trying to help students stay at their grade level. We have many resources
and knowledge in different areas as a team. By using the RTI model teachers collect specific
data and present it to the RTI team and together with the RTI team implement interventions.
I have for example in my own classroom been aware of students reading below grade level
but would have appreciated a more formalized way of approaching this and how to help this
student reach grade level reading levels.

I think that RTI could play an important part in our school and I would be interested to
develop this at our school. Research has rightly shown that we should not wait with
intervention until a child has shown significant gaps, difficulties or is failing. By adapting this
kind of approach valuable years can be lost for a child. In order to implement RTI we would
have to set up a RTI team which generally consists of representatives of different year
groups, intervention specialists and members of administrative team. The general function of
the RTI team is to analyze collected data, discuss students who are struggling, help design
intervention plans and to meet to re-evaluate and assess the effectiveness of the
interventions. One of the main businesses of the RTI team is to meet with referring class
teachers and design implementation. Together an intervention plan is designed and who will
take responsibility for implementing different parts of the intervention and what method of
monitoring will be used.

From what I have read and studied about RTI so far in the MAT course I am very impressed
by the structural and systematic approach to helping struggling students. I have previously

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mentioned that this is perhaps an area we could develop further at our school in terms of
consistent and intensive intervention to prevent students falling behind both academically
and behaviorally. If you find this interesting I would be more than willing to discuss RTI and
how we could use it within our school further with you.

Yours Sincerely,
Dominique Vandevorst