Response-to-Instruction and Intervention/Multi-Tiered Instruction and Intervention Tools and Resources

    When students are not academically and/or behaviorally responding to effective classroom instruction or classroom management, schools and staff need to determine why they are not responding and how to develop, deliver, and evaluate more strategic or intensive instruction or intervention as needed.  This is done within the context of a data-based problem solving process that is used progressively by (a) individual classroom teachers, (b) Grade-level School Prevention, Review, and Intervention Teams (SPRINT), and (c) Building-level SPRINT teams.

    In order to help districts and schools in the diverse areas of Response-to-Instruction and Intervention, and Multi-tiered Instruction and Intervention, the following tools and resources have been developed for your use:

The Data-based Problem Solving Process:  Using School Prevention, Review, and Intervention Teams

The Response-to-Instruction and Intervention (RtI²)/School Prevention, Review, and Intervention Team (SPRINT) Model Implementation Guidebook

   The Response-to-Instruction and Intervention (RtI²)/School Prevention, Review, and Intervention Team (SPRINT) process is used when students are underachieving, unsuccessful, or unresponsive—academically and/or relative to their social, emotional, or behavioral functioning—in the classroom.  This Model Implementation Guidebook describes an RtI²/SPRINT process that has been used in hundreds of schools across the country, and that integrates both academics and behavior.   It provides a step-by-step implementation approach that is practical, field-tested, effective, and student-centered.  Organized along a prevention to strategic intervention to intensive need continuum, the Guidebook  has sample forms and problem solving tools, and discusses two primary components.

    Relative to the first component, the RtI²/SPRINT process involves a data-based functional assessment process that determines why a student is not responding to effective instruction and classroom management.  This can be done by an individual teacher, a grade level of teachers through collegial consultation, or a building- level multidisciplinary team of professionals who engage in more intensive assessment and intervention.  

    The second RtI²/SPRINT process also involves a team process that involves a multi-tiered Problem Solving, Consultation, and Intervention service delivery approach that addresses different intensities of student need with evidence- or research-based instructional or intervention services, supports, strategies, or programs.

RtI/SPRINT Implementation Guidebook     NEW RESOURCE ! ! !
 
SPRINT Master Log and Consultation Referral Audit

    The SPRINT (School Prevention, Review, and Intervention Team) process is Arkansas’ early intervention/Response-to-Intervention process at the school level.   It involves both a data-based, functional assessment problem-solving process to identify needed interventions for students who are not responding to effective classroom instruction or behavioral management.  This process is implemented at the individual teacher level, the grade-level or instructional SPRINT team level, and building SPRINT team level.  In other states, this process may be called the Student Assistance Team, Building Intervention Team, Student Services Team, or Child Study Team process.

    This instrument is used at both the SPRINT Grade-level and Building-level Team levels to track cases that are referred/considered by those two respective teams on an individual student level.  The Log can track the students reviewed by the SPRINT teams chronologically across a school year; and track SPRINT team activities on an individual student basis as part of a running record. 

    Finally, the Master Log’s information can be reformatted across all student cases over a specified period of time so that a school can identify referral, assessment, or intervention trends that will help it to plan its future instruction, personnel, and intervention approaches and needs.

Document coming soon.

Survey to Evaluate Staff Collaboration, Cohesion, and Effective Interactions

The Scale of Staff Interactions and School Cohesion

    The Scale of Staff Interactions and School Cohesion consists of 25 items and three scales (Staff Understanding of the School’s Mission and Expectations, Staff Collaboration and Cohesion, and Effective Staff Practices and Interactions) that staff rate along a five-point scale from 1- Excellent to 5- Poor relative to their perceptions of the staff in their school.  The scale was designed to evaluate the ongoing quality of the staff interactions that support effective school processes and activities.  A link to the scale is below, as well as another link to a spreadsheet that will facilitate the scoring process.

PBSS Staff Interactions Questionnaire
Revised Scale Staff Interactions Spreadsheet

 Survey to Evaluate Staff Perceptions of their School’s Student Discipline Processes

The Scale of Effective School Discipline and Safety

    The Scale of Effective School Discipline and Safety consists of 58 items and five factors (Teachers’ Effective Classroom Management Skills, Students’ Positive Behavioral Interactions and Respect, Holding Students Accountable for their Behavior:  Administration and Staff, Teachers’ Contribution to a Positive School Climate, and School Safety and Security:  Staff, Students, and School Grounds) that staff rated along a five-point scale from 1- Strongly Agree to 5- Strongly Disagree.  The scale was designed to evaluate school staff attitudes and beliefs regarding the degree to which positive and effective positive school discipline and safety processes exist in their school.  A link to the scale is below, as well as another link to a spreadsheet that will facilitate the scoring process.

PBSS Staff Discipline Questionnaire
Discipline Scale Final Spreadsheet for Results

 Identifying and Organizing Staff Skills and Expertise into a Consultant Resource Directory

The School-Based Professional Resource Survey:  Explanation And Implementation

    Schools and districts rarely know the level of skills and expertise that they have on their faculties.  One way to identify this information is to create a directory outlining the instructional and intervention backgrounds, experiences, and skills of a school’s staff by periodically asking them (e.g., once every three years) to complete a simple two-page questionnaire.  On this questionnaire, staff can provide the following information:  their formal degrees and areas of certification or specialization, their formal areas of in-service training and professional development, academic and/or behavioral areas of expertise, and their special skills or talents or hobbies.  This information can then be combined to create a Consultant Resource Directory.  This Technical Assistant paper explains how to create a Consultant Resource Directory, and it provides a sample questionnaire that can be used for staff completion.

Consultant Resource Survey
 
    This second document provides a protocol for collecting the information used in the Consultant Resource Directory through SurveyMonkey or a similar web-based survey approach.

Consultant Resource Survey for Survey Monkey
 
Behavioral Observation Protocols:  Observing Classroom Climate, Safety, and Student Discipline using Brief Classroom Walk-Throughs; and Student Behavior using Systematic Behavioral Observation

I.  Evaluating Classroom Climate, Safety, and Classroom Management using Brief Classroom Walk-Throughs

II.  Completing Systematic Behavioral Observations of Students in the Classroom

    Collecting systematic behavioral observation data is essential to understanding what is actually happening in the classroom relative to both students and teachers.  Data from behavioral observations of teachers provide a real-time look at their effective instruction and classroom management interactions, and those that need improvement.  Data from behavioral observations of students helps to track such variables as time on-task, the frequency of inappropriate behavior, how long they are able to maintain good attention, and how long it takes before they begin their work.

    The Effective Classroom Management Walk-Through (CWT) protocol was developed for principals or others who want to determine the degree of positive, effective, and proactive classroom management approaches in classrooms across their school.  Based on educational and behavioral research, the Effective Classroom Management CWT protocol involves 23 items organized in three areas:  the Evidence of Teacher’s Effective Classroom Management area, the Students’ Positive Behavioral Interactions and Respect area, and the Classroom Safety and Security area.  The first behavioral observation document provides this CWT protocol and describes how to use it.

Classroom Walk Through Behavioral Final
 
    The second behavioral observation document provides a protocol that can be used to observe the classroom engagement of individual students and groups of students, and it describes how to use it.

Behavioral Observation Protocol
 
Identifying the Strategic and Intensive Behavioral Intervention Skills and Expertise of School and District Consultants

The Behavioral Intervention Survey

    When students are not responding to effective classroom management approaches, they often present challenging internalized (e.g., anxiety and withdrawal) and/or externalized (e.g., anger, aggression, and defiance) behaviors.  These situations require the need for strategic or intensive behavioral interventions and the professionals who have the skills to help teachers implement these interventions in the classroom (and elsewhere).  This Behavioral Intervention Survey can be used to have school and district behavioral intervention consultants self-evaluate their skills across a number of specific intervention approaches and techniques.

Behavioral Intervention Survey
 
How to Evaluate Students’ Academic and Behavioral Progress on a Quarterly Basis, and a School’s Student Assessment Processes on an Annual Basis

Conducting Annual School Review of Student Progress Monitoring and Quarterly Student Achievement Review (Q-STAR) Meetings to Evaluate All Students’ Academic and Behavioral Progress:  Process, Preparation, and Implementation

    With all of the assessment information and data that are collected, formally and informally, on different students by different people at different times, it is important for school personnel to periodically review their data collection processes and whether or not these processes are helping students to progress over time.  Relative to the former area, this Technical Assistance paper describes how to conduct an annual (in April) review of the school’s response-to-instruction and intervention data collection and analysis process.  Relative to the latter area, the paper describes how to conduct Quarterly STudent Achievement Reviews (Q-STARs) that systematically track the academic and social, emotional, and behavioral achievement of every student in the school.

Quarterly Data Meeting TA Paper
 
    In addition to this TA paper, the link below provides an Excel spreadsheet that can be used as a “Virtual Data Wall” that tracks the status and progress of individual students during a school year.  This spreadsheet can also be used to evaluate the number and types of assessments being used in a school as part of the annual review of student progress monitoring approaches.

Document coming soon.

Webinar on RtI
Using Response-to-Instruction and Intervention to Facilitate Effective Classrooms and Successful Students:  Integrating Academic and Behavioral Prevention and Intervention.

    Response-to-Instruction and Intervention (RtI²) involves evaluating the degree that students (a) master academic material in response to effective instruction, and (b) demonstrate appropriate, prosocial behavior in response to effective classroom management.  When students are not progressing or “responding” to effective instructional conditions, academically or behaviorally, RtI includes a functional assessment/problem solving process to determine the reason(s) for the lack of success, and the implementation of strategic through intensive interventions to help those students progress and be successful. 

    This webinar, presented by Dr. Howie Knoff, Director of the SPDG, describes an integrated evidence-based blueprint that guides effective classroom instruction and behavior management.  The blueprint includes respective academic and behavioral “service and support” cascades to insure that at-risk, underachieving, or unsuccessful students receive the strategic instruction or intervention needed when they do not respond in the effective classroom.  It also addresses a data-based functional assessment process that determines why students are having academic or behavioral difficulties so that high success interventions can follow.  All of this is guided by an early intervention team process.
Click on Webinar Link Here