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is implemented in all classrooms (tier 1 of RTI), making learning the same materials accessible to all students despite learning differences.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

Danielson, C. (1996). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 403 245.

Sternberg, R. J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. L. (1998). Teaching triarchically improves student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 374-384. EJ 576 492.

Tomlinson, C. (1995). How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-ability Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 386 301.

Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 429 944.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Winebrenner, S. (1992). Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit.

Winebrenner, S. (1996). Teaching kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit. ED 396 502.

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Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction.

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is a tool used in tier 1 of Response to Intervention (RTI) or (school-wide) generally a few times a year to identify students who are struggling. Based on results of this screening, students will receive extra supports and are monitored for improvement. Universal screening may also identify specific classrooms with higher numbers of students needing intervention signaling that the instructional strategies are not the problem.

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Best Practice for RTI: Universal Screening

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According to research, the Education Department’s What Works Clearinghouse finds that the first step in using Response To Intervention to help early elementary-aged students learn to read is to screen all students and regularly monitor students who are at elevated risk of reading problems.

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is a planned series of assessing students in tier 2 of RTI, looking for progress due to added interventions. Results are documented and observed to determine either additional needed supports and interventions, or if the interventions are catching the student up to their grade level peers.

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Fuchs, L. S., Deno, S. L. & Mirkin, P. K. (1984). Effects of frequent curriculum-based measurement on pedagogy, student achievement, and student awareness of learning. American Educational Research Journal, 21(2), 449-450.

Fuchs, L S., Fuchs, D., & Hamlett, C. L. (1989a). Effects of alternative goal structures within curriculum-based measurement. Exceptional Children, 55(5), 429-438.

Johnson, E., Jenkins, J., Petscher, Y., & Catts, H. (in press). How can we improve the accuracy of screening instruments? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice.

Mathes, P. G., Denton, C., Fletcher, J., Anthony, J., Francis, D., & Schatschneider, C. (2005). The effects of theoretically different instruction and student characteristics on the skills of struggling readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(2), 148-182.

McMaster, K. L., Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., & Compton, D. L. (2005). Responding to nonresponders: An experimental field trial of identification and intervention methods. Exceptional Children, 71(4), 445-463.

Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., & Hickman, P. (2003). Response to instruction as a means of identifying students with reading/learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 69(4), 391-409.

Vaughn, S., Mathes, P., Linan-Thompson, S., Cirino, P., Carlson, C., Pollard-Durodola, S., Cardenas-Hagan, E., & Francis, D. (2006). Effectiveness of an English intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading problems. Elementary School Journal, 107(2), 153-180.

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Best Practice for RTI: Monitor Progress of Tier 2 Students

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Click the "References" link above to hide these references. Fuchs, L. S., Deno, S. L. & Mirkin, P. K. (1984). Effects of frequent curriculum-based measurement on pedagogy, student achievement, and student awareness of learning. American Educational Research Journal, 21(2), 449-450. Fuchs, L S., Fuchs, D., & Hamlett, C. L. (1989a).

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is an assessment used for individual students meant to show that student's strengths and weaknesses allowing educators to target interventions and supports at any stage of the RTI process

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Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers - and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. The only aspect of the procedure that has to change is the difficulty level of the text.

For screening, passages are selected from text at the student's grade level. For diagnosing, passages are selected at the student's instructional level (which may be lower than her grade level). In this context, instructional level text is challenging but manageable, with the reader making errors on no more than one in 10 words (i.e., the reader is successful with 90 percent of the text) (Partnership for Reading, 2001). For progress monitoring, passages are selected at a student's individually determined goal level. For example, if an 8th-grade student's instructional level is at the 5th-grade level, the teacher may conduct the progress monitoring assessments using passages at the 6th-grade level.

Screening

Because empirical research clearly indicates the urgent need to provide high quality, intensive instructional interventions to students at risk of reading difficulty as soon as possible (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998), schools should administer screening measures to every student through the 5th grade.

First-graders should be screened in the winter and the spring; second- through fifth-graders should be screened in the fall, winter, and spring. To determine if students are at the expected levels in their reading fluency, my colleague Gerald Tindal and I (2006) suggest comparing students' WCPM scores to the 50th percentile score on the norms table (below), given the students' grade placement and the approximate time of year in which the assessment was conducted.

A score falling more than 10 words below the 50th percentile should raise a concern; the student may need additional assistance, and further assessments may be needed to diagnose the source of the below-average performance. Depending on the age of the student and any concerns about reading performance noted by the teacher or parents, such additional testing might include assessments of oral language development, phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, and/or comprehension.

Diagnosing

If a student scores poorly on a fluency screening, or if the teacher has some other cause for concern such as poor performance in class or on another assessment, the teacher should take a more careful look at the student's strengths and needs. The student could be deficient in a variety of reading skills or in related areas like vocabulary and background knowledge, so administering some informal diagnostic assessments would be helpful for designing effective instruction, providing evidence of the need for a reading specialist, or referring the student for further evaluation.

Typically, if a student's fluency level is low, but word reading accuracy in grade-level texts is adequate, a teacher can place the student in an intervention focused just on improving fluency. But if diagnostic assessments indicate other areas of weakness, a more comprehensive intervention may need to be developed. ( See example below)

Monitoring student progress

If a student's diagnostic assessment reveals concerns about one or more areas of reading, additional, targeted instruction should begin right away. WCPM procedures can be used to monitor the student's progress. Many educators have found WCPM to be a better tool for monitoring students' progress than traditional standardized measures that typically are time-consuming, expensive, only administered infrequently, and of limited instructional utility (Good, Simmons, and Kame'enui, 2001; Tindal and Marston, 1990).

For students reading six to 12 months below grade level, progress monitoring should be done frequently, perhaps once or twice monthly for as long as students require supplemental instruction. Progress monitoring should be done as often as once per week for students who are reading more than one year below level and receiving intensive intervention services, including special education. This regular monitoring assures that if the intervention is not working well, it can be modified.

When monitoring the progress of these struggling readers, the standard procedures are expanded by graphing the student's WCPM scores. A progress monitoring graph, for perhaps a grading period or a trimester, is created for each student. Teachers can use the average weekly improvement (AWI) data in the norms table to select an ambitious, yet reasonable, instructional goal; for example, a fourth-grader's goal could be to improve by 15 WCPM over 10 weeks of intensive instruction. An aim line is placed on the graph to represent the progress a student must make to achieve a preset fluency goal. Each time the student is assessed, that score is added to the graph. If three or more consecutive scores fall below the aim line, the teacher must consider adjusting the instructional program (Hasbrouck et al., 1999).

Teachers should also consider having the students record their own WCPM scores on their graphs - it increases their motivation and investment in their reading progress (Shinn, 1998).

These procedures for screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring have been available for many years, but have not been widely used in schools (Hasbrouck, et al., 1999). This situation will likely change as educators become more aware of the importance of preventing reading difficulties and providing intensive intervention as soon as a concern is noted.

Using fluency norms to set appropriate goals for student improvement and to measure progress toward those goals can be a powerful and efficient tool to help educators make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students, particularly the lowest performing, struggling readers.

Examples of a diagnosis

Andrew (a pseudonym), is an eighth-grader who recently moved to a different town where he entered a new school in March. It soon became evident to his teachers that Andrew was having difficulty with his academic work.

At a weekly meeting during which teachers discuss any concerns about their students, several teachers brought samples of Andrew's work to share. The teachers agreed that the school's reading specialist should determine if reading problems were contributing to Andrew's struggle with his assignments in several classes.

The reading specialist conducted an IRI (informal reading inventory) and planned to follow up with additional assessments if Andrew's performance on the IRI indicated possible deficits in phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, vocabulary, and/or comprehension. The specialist built a fluency assessment into the initial IRI by using a stopwatch to determine how many words Andrew could read in the first 60 seconds of each IRI passage.

The reading specialist began the IRI using a sixth-grade passage, two years below Andrew's grade. The passage was at a frustration level for him: He had difficulty with decoding, phrasing, and expression, and was only able to correctly answer four of the eight comprehension questions. Because the passage was at Andrew's frustration level, the WCPM score was not calculated. The specialist then repeated the assessment using a fifth-grade passage; Andrew was able to read it with 94 percent accuracy and correctly answer six of the eight comprehension questions.

The specialist calculated Andrew's WCPM score for this passage and compared his score, 131 WCPM, to the norms for fifth-graders in the spring (Hasbrouck and Tindal, 2006). The 50th percentile in the spring of fifth grade is 139 WCPM. Because Andrew's score fell less than 10 words below it, his fluency is within the expected range for fifthgrade readers in the spring.

The reading specialist's conclusion was that Andrew appears to be reading approximately three years below grade level, but that his fluency skill level appears to be appropriate for his overall reading level. Before designing Andrew's reading program, the specialist plans to administer a diagnosticassessment focused on phonics and decoding, and a more comprehensive assessment of vocabulary and comprehension.

She suspects there may be some underlying weaknesses in Andrew's decoding skills contributing to his delay in overall reading development. His intervention will likely include fluency instruction and practice to keep him on track, and may also include decoding and comprehension instruction, depending on the results of the other diagnostic assessments.

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Screening, Diagnosing, and Progress Monitoring for Fluency: The Details

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Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers - and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here's how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.

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refers to checking that quality instruction is not lacking and the root cause of a lack of progress at any level of RTI. Checking for this involves looking for patterns in identification.

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Question:

We hear a lot about fidelity of implementation when talking about RTI. What does this really mean?

Answer:

Response from Doug Fuchs

Fidelity of implementation, I think can best be explained this way. RTI, the people who first promoted RTI, were very much interested - and I think rightly interested - in promoting best evidence practices in schools. Promoting the idea that teachers and ancillary personnel should be using research backed or research validated instruction. When I say research backed instruction I mean instruction that was developed through a process, usually directed by researchers, a very carefully conceptualized and operationalized process of instruction to determine its effects on student performance.

As someone who has developed instructional programs I know that this process is often iterative, it's sometimes trial and error, you work very hard, you try to develop programs, and you find out that they don't work, you go back to the drawing board, you try again, and over time you develop a program, an explicit, carefully delineated program that through research you can say that if this program is implemented as the researcher implemented it you can expect X, Y, or Z student outcomes. The researchers then share these instructional programs with practitioners and they should be saying to practitioners, "Look, this is how we developed the program, this is the program. If you deliver the program the way we have detailed it, it's a good bet that you will get results as we did." So what we're really saying is, we're encouraging fidelity of treatment implementation, meaning we're encouraging you to implement our program the way we implemented it when we validated it. Importantly, this doesn't mean that practitioners can't take a validated instructional program, customize it to their own students and circumstances and do better and have their children do even better than the children who participated in our research. But it's also possible that if they customize it, change it in some fashion, their students could also do worse.

The point is, we don't know. When practitioners take validated programs and customize them, change them, we simply don't know what the effects of those changes will be on students. So, I suppose you could say a prudent course of action would be to take a researcher's validated program of instruction, use it as closely as possible to or as in similar a fashion as possible to the way the researcher did and then over time customize it, change it. See if you can tweak it in ways that make sense to the practitioner given considerations of students - types of students - that are involved and school systems and policies and so forth. As long as you continue to take data on children, you can determine whether the tweaking, the customizing, enhances or diminishes the effectiveness of the validated program.

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We hear a lot about fidelity of implementation when talking about RTI. What does this really mean?

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We hear a lot about fidelity of implementation when talking about RTI. What does this really mean? Response from Doug Fuchs Fidelity of implementation, I think can best be explained this way. RTI, the people who first promoted RTI, were very much interested - and I think rightly interested - in promoting best evidence practices in schools.