What is Response to Intervention (also called RtI)?
Response to Intervention is a multi-tierred system of response to meet the needs of individual students. Many educators see this program as either a plan for behavior in the classroom, or a program to meet the needs of underperforming students. While RtI can be used for those students, it can also be used to meet the needs of our gifted students.
"The RTI process is a multi-step approach to providing services and interventions to students who struggle with learning at increasing levels of intensity. The progress students make at each stage of intervention is closely monitored. Results of this monitoring are used to make decisions about the need for further research-based instruction and/or intervention in general education, in special education, or both."
(National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2006)
You may be wondering what does RtI have to do with gifted students? There is a common misconception that gifted students have an easy time processing information given to them in a classroom. We have to consider our twice exceptional students, students who may have a learning disability, yet are still gifted intellectually. RtI provides alternate data to be used rather than just the IQ score for identifying students who need specialized instruction.
The Tiers:
Tier 1:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Response to Intervention is a multi-tierred system of response to meet the needs of individual students. Many educators see this program as either a plan for behavior in the classroom, or a program to meet the needs of underperforming students. While RtI can be used for those students, it can also be used to meet the needs of our gifted students.
"The RTI process is a multi-step approach to providing services and interventions to students who struggle with learning at increasing levels of intensity. The progress students make at each stage of intervention is closely monitored. Results of this monitoring are used to make decisions about the need for further research-based instruction and/or intervention in general education, in special education, or both."
(National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2006)
You may be wondering what does RtI have to do with gifted students? There is a common misconception that gifted students have an easy time processing information given to them in a classroom. We have to consider our twice exceptional students, students who may have a learning disability, yet are still gifted intellectually. RtI provides alternate data to be used rather than just the IQ score for identifying students who need specialized instruction.
The Tiers:
Tier 1:
- All students receive quality instruction
- Benchmarks used in this level to determine what students know, and where they need to go
- Large group instruction
- Daily, quality instruction provided by the teacher
Tier 2:
- Instructional interventions are delivered in small groups to homogenous students of like needs. This could include twice exceptional students who did not meet the requirements on the benchmarks, or not
- Opportunities for acceleration based on the individual student
- Concept based programs such as Accelerated Math or Odyssey
- Elective "Gifted" class
Tier 3:
- Gifted students in this level may be allowed to skip tier 1
- Small group of students, typically 1-8% of population
- Extreme acceleration, this could include grade skipping
- Curriculum differs extremely based on the needs of this individual student