HELP! Interventions to the Rescue

These days it seems like a day never passes when I'm not asked how a teacher can help a student or asked to provide a suggestion about interventions that should be tried before a special education evaluation.  Don't even get my started on what my brain does in terms of interventions with it comes to special education team meetings .... some times I worry that I won't remember my name because I've pulled so many interventions from my brain. 

Over my time in graduate school for school psychology we were exposed to some very valuable resources, especially in the area of interventions.  My favorite site for interventions is Intervention Central, hands down.  I love this site for a variety of reasons (RtI Supplies, Data Collection ideas, etc.) but the overall reason I love it is because it really caters to a variety of individuals working in education.  It doesn't provide the intervention is such a scholarly way that is difficult to read without a dictionary and google.  I often print off copies of the intervention I'm suggesting and hand it to the teacher and support works to look at before we meet to discuss it.  Not once have I had someone tell me they don't understand it or couldn't grasp what was being explained.  Another great things about Intervention Central is that they provide all of the materials that are needed for interventions.  For example, the behavioral contracting intervention provides a link for a homework contract.  Now some times I have to change things around a little to make them work for my situation, but it's always great to have a foundation to build off of. 

The other site I reference a lot is the Evidence Based Intervention Network.  This is a great website because it provides information about the evidence behind the interventions and a brief on how to implement the intervention.  Just a little background information on it :The EBI Network began in 2007 with the East Carolina University Evidence Based Intervention Project.  In 2009, Dr. Rebecca Martinez and students in the Indiana University School Psychology program joined the project with the specific goal of creating YouTube videos for interventions as well as adding to the other resources on the site.  In 2011 the site was formally moved to the University of Missouri when Dr. Riley-Tillman joined that faculty. At that time Dr. Erica Lembke and Dr. Melissa Stormont joined the project with the goal of adding a broader range of resources to teachers, problem solving teams and other educational professionals working with children in need.

Both are great resources that I use on a daily bases.  In fact, one of my internship goals was to make an intervention binder to provide to the teachers at the elementary school I work at.  I created one academic and one behavioral.  My thought was that teachers might consult these binders and try some interventions before bringing a student to the special education team meeting.  I also thought it would be a great resources for the school to have when I no longer worked there. 

I'm always looking for new intervention sites so if you know of some good ones, please feel free to drop me a comment!

Return!

Yes I'm back!  After not posting for nearly 2 years, I've decided to re-open my blogging habits and post some things I've learned through internship and also found to be helpful.  This blog was originally started to fulfill a class assignment when I was in graduate school (well I still kinda am in grad school, finishing up my internship).  I had nearly forgotten about this blog until I got an email about 3 weeks ago that someone had posted a comment on one of my posts.  After taking a look at it, I decided that I would like to share some of my knowledge, condense all of the information into one central location, and if it helps others out in the process PERFECT! 

A Nation at Risk

Although the article A Nation at Risk was written in 1983, speaks about things that are of huge concern in our society today.  The main topic of this article is the failing status of America’s educational system and the impact of that failure, “… the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  Basically what this is saying is that not only is our failing education system an issue because children aren’t getting an adequate education, we are also continuously setting our society up to fail.  In not striving to make our students excel, were putting ourselves behind other nations in the development of new ideas and technology.  While this a logical concern, I don’t really know if it is something I agree with.

This article also listened some indicators of risk.  Those included scores on the SAT’s verbal section have dropped 50 points and 40 points on the math section.  Approximately 23 million adult Americans are functionally illiterate.  13 percent of 17-year-olds are functionally illiterate.  Average tested achievements of students graduating from college are also lower.  Not only are these statistics traumatic, they are coming at time when there is a high demand for skilled works, which seems to be growing every day.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, some people feel that school focus too much of academic achievements in reading and computation and not enough on comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing concusions.

I think that America’s have gone in a different direct for a while.  Instead of focusing so much on the things we used to, there has been a bit of a swing into other things.  Pop culture defiantly seems to have taken over a lot of society.   You can see that clearly in the stories on our news station and in our newspapers.  While real news is still reported, something trivial always seems to slip in. 

With the swing to pop culture we have also made a swing away from pushing students to make all of these great accomplishments in schools and then go on and go to college and from there get this great job and come up with all these amazing things in life.  Instead we want children to be happy and comfortable in there own skin.  Clearly this is an important thing that needed to be addressed because before children can focus on learning they need to have some basic needs taken care of.  I think this swing was needed because we started to focus so much on education and accomplishments that we started to neglect child’s wellbeing. 

One thing I really liked about this article is the part where is talks about how it is important to develop the talents of ALL students to their fullest.  I think it’s important to let children realize their own dreams and then help them fulfill those dreams.

In the end, the important take home point is that America’s seem to be falling behind other countries in our education and development of new ideas and technology.  Regardless of what you wish to attribute that to, the facts don’t lie.  Having 23 million adults who are functionally illiterate is NOT okay.  Likewise, have 13% of 17-year-olds also being functionally illiterate is unacceptable.  What this means is that we need to find ways to improve these issues in get students back to a point in which they can be competitive and be able to hold their own in the world.

Helpful Resources:

http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html (Link to A Nation at Risk)

A Tale of Two Schools

A Tale of Two Schools is a movie about two schools, Walton Elementary and Bearden Elementary, that are failing to meet the state set standards for student progress and achievement.

Bearden Elementary is located literally in the middle of a cotton field.  Teachers are low paid and usually don’t stay there for more than a year.  Some students are illiterate.  When we join Bearden Elementary they have just received a grant to help pay for a reading program that should help their students make better progress.  As we follow them through the school year concerns are constantly voiced about the lack of training the teachers have been proved with to implement the new program.  Teachers fear that they are not doing it right.  Added into the concerns about implementation, the supplies for implementing the program are slow to come in.  The justification behind the delay in supplies is that the coordinators wanted to make sure they were spending it on quality supplies and things that were the most needed. 

Walton Elementary is located in the heart of the Fort Worth area in Texas. Walton seems to be the picture of what Bearden could be in a few years.  Although Walton is not located in the best area, near the interstate, they seem to have a found a way to make things work.  In fact, others are coming to their school to see exactly what they are doing and how they are doing it.  The educators at Walton are working to teach reading in a different way.  They are using a structured program to teach students how to read through letters and sounds (phonemic awareness).

The Tale of Two Schools was an extremely moving school.  As silly as it sounds, I actually found myself tearing up slightly towards the end when the schools anxiously waited the results for their school in the statewide test.  Coming from an intercity failing school myself, I can understand the desperation these schools voiced about wanting to find something that works to help their students.  I think that failing schools and passing along students that are illiterate is unacceptable.   Frankly, it’s embarrassing.  But when it comes down to it, some times schools are failing because they just don’t have the ability to make things work.  It might be a money issues, a staffing issues, or a programming issues.  Regardless of what the issue is, it is something that we as a nation need to address.  Although it might be the cheesy line that is always thrown out there when people are fight for education but it’s true, child are our future and if we fail with them then we are setting ourselves up for a future of failure.

Let me step off my soapbox now and address the issues of failing schools.  Obviously failing at anything is not something we want in life, so what can we do it stop failing and start succeeding?  If you goggle “solutions to failing schools” you don’t come up with many suggestions.  So what can you do as a parent or an educator?  There are steps you can take to head in the right directions.  Things like Response to Intervention (RTI) programs that check progress of students and from there help determine in students are falling behind because of poor instruction or some sort of cognitive deficit. You can look into programs like the one that Walton used to help students who continue to struggle.  These programs address the issue of poor instruction and figure out what the things are that need to be focused on for each individual student to be able to grasp concepts.  

Helpful Resources:

http://www.pbs.org/weta/twoschools/ (Link to A Tale of Two Schools)

CBM, CBA, CBE ..... HUH?

CBM’s, CBA’s, and CBE’s.  No there not new television stations. You might have heard these acronyms thrown around by educators but what do they really mean and how are they being used in the classroom?

CBM

CBM stands for curriculum based measurements.  CBM is an assessment tool characterized by certain attributes.  Those attributes are:

•       Alignment.  With CBM’s students are tested on the curriculum they are being taught.

•       Technically adequate which means that they have established reliability and validity. 

•       Criterion-referenced measures as opposed to norm-referenced measures. Criterion referenced measures are measures if a student has learned what was being taught while norm referenced measures compare the child being tested to those at their same age or grade level. (If you want a more in-dept explanation between these two measures refer back to my post on Monday, March 21,2011 titled The Big Match Up: Criterion Referenced Assessments VS. Norm Referenced Assessments.)

•       Standard Procedures are used.

•       Performance sampling.  Correct and incorrect behaviors on clearly defined tasks are counted. Ex. A CBM might tell you that the student reads a grade-level passage at 47 words correct per minute with no error.

•       Decision rules.  These are put in place to provide those who used the date with information about what it means when students score at different leves.

•       Repeated measures.  These can be used to determine progress and provide progress-monitoring data.

•       Efficient.  People can be trained in a short period of time to give the measures.

•       Summarized Efficiently.  Data can be summarized efficiently by using a wide variety of tools such as pencil and paper or web based data management systems.

CBM’s usually composed of a set of standard directions, a timing device, a set of materials, scoring rules, standards for judging performance, and record forms or charts.

CBE

CBE stands for curriculum based evaluations. Curriculum-Based Evaluations are best defined by Deno (1987) as "any set of measurement procedures that use direct observation and recording of a student’s performance in a local curriculum as a basis for gathering information to make instructional decisions" (in Shinn, 1989; p. 62).  CBE measures specific skills that are presently being taught in the classroom, usually in basic skills.

CBA

Curriculum-based assessment (CBA) is an approach to linking instruction with assessment. CBA has three purposes: (1) to determine eligibility, (2) to develop the goals for instruction, and (3) to evaluate the student's progress in the curriculum. CBA is useful because it:

•                Links curriculum and instruction.

•                Helps the teacher determine what to teach.

•                Can be administered frequently.

•                Is sensitive to short-term academic gains.

•                Assists in the evaluation of student progress and program evaluation.

•                Can be reliable and valid.

•                Assists in improving student achievement

Now that we’ve gone over all that information, how about a quick CBA to test what you have learned?!

1. CBA’s are used to link instruction with __________________.

2.CBM’s use _____________ referenced assessments.

3. CBE’s measure _________ __________ that are being currently being taught in the classroom.

Answers:

1) assessment

2) criterion

3) specific skills

Helpful Resources:

http://www.studentprogress.org/families.asp

http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/curriculum-based_evaluations

Myth Busters: Learning Styles

Dr. Willingham is changing things up.  He is presenting a theory and information about how there are actually NOT different types of learners or learning style.  This probably comes as a shock to most people because learning styles is something that is strongly believed among educators.  I personally always believed in learning styles and felt that I learned in a particular way.  What Dr. Willingham is saying is that this thought over learning styles isn’t true.  What most people think of as “learning styles” is actually ability.  So some people might say their not that good at math.  That actually has nothing to do with your learning style but instead your ability.  Some people have a higher ability level for math, meaning they can pick up that information/ it comes easier to them, than others.  Other people think of learning styles as the way they recall information.  So if you’re asked to describe what your favorite shirt looks like, you’re going to visually recall it in your head.  You’ll visualize if it has short sleeves or long sleeves, does it have buttons, what color is it, and does it have a design on it?  All of these help you build a mental picture of what the shirt looks likes.  But that doesn’t mean that you are a visual learner.  That means that you have a stronger visual memory ability.  Meaning that you have a higher ability to retrieve information in your memory by creating a visual picture.

Why is this important to educators?:

 This is important because you no longer need to base your teacher to meet individual learning styles but instead you need to present information the best way possible to get the meaning across.  What that means is that most learning we do in school is meaning based.  That means that you’re asked to remember facts or different items and then understand the meaning and apply that.  So if we are trying to teach students what shape the state of Tennessee is, were not going to describe it to them, were going to show it to them on a map.

So how does this affect your teaching?:

- It’s important to introduce material in the way in which it is best to teach it.  So going back to the state of Tennessee example, it is important to show all students a map and present the information that way.  You don’t need to come up with different ways to teach the information to students.

-Remember that learning styles don’t exist but instead different ability levels exist.  So just because Student A doesn’t understand a math lesson as well as Student B doesn’t mean that Student A needs the information presented differently, it means that Student A’s ability level for math isn’t the same as Student B.  So you don’t need to teach the math lesson differently to Student A, instead you might need to give them more practice and exposure to the information.  This is important to remember with all students.  Everyone has a different ability level in different subjects.  Just because a student is having a problem grasping on to a particular lesson doesn’t mean that they aren’t learning it or even that there is a deeper, cognitive problem, it just means that they have a different ability level and might pick it up a little slower.

-Another thing to remember is that students have different memory recall styles.  So while you don’t need to teach information differently to all students, you might use differently strategies to help them recall the information.  This is something that we all use on a regular occasion. When trying to remember how to spell a tricky word, you might think of how it visually looks.  So that is how we help students recall information.  When we are trying to get them to recall information about the state of Tennessee so they can locate it on a map, it might be helpful for them to remember the other states it surrounded by.

Helpful Resources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk&feature=player_embedded#at=337 ( A link to Dr. Willingham's YouTube video that explains his theory that learning styles do not exist)

http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2009/03/episode-90-the-learning-styles-myth-an-interview-with-daniel-willingham/ ( A link to the podcast in which Dr. Willingham explains his theory more)

The Timely Transition Game

Name of Intervention: The Timely Transition Game: Reducing Room-to-Room Transition Time

Purpose: To facilitate rapid, disruption-free room-to-room transitions by means of a transition game combining explicit timing, public posting, and a group contingency with randomized elements.

Materials: -Stopwatch or watch with second hand

            -Two plastic containers

-       One labeled “Transitions”.  Place in the container six slips of paper with one of the following phrases written on each slip:

·      Going to Recess

·      Returning from Recess

·      Going to lunch

·      Returning from lunch

·      Going to Specials

·      Returning from Specials

-       Label the second container “What It Takes to Win”.  Place in the container 13 slips of paper with a range of acceptable transition times, using data obtained during the observation period to help select the time criteria.

-       “Timely Transitions Feedback Chart” consisting of a poster with nine columns

·      First column says “Date”

·      The next six columns for each of the targeted transitions

·      The eight column “Randomly Selected Time”

·      The ninth column “P-A-R-T-Y”

-       Brightly colored construction paper letters

-       Materials for a class party

Steps: Introduction/Training: Explain to students that they will be learning a game that will help them get to recess, lunch and specials fasters and they will get the chance to earn a class party.  Then guide them through the following steps:

Step 1: Review Appropriate Transition Behavior

o   Review ready to line up behaviors

-  Clear your desk

-  Sit in your seat quietly

- Wait for your row or table to be called

o   Review appropriate in-line behavior

-  Get in line promptly when your row or table is called

-  Stand quietly, facing forward

-  Keep your hands and feet to yourself

-  Wait for directions

Step 2: Demonstrate the timing procedures and conduct a practice transition

o   Tell students that they will have a chance to practice making effective transitions

o   Display the stopwatch and tell students that you will start it when the transition begins and let it run until they are ready to leave the classroom.

o   Say “It is time to line up now to go to _______” and start the stopwatch.  When all the students are displaying ready to line up behavior class them by tables or rows to line when.  When all students are displaying in-line behavior stop the stopwatch and direct them to leave the classroom.

o   If students misbehave in the hallway stop the class and start the stopwatch again.  When students start displaying appropriate in-line behavior, stop the stopwatch and continue the transition.  The transition ends when the last student is through the door

o   Allow for another practice transition

o   When students are returning to the classroom stop the stopwatch after every student is in their seat and quiet for 5 seconds.

o   Tell students what their transitions times were and record the times on the chart.

Step 3: Explain the group reward

o   Display the “Transitions” and “What It Takes To Win” containers.  Explain that you will write the date and each targeted transition time on the Timely Transition Feedback Chart each day.  At the end of the day you will draw a transition from the “Transitions” container to select the transition time that will be used to determine whether the class meets the criteria for earning the reward

o   Show the students the slips of paper with the criterion times and the list of the times on the poster.  To ensure that students understand the times, write times over 1 minute in minutes and seconds.

o   Explain that you will select a criterion time from the “What It Takes To Win” container and compire it with the students’ actual time for the transition you have drawn.  The class will earn a letter in the work P-A-R-T-Y if their time is less than the criterion time drawn from the container.  If the actual time is greater than the criterion, you will put a dash on the chart to indicate that no letter was earned.  After the class has spelt the word party, they will receive some type of celebration.

Implementation: Remind students about the game at the start of each school day.  Record transition times.  When students return from destination announce the number of seconds required to go to and return from the destination and record the two transition times on the Timely Transition Feedback Chart.  Repeat throughout the school day.  At the end of the day draw a slip from the Transitions container and put a star next to the times on the chart.  Then draw a slip from the What It Takes to Win container if the actual time is less than the criterion, record a letter in the last column and praise the class.  If the actual time is greater than the criterion then put a dash in the last column and encourage students to do better.  Deliver the group reward when the word part is spelt out.

Evaluation: Compare the number of seconds required for students to complete one or more transitions before and after implementation.

Helpful Resources:

Rathvon, N. (2008). Effective school interventions: Evidence-based strategies for improving student outcomes. The Guilford Press: New York.