 Welcome everyone to this webinar. This webinar is an introduction to response to intervention with Kerasaurus. Sure, sorry. It is brought to you by ARPDC as a result of a grant from Alberta Education. So we're very lucky to have Kara here today to share her experience with RTI, a response to intervention. She started off as a special education teacher and then worked as director of education and in the more recent years has been publishing books and resources on RTI as well as presenting. And lucky Kara, she's probably somewhere much, much warmer than it is for us today. We had a big dump of snow last night, Kara. So without any further delay, I'm going to pass it over to you. Hi everyone. I'm very glad to be with you this afternoon. As we're going through, let me know if you have any problems with sound or if you have questions. Give me the little confused face or raise your hand. If you have a question, I will stop at certain points and let you ask specific questions. I'm not real good about reading your questions and talking at the same time. I'm not quite coordinated that way. So I'll pause every once in a while so that you can certainly ask questions and get all of your questions answered as we go. We are this afternoon talking about response to intervention. I'd like to know if any of you have attended any of my sessions that I've had in the Alberta area. If you have, if you would click on the smiley face just to let me know. Okay. Just maybe Andrea and then Carla and Val. So I'll have one other person. Okay. Well, great. Hello again to you guys. It's nice to have all of you with me this afternoon. As we look at response to intervention, we are looking at it in the Alberta context and what it means for schools in the Alberta area and just looking at it in that overall mode. So you can follow along with me with the slides and we will begin. Response to intervention is not a program. It's very important for you to go into the process with the thought in mind that this is a school improvement process, that it is one that we look at individual student learning. We provide very, very intensive instruction in the regular classroom, just our normal instruction. And then we use assessment to determine if the students are making progress with that instruction. And when students are not making progress, then we put in place interventions so that students can come up to the benchmark and come up to grade level in areas specifically of reading and math. But we also use RTI for behavior. Now it is technically called response to intervention and looking at how students are responding to interventions in the different tiers that we look at. But I really like to think of it as responsive instruction when we look at the instruction that's going on in everyday classrooms with all students. So there's a large focus on just instruction for all students. So you'll see that as we go through today. Now today, because of our timeframe, is just a very quick overview. But I will give you some resources where you can look more in depth at different areas that we're going to talk about. RTI is oftentimes used with behavior as well as academics to address behavioral needs that students have. And research has told us that it works best when we include academics and behavior. And so when you're looking at the overall RTI process, how do you know where to focus your attention? It really will vary from school to school. It depends on what the needs of the school call for. And so as we go through today, we'll look at, okay, we could do this for academics. We could do it for behavior. And it really will change depending on the specific needs of your school. As we're looking at RTI, I think of it as an umbrella under which all of our school improvement initiatives fall. And in Alberta, you have many different pilots and different programs that are currently in place in schools. And so I look at it as a way to bring all of that together. And many times when I speak with individuals in specific school systems and working with local school systems there, they say, you know, we've done a little bit of this and we focused on differentiated instruction. We focused on inclusive education. But this really brings it all together to make it one total package. And that's what we really want, is how can we make everything fit together. So as you're thinking about your school and your school system, think about the things that have been a focus for you, whether it is universal design for learning or differentiated instruction or perhaps backward design or understanding by design. Perhaps a particular focus for a reading program that you use. But think about how the aspects and the elements of RTI can work with what you already have. I always encourage districts to look at what you already have going and how can we use RTI to bring that together in a framework where it fits very well. So I'd like for you to think about it that way. When we're looking at RTI, we have a lot embedded into that plan. We need to look at curriculum and instruction with assessment and look at it all as one big picture. How are we instructing students and how are we assessing to make sure that students are learning what we are learning. And as we look at RTI, we'll be looking at some specific assessment tools that are designed for RTI that complement what you already have going on in your schools and how do they all work together to drive instruction. You will probably see a slide. I think I included a slide later on that says when you're using your assessment, if you are not using it to drive instruction, if you're not using the data to make instructional decisions, then your assessment is really not very helpful. So we want to have all of that play in together. There's a lot of professional learning that needs to go into an RTI plan for a school. Really looking at how can we use our professional learning time and resources to best equip our teachers to make good instructional decisions for students and to be able to use the data that they have. Most all schools are using RTI with no additional personnel whatsoever. Schools right now don't have the money to hire additional personnel in most cases. So most schools look at using the resources that they already have and so there is no need to think you've got to hire a lot of additional staff members. We really look at what do we already have in the school and how can we best use the personnel and then other resources as well. The materials that you have, the time that you have, all the resources available. Most schools find that RTI implementation, when you are looking at your school schedule, it will be an issue of we need to change the way we run our school day to make time for instructional strategies and interventions. So as you're thinking about how to do this, scheduling changes are often times something that schools really need to pay attention to and think about do we need to change those scheduling options. I wanted to just give a really quick overview of the purposes of our RTI and how it is most often used at an elementary level and then at a secondary level. Let me just ask a question if you want to go ahead and click on the link on your little smiley face. If you work with students at the secondary level, basically sixth grade and above. Okay. We have Andrea and Colleen and Heather. Okay. So as we're looking at secondary, it often times looks very, very different from the primary school. In fact, we have many different purposes between the two areas. At elementary, basically response to intervention is an early identification, early intervention area. Just providing instruction to students as soon as we start to see deficits, as soon as we start to see students who are struggling, we provide instructions at that point. There is some research out there that says students have such a brief window to learn those reading skills and we want to make the best of that brief window. So in elementary grades, especially through a second or third grade, we're really looking for what students are not learning to read at grade level, what students are not doing math at grade level, and providing those interventions for that. We can also use some of that information to determine if students aren't learning. Perhaps there is a need to investigate if the student might have a disabling condition that we need to look at. Once we start moving into really fifth, sixth, seventh grade, the focus of our TI changes from early identification or early intervention to how can we support the student so that they will be successful graduates from school and go into whatever post-secondary option that they want to pursue. So the shift really becomes what kind of supports, in addition to interventions, can we put in place for students. And then also looking at the quality of teaching within the school and how do we make sure that our teaching best fits the needs of our students. So we really shift the focus from one specific area for elementary to an overall how can students be successful in the secondary years. As we're looking at RTI, I want to point out to you some essential components that are just kind of the non-negotiables that have to be in place for RTI to work. And after we talk about these, then I'll give you a chance to ask some questions. There are three essential components that we always want to make sure are included in our RTI process when we put it in place in a school or within a division or a district. First, whenever we choose instructional strategies, interventions, or even our core instruction, we want to use things that are research-based that have good solid research behind them that we know are effective with students who are learning, especially students who are struggling to learn. And we have evidence that these instructional strategies and this core instruction, all the areas that we put in place are effective for students. Secondly, we want to use our data to drive our instruction. As I mentioned earlier, we want to use all the data that we have. And with RTI, we specifically have some tools that were developed for use with RTI, but we want to take all the data that we have about the student's formative data, summative data, and just see where the student is functioning and what we need to do differently in order to teach that student. So, database decision-making is our second non-negotiable. And then the last one is implementation fidelity. And we'll talk quite a bit about fidelity this afternoon and how do we put that together and make sure that we're doing what works best for students if we have a research-based intervention, that we are implementing that the way it was designed and the way it was researched so that we are actually following the instructional guidelines that were set forth. So, when we look at implementation fidelity, it is making sure that we're doing everything the way it was designed and the way it works best with students. Many students often, or many schools oftentimes have difficulty with implementation fidelity. And they believe that it will take care of itself and that there is no need to pay attention to fidelity, but that really is not true. As we're planning out our process, we need to keep that in mind as well. As we look at this process, it is often depicted as a three-tiered continuum of instruction. We look at this particular graphic. This is one that has been put together specifically for the Alberta context. Many times when you see this graphic, you will see lines between the tiers. And in Alberta, we chose not to do that just to signify that students can be in multiple places in this continuum at one time. And so I'll go through all three tiers and then I will try to explain what I mean by that, of being in multiple places. Here one of the RTI pyramid is core instruction that all students receive in the classroom that's available to all students. It is our curriculum outcomes. It is providing that instruction in a way that all students can have access. And so it's good, strong core instruction for all students. We also use universal screening in tier one. And that's one of our RTI specific terms that is a type of assessment that lets us know if students are meeting benchmarks at the time that they are supposed to, or if they are falling behind with instruction to let us know that we need to start immediately looking at some instructional changes for those students. So it's good instruction and then screening and assessment to determine if students are making expected progress. When students are not meeting the outcomes when they are not making the progress that we want to see in the benchmarks, then we can put in place additional instruction. And tier two is additional instruction. It does not take the place of tier one instruction. It enhances it and it is in addition to the instruction that students continue to receive in the core. So targeted interventions are put in place at that time. And what we mean by targeted is that when we're looking at say reading, and we know that students are having difficulty reading, we need to target specifically what areas of reading students are having difficulty with, such as reading fluency. And then we provide an intervention that is directly designed to address reading fluency. So those interventions are designed to provide students with better information so that they can have access to that core instruction. Everything that we do in the intervention tiers, both tier two and tier three, is designed to help students be successful in tier one. You also see there that it says progress monitoring is put in place in tier two. And this is a type of assessment that is more frequent that we use to determine if students are on track. And are making the progress that they need to make in order to be successful and to attain the goals and be able to be successful in the core instruction. The tier two instruction is provided for a student for no specific limit, no specific amount of time. It depends on the response that the student has. And we find that the student is not making appropriate response and not catching up and not meeting goals. Then we can put in place tier three instruction. And tier three is more intensive in both the interventions that we use and the assessment that we use. It is still progress monitoring, but it is a more intensive form of progress monitoring. Now when we look at these three tiers, we see that there are no lines between them and we want students to move throughout that continuum as is appropriate for them. And when I said that students can have multiple levels at one time, here is an example of that. I might need tier one instruction only for math. I'm a very good math student and I'm having no trouble in math at all. But I am having trouble in reading. And so I might need tier two interventions in addition to my core instruction in reading. So I would have that level of support there. I may also have some behavioral difficulties that are keeping me from being as successful as I need to in the classroom. And those behavioral difficulties could be very significant. So I might receive tier three interventions for behavior. So I would be receiving tier one for math, tier two for reading, tier three for behavior and anywhere in between that for all different levels. So that is what we mean when we say students can be in different areas at one time. It's important to remember this because RTI is not about labeling students. We don't want to create new categories of students called tier two kids and tier three kids. We just want to look at what level of instruction the students need for specific areas. So I want to give you an opportunity to ask some questions at this time. And I'll be glad to answer a question if anyone has one if you want to do that through your microphone or if you want to type in a question. So thanks, Kara. I can see we've just Melissa's chatting in a question as well. I really like the fact that you really make it clear that RTI is that umbrella. It's such a nice analogy because, you know, it's not, yes, we have to be more focused in what we do, but it's not in addition to what we're already doing. It combines everything that we're doing together. I just really like that point. Do we have any questions? I can see a few coming in on the chat window. So we'll give them a minute as well, but please feel free as well to pick up your microphone. I'm going to do some sound checks, so, you know, it's often quicker as well, so if you'd like to pick up your math. Okay, so we just had a question about the thoughts on William Brazos assertion that RTI programs at the secondary level are rarely successful. Well, Melissa, I am working with secondary schools, and I do work with secondary schools quite a bit in RTI. And I think that the things that oftentimes keep them from being successful are things such as a lack of differentiation in the core instruction, having, you know, kind of a one-set way that we do things, and really not thinking out of the box. But the biggest thing I find is that schools try to implement RTI at the secondary level the way it is implemented in the elementary grades. It's not going to be a different type of process. It's the same, you know, structure, but it has to be differentiated in so many ways that are different. So I am starting to see some secondary schools that are being very successful. I worked for a couple of years with a school that was very successful, their RTI process, and helped to raise their graduation rate and raise their student achievement scores. So I think it just involves finding how RTI is different in the secondary level and putting in place that way rather than trying to copy what elementary and primary grades are doing. Thanks, Cara. We also had a quick, just if you could give us a bit more question about the clarification between what sort of tier two interventions and support. So, Andrea, I don't know if you want to add something about that as well. The last question was about supporting, well, the PBIS, so positive behavior supports. Kathy was just asking about that, if that, we are including the PBIS interventions. Okay. Andrea, we will look at some specific examples of tier two interventions and supports in just a few minutes. If you don't mind, I hate to put you off, but if you don't mind, I think I can clarify that for you with some visuals. And then if I don't answer your question about that, then I can come back to it. And I see your smiley face. Thank you. It is in addition to that core instruction and we'll look at what are some examples of that. And if that doesn't answer your question, you let me know and I'll be glad to come back to it. Kathy's question about looking at the behavior, it is very much based on positive behavior interventions and support systems that have been put into place in many, many schools. And that is, it directly aligns with our academic RTI process. And so, in putting that in place, yes, I'm talking about putting PBIS type things in place. Sometimes they're a little bit different, but again, that just goes to the individuality of the school. So, yes, that's very much the same. And there's a question from Andrea about the difference between supports versus interventions. We're looking at interventions. We're looking at research-based instruction for students to help them learn what they don't know. So, if I have a difficulty in reading fluency, then I need an intervention to teach me how to be a more fluent reader and to improve my reading fluency and then ultimately comprehension. When I'm talking about support, sometimes, especially at the secondary level, we do things like putting in place homework, tutorials for different content areas, mentoring that's often used at elementary as well. Those are supports that help students be successful in the classroom, but it is not an intervention. An intervention is actually teaching me what I don't know. And a support gives me different types of access or just supports to help me access the information. And that's really a big thing that we clarify for secondary schools, because many times schools will be in place supports and they'll call them interventions when they're really not. They're there to give additional help, but they're not teaching students the skills that they don't have. So, when we look at interventions, I'll try to point out to you what some supports might be there as well. Okay. Well, let's move on then as we are talking about this RTI process. And I wanted to give you some additional follow-up on that as a visual. What is the difference between the three tiers? Again, tier one is that quality instruction available to all students is the instruction that goes to every student within the school. We do put in place in most schools group interventions for struggling learners. That would be, if I have a child in my classroom today, I taught, I don't know, two-digit addition. And the student, I have two or three students who are struggling. I'll put interventions in place for those students within my classroom in order to help them be able to access the information. That is different from a tier two targeted intervention in that it's one time as needed. But when I have a student who is starting to fall behind grade level and I need a consistent intervention for them to learn, then I'll put those in place as tier two. So, this is not saying, okay, we don't need to individualize for students in the classroom. It's saying just the opposite. We do individualize. And then when students need additional support, that is more than just what they need in the classroom, then we put in place our tier two interventions. Universal screening is put in place for all students in tier one. And I'll show you some examples of universal screening tools. And then some schools do go beyond just the universal screening, which is usually done about three times a year. To actual progress monitoring of all students within the classroom, which would be more often about three once a month or sometimes even more often than that, using the same types of tools. But most schools just been in place universal screening for tier one. And so when we look at the screening tools, I'll give you a little bit more information about that. As we look at tier two, again, that is for our students who are having difficulty with tier one. It is in addition to tier one, not instead of. It is specific to the deficits, such as reading fluency or reading comprehension. Usually, students are in a small group setting by skill level. When we look at the interventions at tier two, we want students to be with other students who have the same needs as them. So it really is ability grouping for that small amount of time so that we can provide very targeted instruction. And then we do use progress monitoring. Tier three differs from tier two in that it is more intensive. And both the instruction and the assessment becomes more intensive as we go up into the higher levels of intervention there. It is really important to remember that we want students to be successful as close to the bottom of the pyramid as they possibly can be. That we want them to be successful in the core instruction. So we are not trying to see how quickly we can get students into intensive support. We're trying to help them be successful very low in the pyramid. And sometimes that's a culture shift for schools. As we look at frameworks for interventions, we are looking at basically two types. And I don't want you to get really bogged down in this because it's almost like two ways of saying the same thing. But if you look at research in RTI, you will see most of the time that researchers use what is called a standard protocol intervention. And those standard protocols are put in place ahead of time based on the most common needs within the school. So if I am a school principal and I look at my school data and I see that I've got lots and lots of kids who are having difficulty with the concept of fractions, then I can first of all look and see is it a core instructional need? And if it's not that widespread, if I just have a small percentage of students who need that, then I can plan ahead and get that in place before the school year ever starts knowing that I'm going to have some interventions for that. And I will be able to plan for that in my schedule and get everything set up. In contrast to that, we have what is called a problem-solving model where we sit as a team and plan for every student individually. And I like to use the four-step protocol for problem-solving that's listed there where we first define what the problem is that the student is experiencing. We define that in measurable and observable terms. Not just the student can't read, but the student should be reading 40 words per minute. The student is reading 20 words per minute. So something that's very specific. And then we plan an intervention based specifically on the needs that that student has. So we would find a fluency intervention for that student. And then we implement that and evaluate that response based on how well the student responds with that specific instruction. Now, these really are two ways of looking at the same type of process to meet the needs of the students. The difference is that standard protocol is set up ahead of time and is standard for all students who have that specific problem. And problem-solving is based on the needs of each individual student. We really have to have both within a school. It's the most efficient use of our time if we set up standard protocols based on what we need within the school. And then we have problem-solving for those needs that arise that are out of what we've already planned for. The bottom line is we need to specifically define the problem based on the data. We need to choose an intervention and develop the goal for that intervention for that student to determine who's going to provide the intervention. How long is it going to be every day? Is it going to be three days a week? How many minutes in a session? All those semantics we have to work out and then determine how we're going to assist the progress. And then ultimately, is this intervention working and can we do things differently? Do we need to do something differently for the student? Or are we effectively meeting that student's needs at this time? So whether you use standard protocol or problem-solving, we are looking at these. Oh, I just went all the way to the end of the PowerPoint. Sorry, Carla. I skipped on the wrong slide. Guys, hold on just a second and we'll find my... I hit the wrong arrow there. I love live audiences. When we're making these decisions, we just need to make sure that we are addressing the needs of the students, whether we can do that individually through the problem-solving or as a standard protocol. Thank you for your patience there. No problem, Kara. Judy had just asked earlier about when to do the Tier 2 interventions during school time. Could you provide like an example of how some schools modify their timetable in terms to fit that in? Sure. The most common way that schools provide interventions during the school day, and this is whether it is an elementary setting or all the way through a high school setting, is to set aside a time during the school day where all students who need interventions will have those at one time. So I might have a block of time from 9.30 to 10 a.m. where all students go into small groups. And sometimes this is cross-grade level, especially in very small schools when we don't have a lot of resources and we don't have a lot of personnel, then we might cross-grade level. In larger schools, it will probably be all within the grade level. But basically from 9.30 to 10, every student who needed intervention would go to an intervention group during that time. And then kids who needed enrichment could receive enrichment during that time. And kids who are on grade level, I know at the high school many times they are preparing for a graduation test they may have to take or preparing a college application or working on a community-based project that they're working on for part of their portfolio. So when we look at the most common way that schools provide time for this instruction, it is to put a block into the school day. And the most common amount of time is about 30 minutes for that. The variations on that are just huge depending on what resources your school has. But a good, and one of the reasons that schools like that whole school model is because you can take every adult in the building and give them an instructional group and your intervention groups are smaller groups and your enrichment groups are larger groups that every adult has a group at that time and therefore you're able to have much smaller student-teacher ratios with that. So that's a very common way of providing that intervention time during the day. Thanks, Carol. All right. Let's look at now what we're talking about with research-based instruction and interventions. We're looking at the tier one instruction. I recommend that schools always begin with their RTI process by looking, picking a very objective look at their school data and at their student performance to determine if students are being successful in their core instruction. And that may be your provincial test that you use. That's certainly a really good source of data for you. It may be ongoing formative assessment or if you have benchmark testing that students take every grading period. All of that data coming together but to look at is our instruction appropriate for all students within the school? And we'll look at some data in just a minute to kind of illustrate that for you. The first have to look at is our curriculum appropriate and is it beneficial for all of our students? Secondly, we need to have good strong differentiated instruction within all of our classrooms. Some teachers are so skillful at differentiating instruction, but many teachers really struggle with it. They struggle with the management of the classroom. They struggle with time management. And so differentiated instruction is something that I find all schools really have to work on. Using flexible grouping, not always ability grouping, not always interest grouping, but really using small groups for a variety of purposes within the classroom. We also want to make sure that we have appropriate classroom management. And that may include school-wide behavior supports if we are putting in place a school-wide RTI model for behavior. Basically, whatever is important in our Tier 1 instruction, are we doing it well? And one of the questions that I always ask in my longer workshops and that I encourage administrators, especially to think about, but really all leadership within a school, is how do we define core instruction in our school? If someone comes into a classroom, what should they see? What's important? What are the areas of focus that we want instruction to be within our classroom? And that's a hard thing is when you really start trying to define that core instruction, what does it mean within your school? I encourage all schools to do that. So as we're looking at our Tier 1 instruction, we want to make sure that whatever we're doing, we're doing well and that it's meeting the needs of our students. And then we put our universal screening in and we'll come back to universal screening in just a minute. Now this is an example of school data. This is using DIBLS. And DIBLS is, that stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. This is a curriculum-based measurement tool that is designed to assess reading. It is what we call a general outcome measure, which means it measures the five big areas of reading. It is not a diagnostic. It will not drill down until you why students are having difficulty with say comprehension. It will just be a red flag to say this student is not performing as they should in the areas of, and it goes through all five of our major areas of reading. So this is some DIBLS data. And thank you, Karla. She's put our resource up there for DIBLS if you want to check that out. But this is some data that a school might have where they have administered DIBLS to all students within their school. And they have 78% of their students who are at the benchmark. They are exactly where they need to be or they're above that benchmark for their grade level. We have 17% of our students who are struggling. And with DIBLS, these kids who are just below the benchmark are listed in a category called strategic. And that's what the yellow area indicates. So they have 17% of their students who are just below the benchmark having some difficulty not quite where they need to be. And then they have 5% of their students who are at the lowest level. And they are the most needy as far as being far below the benchmark. And they are categorized as intensive. Now, this particular spread here is really what we would want to see within a school. We like to see about 80% of our students. So we're around 80% being at benchmark. And then we would expect to see about 15% of our kids at strategic and about 5% as intensive. Every school will not fall into that. But it is a good target to shoot for. Because in well-functioning schools where core instruction is strong, we would expect to see about 20% of our students need additional instruction through our tier two and tier three interventions. So a school that has data that looks very much like this, who has 78% of their students being successful, this school is ready to put in place tier two and tier three interventions. Now, if we have a school that looks more like this, then we need to take a different focus. This school has 21% of their students who are at benchmark. 26 who are just below the benchmark. And 53% who are very far below the benchmark and intensive. And this may seem very exaggerated, but it really isn't. There are many schools that this is where they fall when they administer a universal screening tool. What we need to think about with this is that if 53% of our students plus 26, so we have 79% of our students who are not meeting the benchmark, we don't need to put in place interventions at this point. We need to work on our core instruction and make core instruction more appropriate for our students. So for a school that we looked at universal screening data and found this type of scenario, I would spend a great deal of time working on the quality of core instruction with the items that we just looked at, a couple slides back, or just looking at what does instruction need to be within the school. So this data from DIBLES is very easy to see that this is phoning segmentation fluency. So this is one of the skills that kids have to have to be successful with phonemic awareness and phonics. And this would indicate to us that our instruction in this particular skill in our early grades, kindergarten specifically, is not strong and we need to work on that instruction. And it might be a curricular issue. It might be an instructional issue. We would just have to really drill down and find out what is going on in the classroom and why our kids are not being successful there. So as we're looking at our data and we see that we have students who are being unsuccessful and we hopefully have a manageable number of students who need interventions such as the 20% that we, or 22% that we had in school A. Then we begin choosing targeted interventions for those students. So this would be in our tiers two and three. The interventions would be ones that our research base that we know are designed to work and have worked with students with the specific deficits that our students have. And we would implement those the way they were designed. If I have a research base intervention and I try to implement it in my school but I either don't like the way it was designed or I don't have the resources. And I just change the procedures and I change how I'm teaching the program or the intervention. But I'm no longer using a research base intervention. I've ordered it down. So I had to be very careful that I am implementing the intervention with fidelity the way it was designed because that's where I can expect to have progress. And again, we will talk more about fidelity a little bit later. As we're looking at interventions, one of the most common questions that I'm asked is what kind of interventions. And we mentioned this earlier. What kind of interventions are we looking at for putting in place with our students? And I've given you here some resources and you can pull up the copy of the PowerPoint later on and be able to go through all of these different websites and look at the resources. But these all give different kinds of intervention strategies as well as intervention programs. And the difference in what I'm referring to there are strategies are just ways of teaching students how to obtain the skill. A program is built on a strategy. So I can purchase a program but strategies can be used with whatever materials I may already have. So the resources that you see here have both programs and strategies. They have reviews. They have recommendations. And some of them have actual interventions, research-based interventions that can be used with students. So when we look at our interventions, we're just wanting to make sure that whatever we're putting in place is appropriate for the student. And when that student doesn't respond it to you too, then we're going to provide additional instruction in a more intensive fashion with the tier three. And just putting more time perhaps, a different intervention that is more intensive or simply giving students a different type of instruction than they've had before. Now, I see that Andrea has a question to clarify strategies versus programs. And I will try to explain that a little bit clearer. We look at research-based strategies. There are many strategies that have a specific focus of one of the areas of reading and the area of math or even behavioral strategies. And it is a specific method for teaching students what they do not know. But they are not tied to a specific program. So one of those strategies would be repeated reading. Repeated reading is a very strong strategy. One of the strongest that we have for teaching reading fluency. And there is a specific method that you go through in using repeated readings. And so when we teach repeated reading to increase fluency, we would just simply use that strategy with materials that we already have available. Or we could purchase a program that is based on the strategy of repeated reading that already has all of our materials laid out for us. So that would be a program. A program based on repeating readings is called Read Naturally. And it has everything there already done for you. It has your assessment built in. Everything is there. So the strategy is what researchers have put in place that they say if you follow this step, this step, this step, this strategy teaching this student this specific strategy and these skills, then students will be able to understand and will improve their fluency. When you look at the program Read Naturally, then they have their materials that you're using. So hopefully that makes it a little bit easier to understand. And Karla has put up a link that I like to use in my workshop showing repeated reading being used in a classroom. And it's a very good example of repeated reading. So thank you, Karla, for putting that up. Sorry, Kara. And when we are looking at... Sorry, I was sorry to interrupt you. When we're looking at increasing the intensity for tier three, we can do that in one of two ways. We can change the intervention as I said earlier. We can give more time. We can put students into smaller groups. All of that will help to increase the amount of instruction students receive. But we can also increase support by giving additional interventions. Sometimes we put two or three interventions together. Or instead of just getting an intervention in reading comprehension, I might need an overall comprehensive reading program. And oftentimes we look at those in tier three. So as you're looking at progressing from tier two to tier three, one of the signals that students need more intensive instruction might be that they don't need just a strategy working on one or two areas of reading, but they need an overall reading program. We oftentimes see this with older students, adolescents, who are having significant reading problems. And they don't need just one strategy. They might need many strategies put together for them. And so we might can do that through that increasing intensity. Sometimes we have students who have been identified as having a disability who are served in this intensive tier here and get a very intensive instruction. But I don't want you to equate tier three with any sort of service of any kind, not special ed, not anything else, because it really has nothing to do with labels. It has to do with the level of intensity of support that a student needs. All right, any additional questions about research-based interventions in that first essential element there? So I can see Heather's just typing in a question. Kara, I was just wondering, did you want to give people time to look at those websites or maybe build that in at the end of this time? Yeah, I was kind of looking at the clock and thought we might need to wait until the end if that's okay. That sounds good. And likewise, too, we can also definitely- I'll put the link into the wiki where you can download Kara's PowerPoint. It's just saved as a PDF, which will have all these links on it. So after the webinar today. And likewise, I can see Heather's just asked as well if we'll be getting the archived recording. So the archived recording will also be housed here on this erlc.wikispaces.com forward slash RTI space. So again, you can watch it back. You can also go to that website. And at the bottom where it says handouts and resources, you can download the PDF that says presenter slides. So again, you'll have all those links and you'll have Kara's presentation there. She's kind of agreed to share it with us. Okay. So I'll pass it back to you, Kara. Okay. All right. Now we're going to begin looking at database decision making and the assessment that is specifically designed for RTI, the first being universal screening. And that is what we get to all students within a school. There are exceptions to this, especially in secondary. I'll share some examples of what we do in secondary in just a minute. What we're looking for is a curriculum based measurement tool that is very quick and easy to administer. And when we're talking about amount of time for administration, many of the tools specifically