Sean Chang

SPED 444

RTI Part 1
The classroom I am in is a 4th grade classroom with an even split of 13
boys and 13 girls. The students are mostly middle working class and mostly
from military families. Three of the classroom walls are used to display
student work and standards and the fourth is all windows. The students are
split into 4 desk clusters or mokupuni or islands, with each island having a
designated konohiki or cluster leader. It is the job of the konohiki to
ensure that all the students on their mokupuni have turned in their
homework and whether or not they are eating home or school lunch.
The curriculum for Language Arts is the Wonders program which they
do on a regular basis right after recess. The curriculum for math is
Harcortt math which includes textbooks, workbooks, and online resources
for enrichment and assessments. The Wonders reading program and
Harcortt math are both research based.
There are a number of effective teaching practices that happen on a
daily basis in this classroom. For reading, one of the big pushes for the
fourth grade at Webling Elementary school is effective reading strategies.
My teacher is not only teaching how to read, but how to approach difficult
topics like summarization and citing evidence. There is a big push for
comprehension over being able to read fluently. For math, the students split
into homogenized groups based on ability. My teacher teaches the lowest
level and stresses formative assessments to her students. She constantly

Sean Chang
SPED 444

has them proving their knowledge and having them explain their thinking to
stress the importance of understanding.
Another thing Webling and especially my teacher stresses is
differentiation and being able to reach all students, regardless of learning
ability. My teacher is constantly differentiating her lessons and assignments
for her students. Some examples include allowing more time for struggling
readers to read, or giving more advanced research topics to the gifted
students. She also does things like allow for more time for students with
poor fine motor skills to write on timed tests and gives tests with more room
to write to these students. In my own classroom, I want to try to use all of
these tier 1 interventions. I think my teacher runs a very effective classroom
with very effective interventions and differentiations and I plan to use a lot of
her strategies and skills in my one classroom.
For my universal screening, I chose to use a math multiplication facts
speed test. I feel that knowing your single-digit multiplication tables is
essential by the fourth grade and I think this would be a great screener to
find students that are struggling with their single-digit multiplication tables.
My universal assessment included 20 problems of single digit multiplication.
Even though my class is the slower math class of the three, the students are
still expected to know their single-digit multiplication facts. The students are
given 4 minutes to complete the 20 problems. After the four minutes are up,
the students switch papers and correct them. After compiling the data, the

Sean Chang
SPED 444

class average is 72%. I identified the three lowest students who all scored a
20%, and out of those three, I chose one out of the three because that
student was also in my homeroom class, therefore giving me more
opportunities to work with this student. Out of 20 problems, this student
only filled in 6 blanks, and out of those 6, only got 4 correct.
I know that the next unit planned is fractions and that having
knowledge of multiplication facts is essential for factoring and finding
common denominators and I have chosen this student to implement tier 2
practices on.
RTI Part 2
After identifying the student, I worked with her one-on-one every
Wednesday and Thursday at recess for 4 weeks from March 30 to April 23. I
played multiplication fact games with this student every recess and worked
on concepts like fact families and taught her different methods to
remember her multiplication facts (ex: 9s on your fingers).
On week 1, I used flash cards and played a form of go fish with only
the 2s and 3s facts. At first, the student really struggled, so on Wednesday,
we worked on knowing our 2s and 3s facts. On Thursday, we played the
game. It was slow at first, but she eventually got it, and could identify the 2s
facts up to 2x5, but I had to help her on the rest. On her assessment for the
week, she did a little better than her first try, and scored a 30%.

Sean Chang
SPED 444

On week 2, I used fact family snapshots (photos of fact families) and

we played a dame called Line-up where she had to identify the product
after seeing the factors of the 2s, 3s, and 4s. She seemed to latch on to
this concept and could tell me the fact families for all of the 2s. We started
on the 3s on Thursday, but she had a very hard time with them. On her
assessment that week, she scored a 25%.
On week 3, I tried to duplicate the prior weeks success and I started
with fact family snapshots on Wednesday. She started to get the 3s, so for
Thursday, I built off the Line-up game by giving her a missing number
worksheet, where it had one factor and the product and she had to try to
figure out the missing factor. I had her only do the 2s and 3s and if she saw
any that she knew, to do those too. She didnt get a lot of the 3s, or many of
the other problems, but she got 7 out of the 10 2s facts. But to my surprise,
on her assessment that week, she got a 20%.
In the fourth week, I had no idea what to do. She could get most of her
2s, but her 3s and beyond were still out of her grasp. I started with 2s facts
flash cards and after going through those, tried the 3s, still to no success. I
also tried showing her the fact families for 3s, but it just wouldnt click in her
head. I thought it might just be the 3s that were giving her trouble and I
tried to teach her one of my personal favorites, the 9s trick with your fingers.
This proved to be too far out of her grasp and I went back to working on 2s
and 3s. On her assessment that week, she again scored 20%.

Sean Chang
SPED 444

We worked and played for about 8-10 minutes twice a week for four
weeks and every Thursday, I gave her another version of the assessment.
While playing the games and doing the exercises, I felt like this student was
making progress in knowing her multiplication facts. She could easily recall
the entire twos fact family and was slowly making progress on her 3s.
Unfortunately, this did not translate on paper. On the first week, she
improved slightly, scoring a 30%. The next week, she scored a 25%, and for
the next two weeks, she scored 20%. The results didnt match what she
could do verbally.
I asked my teacher and she said that this particular student had
trouble getting engaged in the content, no matter what the subject. She said
that if you sit with her one on one, she can start to grasp the concept, but in
a classroom setting she has trouble focusing. I know that it is entirely up to
the parents to get her tested, but both my mentor teacher and I came to the
conclusion that she may qualify for services and that she would benefit
greatly from having one to one help.
Below is the students weekly assessment, with column 1 being week
1s assessment, column 2 for week 2, column 3 for week 3, and column 4 for
week 4. Also, column one was used as the universal screening for the entire
class.

Sean Chang
SPED 444

RTI Part 3
Based on my assessment, this student could definitely benefit from
one-on-one instruction in learning her math multiplication facts, but also in
math in general. Concepts of two and three digit addition and subtraction
are difficult for this student and fractions are also proving to be a problem. I
believe that one-to-one instruction would benefit this student because I feel
that her lack of understanding stems from her inability to focus on and be
engaged in learning content. Having an aide or even a skills trainer to help
her stay on task may help this student to learn better.

Sean Chang
SPED 444

Beyond that, the student needs help with learning in general. In

looking at her work in other subjects, I think that the problem is much larger
than just not knowing her multiplication facts. I think that this student is
struggling in most other core content areas and could use tier 2 instruction in
reading and possibly tier 3 instruction in writing as well as in math.