Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Merrimack School District uses the Response to Intervention (RtI) model to identify
students at risk for academic or behavioral intervention. According to the National Center on
Response to Intervention (2010), RtI is not an instructional practice, but rather a prevention
based approach that informs educators about how best to teach their students. Each school in
our district approaches RtI differently; however, all schools use data to inform their decisions.
At Reeds Ferry, we begin the school year with a meeting with each teacher called, Meet my
Learner. Each Meet my Learner meeting is attended by our principal, assistant principal,
school counselor, special education coordinator, behavior specialist, the classroom teacher and
myself. My role in these meetings is to create the schedules, display the academic data and to
listen as each teacher talks briefly about each of his or her students. Teachers are provided
guidelines for their discussions, and by the end of the meeting, students are identified as red,
yellow, or no color. A student identified as yellow means that this student will be on a watch; a
student identified as red will be added to the RtI agenda, where we will meet and discuss this
students needs in greater detail. The remaining students will continue in Tier 1 instruction and
supports.
Once all of the Meet my Learner meetings have taken place, and each student has been
identified and discussed, I will then create the RtI agenda. The purpose of these meetings is to
discuss each student identified as red, individually. The RtI team consists of the students
coordinator, behavior specialist, two additional classroom teachers, two special education
teachers, and me. As an RtI team, we brainstorm and identify interventions to be used to
support the student academically and emotionally. The progress of the yellow students is
discussed at grade level PLTs. Sometimes, these students make adequate progress with Tier 1
classroom instruction and no interventions. Other times, these students are moved to red, and
Throughout the school year, all students receiving interventions are progress monitored.
RtI meetings are held every six to eight weeks to review data and modify interventions as
needed. When multiple interventions have proved unsuccessful, the team will refer the student
References