RTI Guide: Making It Work, Strategies = Solutions

RTI Guide: Making it Work is a comprehensive resource that helps educators understand the relationship between processing deficits and academic skill deficits, and identifies a wide selection of interventions for targeting these processing deficits and improving academic outcomes. Authors Concetta Russo, Ellenmorris Tiegerman, and Christine Radziewicz, are all interventionists who have had success using the strategies put forth in the guide to remediate deficits in the different areas of processing and improve subject-specific skills.

The guide focuses on the most common areas of academic underperformance (reading, math, spelling, and written language) and the processing deficits that underpin underperformance in these areas (auditory processing, visual processing and language processing). The guide also includes a section on behavior problems, which also frequently trigger the implementation of RTI (Response To Intervention). 

The authors simplify the complex process of implementing RTI, providing team members and interventionists with step-by-step guidance at all stages of the process, including

• Identifying a student’s problem/deficit
• Determining appropriate Tier 1 interventions
• Monitoring and assessing the student’s response
• Selecting Tier 2/3 interventions as necessary
• Creating an action plan for the classroom

RTI Guide: Making it Work includes eleven sample RTI forms that can be used by RTI teams to document meetings and monitor progress as required for determining special education eligibility. Forms include

• Checklist for RTI Teams
• RTI Initial Team Meeting Minutes (for Tiers 1, 2 & 3)
• RTI strategies (for Tiers 1, 2 & 3)
• RTI documentation form: Student interventions/strategies (for Tiers 1, 2 & 3)
• RTI Team report

 Use of this guide will equip a wide array of interventionists (teachers, speech/language pathologists, occupational therapists, etc.) with targeted intervention strategies that truly equal effective solutions.