Greetings!
We hope 2023 is off to a good start for you! The Brookline Literacy Coalition started the year with a very informative presentation and discussion on January 8th with Dr. Nancy J. Nelson Fien, an expert in school-wide support systems and literacy instructional practices to help teachers meet the needs of all students. We are grateful to Dr. Nelson and to all who attended and expressed interest!
In this newsletter, we will share:
- The recording and presentation slides from Dr. Nelson’s talk
- Highlights and key takeaways
- Further links and resources
- Information about the relevance to current initiatives in the Public Schools of Brookline
Recording and Presentation Slides:
Dr. Nelson covered a lot of ground! She explained the essential features of multi-tiered systems of literacy support and their rationale; described what literacy instruction across tiers should look like; and provided the example of Enhanced Core Reading Instruction, a set of teaching routines designed to work with any core reading curriculum to make the instruction more robust and effective.
You can watch or listen to Dr. Nelson’s presentation here and view the presentation slides here.
Highlights and Takeaways:
- Response to Intervention, the academic arm of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) is designed as a preventative approach. It’s a way to take action early and give students what they need, saving years of struggle and preventing negative downstream effects.
- Response to Intervention is designed to be flexible. Decisions are not high-stakes and students can flow flexibly through tiers of support as needed.
- Response to Intervention is not only about using tiers. The instruction provided at all tiers must be evidence-based. What does that mean? First and foremost, it should be explicit and systematic. It should include:
- clear learning goals
- small steps that move from simple to more complex within all components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension)
- plenty of practice opportunities
- immediate feedback
- checks for understanding
- Teachers need to provide the most high-leverage skills at various points in students’ reading development. Some skills are more important at different time points than others. Dr. Nelson shared a helpful ‘broad timeline’ (see slides).
- As Dr. Nelson said, “We don’t have rigorous research evidence for every single thing; but we always want to make sure that we are using the most rigorous research evidence available to inform our practice and using that as a starting point for instruction.”
- In addition to being a way to prevent reading failure, federal law allows for the RTI process to be used to determine if a student is eligible for special education under the category of a Specific Learning Disability. Child Study Teams have an important role to play in meeting regularly to monitor progress, review data, assign students to different tiers, and make adjustments.
- The level of support is determined by performance on valid and reliable assessments such as DIBELS 8. Students who are at or above Benchmark are not ‘students who don’t need anything’. They still need high-quality Tier 1 (whole classroom instruction). The risk levels on DIBELS determine who needs supplemental Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention. One of the strongest evidence-based recommendations is that students who are not responding to high-quality Tier 1 instruction should get small group daily, explicit instruction in foundational skills.
- Communication to parents and caregivers should be timely, clear, and comprehensive. Families should hear not only about their child’s performance on assessments but also about what their performance means, what the goals are for their child, and what is the plan at school to address their needs. This needs to be an early and ongoing conversation.
Further Links and Resources
- Dr. Nelson is Deputy Director of the National Center on Improving Literacy (NCIL). The primary mission is to support schools, teachers, families-anyone who works with children pre-k through grade 12- to raise literacy outcomes, with a focus on those at risk. NCIL provides professional development sessions and technical assistance. Their efforts aim to increase general awareness, as well as to provide more targeted support. People can request help via their website, and the team will identify a service provider. Intensive technical assistance can be provided to bring in staff and experts to provide training and resources that could also benefit other stakeholders. This assistance is free. The NCIL website also contains a wide variety of information for families and schools and we highly recommend visiting and exploring.
- Dr. Nelson mentioned a local research opportunity, the Reach Every Reader Assessment Project, that is currently open to schools and teachers in districts like Brookline and Newton. This initiative is focused on developing more accurate early assessment methods. For more information and to participate, contact njnelson@bu.edu and kaseyt@bu.edu.
- In her discussion of evidence-based practices, Dr. Nelson referred to the practice guides published by the What Works Clearinghouse of the Institute of Education Sciences. These are free, accessible, practical guides that we highly recommend to teachers and school leaders.
Relevance to Initiatives in PSB
In Brookline schools, a disproportionate number of Black students qualify for special education services as students with specific learning disabilities. In an effort to plan action steps to mitigate this disproportionality, the district commissioned a review on the use of Response to Intervention within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support and Child Study Teams. The review, conducted by The New Teacher Center, included site visits, interviews, and observations. They provided recommendations on both short-term and long-term priorities. Immediate recommendations are that the district:
- Review findings at all levels
- Provide professional development for leaders with the goal of coherence throughout the district
- Review core curriculum implementation and practices with the goal of coherence throughout the district
- Review current assessments and use them to make good decisions
- Involve families and caregivers
This review was summarized and discussed at the School Committee meeting on 12/15/22. You can find the recording here. The presentation begins around 1:48. Minutes from the meeting here (scroll to 5b for a summary of this presentation). You can view the slides here.
The district-wide data from the ongoing DIBELS/mClass assessments in K-2 and the formulation of questions in preparation for a review of the district’s approach to literacy are also related initiatives that we are following closely.
Lastly, in case you missed the news that was shared in Dr. Guillory’s newsletter, we want to let you know that the district has hired Dr. Grace Wai as Interim Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning. They aim to select someone for the permanent position in mid-March for a July 2022 start.
We are working on more events and projects for the coming months and we will share details in our next newsletter. So, please stay tuned and, as always, share any thoughts, questions, or ideas.