Teacher Help: Ideas for Working With Struggling Students

Jim Wright presented to faculty from Longwood Jr. High School on 9, 17, and 23 January 2014 on the topic RTI for Secondary Schools: Teacher Tools to Help Struggling Learners.

PPT in PDF Format: RTI for Secondary Schools: Teacher Tools to Help Struggling Learners [1]

Behavior Report Card Maker [2]. This application creates custom teacher rating forms to easily track in-class behaviors on a daily basis.

Below are common teacher concerns about struggling junior-high students, along with sample solutions.

Strong Core Instruction:

DIRECT INSTRUCTION CHECKLIST: How To: Deliver Direct Instruction in General-Education Classrooms [3].

Reading Comprehension: The student has limited understanding of what is read.

Ask-Read-Tell: [4] The student engages in pre-reading, reading, and post-reading activities to boost comprehension.
Question Generation: [5] The student summarizes main ideas of a passage on note-cards along with associated review-questions for use as a study tool.

Work Planning: The student lacks work-planning skills to complete assignments in an efficient and timely manner.

Work-Plan Training. [6] The student is trained in a planning sequence. Plan, Work, Evaluate, Adjust.

Non-Compliance: The student does not readily comply with teacher requests.

'Catalytic Comments' [7]: Here are 10 teacher communication tools that can help to increase student compliance.

Academic Survival Skills: The student lacks organization or other 'academic survival' skills necessary for school success.

Academic Survival Skills Checklist Maker [8]: The teacher uses this free application to break a global survival skill into a checklist of specific subskills. (See example [9].)

Poor Motivation: The student is unmotivated to complete schoolwork.

Six Reasons Why Students are Unmotivated (and What to Do). [10] Review the six most common reasons for poor motivation and how teachers can increase student engagement.

How To: Create a Written Record of Classroom Interventions' [11]
Classroom Intervention Planning Sheet [12] [in RTF/MS Word format]. This 1-page form is an organizer to help teachers to easily document Tier 1 (classroom) interventions.

Intervention Planner for Academics [13]	Manual [14]	Sample Reading-Fluency Interventions [15]
Intervention Planner for Behavior [16]	Manual [17]	Sample Relationship- Building Strategies [18]
Accommodations Finder [19]	Manual [20]	Sample Task-Accommodation Strategies [21]
Academic Survival Skills Checklist Maker [8]	Manual [22]	Sample Homework-Skills Checklist [9]

RTI Information Sources from the New York State Education Department and the NYS RTI TAC
	New York State Education Department Guidance Document on RTI. [23] Released in October 2010, this NYSED guidance document provides a guide to schools at any grade level in how to structure their RTI model and services.
	NYS RTI Technical Assistance Center [24]. This site provides resources and guidance for NYS schools on implementation of RTI.
	NYSED 2008 RTI Guidance Memo. [25] This memo presents the main points of the Regents Policy Framework on RTI for schools.
	NYSED Part 100 Regulations on RTI. [26] This subsection of Part 100.2 (NYSED regulations) describes expectations for RTI for all schools.
	RTI Readiness Checklist. [27] This checklist from the NYS RTI Technical Assistance Center allows schools to self-administer a quick 'RTI Readiness Check'.