Intervention Pathways: How to Find and Fix Common Classroom Academic Problems

The Common Core Standards have raised the bar for student academic achievement in our nation's schools. Yet struggling students often present a cascade of issues that interfere with academic success--problems such as limited basic academic skills; lack of cognitive strategies; and poor organization or other executive-functioning skills. This full-day workshop trains teachers, support staff, and administrators to develop academic intervention plans to help underperforming students to reach their full potential. Educators completing the training will have the skills necessary to put together high-quality RTI Tier 1 classroom intervention Plans.

This training is structured as a series of 'intervention pathways' that show participants how to build classroom capacity to carry out high-quality academic interventions --by (1) implementing elements of strong core instruction, (2) creating a bank of interventions for common academic problems such as reading comprehension, (3) making simple classroom accommodations available to students who need them, (4) promoting student participation and responsibility for intervention plans, and (5) building a collaborative school culture to assist teachers in creating, documenting, and tracking the progress of academic interventions.

Participants will learn how to:

• identify elements of strong core instruction that directly benefits struggling learners. 
• use the Instructional Hierarchy to identify and clearly describe academic problems.
• select the right research-based intervention ideas to address reading, writing, and vocabulary deficits.
• create customized 'academic survival skills' checklists to teach students executive-functioning skills such as homework completion, organization, and time management.
• teach work-planning skills to help students to become self-managing learners.
• conduct "can't do-won't do" assessments to determine if academic underperformance is due to a skill or motivation deficit.
• use specific ideas to motivate students to engage in academic tasks.
• adopt class-wide instructional adjustments ('accommodations') that promote a flexible, responsive learning environment.
• document interventions in a convenient, flexible format suitable for use during student conferences, parent meetings, and other problem-solving settings.
• access free online websites with additional research-based intervention ideas.

Training participants will receive a copy of the Classroom Academic Problems: Intervention Pathways Checklist, a step-by-step guide on how to efficiently identify and remediate common academic deficits. Participants will also have access to a custom web page containing links and resources shared at the workshop.