My Story...
This year in my role as an Itinerant working with preschool special educations students, I also have been in charge of our Response to Intervention (RTI) or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) or I like to call it problem solving. Figuring out which students within the classroom need more support or interventions and possibly an IEP. For this role, I meet with the students in small groups weekly to support them in their area of need. I have three different MTSS groups that I see.
Intervention Group Skills
These areas include:
- Math (specific to counting 1:1 correspondence/number identification)
- Literacy (specific to phonological awareness)
- Social-Emotional (social-emotional understanding and relationships)
Structure of Intervention Groups
Here’s how my groups are run:
- Listening Song: we start by singing the listening song by Second step
- Story: interactive story focused on the theme the classroom is learning, along with the skill I am targeting (counting, sounds, segmenting words, feelings, etc)
- Activity: I pick a turn taking game for the activity, so the students can also work on sharing and turn taking with each other.
- Sensory Exploration: this is their favorite part! I use a variety of sensory activities such as playdough, beans, pasta, kinetic sand, cotton balls, paper, etc and incorporate the skills into the sensory exploration.
We use the DRDP measure to get a baseline of the three areas and then identify the students who are below expected age level. I see the students weekly in each area to help provide interventions. I provide the same structure to the group and have a visual schedule to show the children a clear beginning and end. The structure provides predictability for the students and they know how long each activity will be. I try to make all activities engaging and fun so they enjoy coming to see me each week.