Thank you Maureen!  What's so hard about using explicit, direct,
multisensory instruction - right from the beginning.   Your last paragraph
should be sent to every college developing teachers.  Until that day comes,
all teachers can learn a methodology that works.  They can go to the
International Dyslexia Association - just to get started.
Lucille Cuttler



 -----Original Message-----
From: learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of Maureen Carro
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:12 PM
To: The Learning Disabilities Discussion List
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4237] Re: Response to Intervention (RTI)


  Here is what I thought the "tiered system" of "Response to Intervention"
entailed:


  1.  The classroom teacher notices the student is struggling in the
classroom.
  2.  More specialized classroom help is provided as the first intervention.
  3. If the student continues to struggle in spite of the classroom
intervention, he/she is referred to more intense, small group instruction.
  4.  If the student still fails to "respond to the intervention", they  are
referred to one-on-one, very specialized, intense, instruction.


  My question:  Is this "fourth tier" struggling student not feeling like
he/she is failing???!!   It seems to me that they now have to "fail" three
times to get the right help!


  For heaven's sake..... why not give every child the direct explicit
instruction in the structure of the language..... starting with the
alphabetic principle, moving to syllables, words, phrases, sentences,
paragraphs, and discourse.... that is needed to successfully read and
comprehend text in the first place!




  Maureen Carro, MS, ET
  Academic Learning Solutions
  Alamo, CA
  mcarro at lmi.net






  On Nov 3, 2009, at 2:17 AM, HKerr at aol.com wrote:


    The RTI initiative was originally, I believe, aimed precisely at
adopting a different approach than the deficit one. The idea was originally,
according to articles by people like Jack Fletcher, specifically to enable
the whole environment to be considered and for us to move away from the
assumption that 'failure' must mean deficit; that we must always seek to
find a fault in the student, even his neurology. Recent literature seems to
show that RTI has been subverted and is now being deployed as a measure
which is used to 'identify, a 'deficit' in exactly the way the discredited
discrepancy criterion was in the bad old days. For discrepancy read RTI, in
other words, which had not been the point originally, as I understood it.

    Hugo

    at: http://www.hugokerr.info

    "We're here to help each other get through this thing - whatever it
might be." (Kurt Vonnegut)
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