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Cornell Elementary School's enrollment consists of 440 students in preschool through third grade. Nearly 43 percent (187) of those students receive free or reduced lunch. Thirty-two students are served in special education, and five are English language learners. Cornell Elementary's responsiveness-to-intervention model uses the following structure: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and special education.
Within the core curriculum, progress monitoring is recommended
For these students, progress is monitored weekly using DIBELS measures. School staff assesses kindergartners' initial sound fluency in the fall and their phoneme segmentation fluency in the winter. For first-graders, nonsense word fluency is assessed in the fall; oral reading fluency is assessed in the spring. School staff use oral reading fluency measures for second- and third-graders three times a year.
Progress monitoring in the core curriculum will be discontinued for those students who score at or above the benchmark performance level. School staff will further analyze the performance of students who score below the benchmark performance, with the goal of matching instruction to student need. These students may remain in the core curriculum with changes to instruction/practice or may be placed in core plus supplemental support.
Options considered when planning supplemental support and matching students' needs with the appropriate type and intensity of resources and instruction include the following:
For students who receive supplemental instruction, progress is monitored often twice each week rather than only once as with the core curriculum. School staff use DIBELS measures to assess kindergartners' initial sound fluency in the fall and their phoneme segmentation fluency in the winter. Staff members assess first-graders' nonsense word fluency in the fall and oral reading fluency in the spring. For second-graders, oral reading fluency is assessed; for third-graders, both oral reading fluency and retell fluency are assessed.
For students whose slope of performance is on the goal line or who are scoring at or above the benchmark performance level, two options are considered:
For students who have four consecutive reading probe data points below the established goal line, who are scoring below the benchmark performance, or whose slope of performance falls below the goal line (trend line), three options are considered:
Options considered when planning instructional support and interventions for struggling students include the following:
Follow-up coaching and support. For Cornell Elementary School, one of the greatest challenges continues to be in the area of follow-up coaching and support for supplemental and intervention level instruction in vocabulary and comprehension.
Fidelity. An additional challenge for this school staff is ensuring continued fidelity of implementation of supplemental and intervention level instruction over time.
Time. Finding additional instruction and practice time (core plus supplemental plus intervention) without sacrificing other core academic subjects remains a challenge.
Funding for NRCLD is provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special
Education Programs. Award No. H324U010004. Opinions expressed herein are those of the National
Research Center on Learning Disabilities and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S.
Department of Education.
© 2007 National Research Center on Learning Disabilities
Last Updated: November 19, 2007
Contact: nrcld@ku.edu