High Expectations & Providing Intervention

Having high expectations for your classroom learners, is a fine goal, however, you must be able to communicate those high expectations to your students, in order to see actual results. "Teachers and students may begin the year with excitement and high expectations for a great academic year, but somewhere along the line some kids fall behind and others seem to never achieve. The teacher must have good communication skills if she is going to help the students have a successful start of the year and stay on the right track. Procedures for communicating high expectations for elementary school students help more kids achieve their goals." (Hanly, 2014)

Some of the procedures a teacher might use are:

• Clear Communication All expectations should be shown, demonstrated or modeled, and listed clearly.
• Children & Families Get parents involved from the start! Handouts, emails, and other communications should regularly be used to indicate clear expectations, reinforce those e pec tattoos, and note progress with constructive feedback, as it is happening.
• Offer Praise Praise is a powerful motivator. It can (when used appropriately, and is both specific and genuine), improve student behavior, and inform students at the same time (in a less obvious way) of the teachers' expectations.
• Respect & Support Language used by teacher should be carefully self-monitored, so as not to distance students who feel less confident in their abilities or may be struggling. At the same time as acknowledging the difficulty of the work however, a teacher should express faith in students' capability to meet expectations with perseverance and effort, and find ways to help them in that process by providing frequent assessment/constructive feedback, such as with RTI.

According to the RTI Action Network online, "Response to Intervention or RTI, is a multi-tiered approach to helping struggling learners, in which high quality instruction and universal screening of children, both occur in the same general education classroom." (RTI Action Network, 2011) Author Ben Johnson, in his 2012 article called Olympic Gold in the Classroom: RTI, from Edutopia online, provided the analogy of weak swimmer who, if left by himself, might sink. However, with an attentive coach providing additional training and practice, the student can be retested to show improvement and be able to swim on their own. If not enough progress has been made after this assistance, the coach can further provide extra conditioning, strength building, and personal coaching etc. and repeat. If none of the coaches' efforts have enabled the swimmer to work towards independence, the coach may have to defer to medical staff or other professionals regarding a deeper issue. In any case, the author suggests that "the key to successful RTI, is quick turn-around between noticing the problem, intervening, and testing the effect of the intervention." This assertion organically flows back into my initial premise: having and communicating higher expectations to students. To achieve this lofty goal successfully, teachers must use strategic measures to make known what the expectations are, and reinforce those expectations with assessment and support.

Sources/Resources

How to Communicate High Expectations for Elementary Students. (2014) Global Post. By Samantha Hanly of Demand Media. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/communicate-high-expectations-elementary-students-3650.html

Response to Intervention: A Tiered Approach to Instructing All Students. (2008) YouTube. By AtlasInitiative. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://youtu.be/nkK1bT8ls0M

What Is RTI? (2011) RTI Action Network. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/what 

Olympic Gold in The Classroom: RTI. (2012) Edutopia. By Ben Johnson. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/intervention-rti-benefits-ben-johnson

How to Implement Response to Intervention at the Secondary Level. (2011) Edutopia. by PJ Caposey. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/response-to-intervention-secondary-school-philip-caposey

Response to Intervention: A Primer for Parents. (2007) National Association of a school Psychologists. By Mary Beth Klotz and Andrea Canter. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.nasponline.org/resources/handouts/revisedPDFs/rtiprimer.pdf