University of Central Arkansas Mashburn Center for Learning
The Mashburn Center for Learning creates resources and opportunities that encourage Arkansas teachers to promote a sense of purpose, hope, academic achievement, and resilience for all learners as they experience barriers to learning.
Website: https://uca.edu/else/mashburncenter/
Twitter: @AALIMashburn
Connecting SIM to RTI Through the Content Literacy Continuum | B. Keith Ben-Hanania Lenz
Since the development work of the Strategic Instruction Model in the 1970’s, the focus has always been on helping students with differing abilities, including students with disabilities, meet the demands of and be successful in the general education setting. As a result, a strategic approach to instruction for students who struggle with learning content as they pass through the upper elementary curriculum and into the rigorous secondary curriculum, looks different compared to how it is implemented before they enter 4th grade. In 4th grade the curriculum begins to shift from developing the strategies and skills that are needed to learning content to applying the strategies and skills to learn content. This shift is characterized by an increase in expectations for students to learn content independently. In fact, the decrease in attention to how to learn is accompanied with an increased assumption that any necessary strategies and skills that are needed to learn content will be independently acquired by the student as a result of increased exposure and independent effort on the part of the student.
However, research does support this assumption. Numerous studies have shown that once specific instruction in the use of literacy strategies and skills to learn content stops, literacy achievement (i.e., reading, writing, mathematics) significantly slows down or plateaus. For example, if a student leaves 6th grade reading at the 3rdt grade level, we can predict, with only content area tutoring and accommodations and no targeted literacy instruction, that student will graduate from high school at about the 4th grade level. (Deshler & Lenz, 1990).
With this likely outcome in mind, we can begin to think about what kind of interventions should be part of a content-centered secondary curriculum to support students who struggle to learn complex content. To address this challenge researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) developed a framework specifically designed to help both general and special secondary educators plan and make decisions to increase student success. This framework is called the Content Learning Continuum (CLC) (Lenz, Ehren, Deshler, 2005). The CLC organizes the different interventions in SIM into an implementation and decision-making framework. In addition, the SMARTER Instructional Cycle (Lenz, 2016; Lenz, Bulgren, Kissam, & Taymans, 2004) helps teachers integrate collaboration, assessment, and progress monitoring into a cohesive support system to guide conversations around instructional decision
However, Response to Intervention (RtI) is the current decision-making framework used in schools. So, how does the CLC fit with the implementation of the RtI framework? Similar to the ideas associated with the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework that emphasizes the integration of assessment, providing differing tiers (or a continuum) of instructional intensity required for effective instruction, and guiding decision making, the CLC emphasizes the integration of secondary content-area assessment, providing a continuum (or tiers) of instruction linked to being successful in meeting the demands of the general education content-centered curriculum, and guiding decisions about secondary evidence-based interventions across a continuum of instruction . The key point here is that the CLC provides a content-centered way of implementing RTI in secondary schools.
To help us understand how RTI and CLC are linked, let’s use a graphic organizer! Figure 1 shows a comparison of the tiers in RtI (on the left) and the levels of instruction in the CLC (on the right). As one might predict, RtI focuses on decision making around three tiers of instruction.. Now, let’s take a look at the right column which depicts the levels and types of instruction provided in the CLC framework. Levels 1 & 2 of the CLC are aligned with RtI Tier I instruction. Level 3 in the CLC framework aligns with RtI Tier II instruction. The most intensive levels of CLC are Levels 4 & 5, which align with RtI Tier III. Finally, on the right of the five CLC levels, printed vertically, are Language Support interventions and Strategic Tutoring. These are listed because both content-relevant tutoring and language support are needed for students across tiers or levels of instruction.
(See Figure 1. Comparison of the SIM Content Literacy Continuum to RTI below)
CLC Instructional Levels and Critical Questions
To better understand the types of interventions used and the decisions that are made at each of the CLC levels, a specific question is associated with each level.
Level 1. Enhance Content Instruction. How can we ensure that all students learn the critical content regardless of the level of their literacy skills? Three types of interventions are included in CLC Level 1. First, to compensate for the absence of skills to independently learn content, we can provide individual accommodations that will allow access to the general education curriculum. However, if students do not have the skills to process and study, additional instruction and support may also be required. Simply allowing access does not address underlying learning and language issues that prevent learning. Second, group accommodations that are informed by the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are provided to meet the needs of individuals as part of instruction for all students. Within SIM, the Content Enhancement Teaching Routines, which focus on the use of teaching devices (often based on the effective use of graphic organizers) and the direct and explicit use of the Cue-Do-Review instructional sequence are group accommodations. They are group accommodations because they lead to the use of a teacher-led routine that guides student processing of complex critical content that students find difficult to learn because they have not learned how to independently use the required learning strategies. Third, to help students learn the strategies to independently learn complex critical content, the teacher embeds the teaching of learning and discipline-relevant strategies into their teaching of the subject matter of their content area. This instruction promotes more student independence in how to learn and apply information in a discipline.
Below are examples from the field of how Content Enhancement Routines are utilized as Tier I interventions for teaching and learning.
Building Capacity at Greenbrier High School Through Tier I Instruction | Lindsay Griffin
At Greenbrier High School, content teachers have been introduced to several Content Enhancement Routines through instruction by certified Content Enhancement Professional Developer, Jennifer McMahan, Literacy Specialist at the Arch Ford Educational Service Center in Plumerville. One of the participants in Jennifer’s professional development was Greenbrier High School Assistant Principal, Lindsay Griffin. Lindsay took her newly acquired knowledge of the SIM CERs to a whole new level. This past summer, Lindsay began the process of becoming a certified Professional Developer in the SIM Content Enhancement Routines by attending the Content Leadership Learning Institute through UCA. This fall, Lindsay provided professional development in the Unit Organizer Routine and the Framing Routine to her teachers, and she provides onsite coaching and support through her role on the school’s leadership team.
As a school leader with a vast knowledge of instruction, Lindsay seeks ways to link the Content Enhancement Routines with her schools’ efforts in curriculum alignment and identifying essential standards. She has also tied her work with SIM to her school’s Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) by having teachers collaboratively work on their Unit Organizers and share their respective successes and challenges in all content areas. In addition, Lindsay has helped her teachers see the connection between SIM and formative assessment. Teachers have gained confidence in using the routines to plan both strong Tier I instruction, as well as identify students who benefit from Tier II interventions. Lindsay is in a unique position to introduce her teachers to evidence-based practices by easily weaving SIM into the rest of her work guiding the Greenbrier High School teachers to deliver quality instruction within their diverse classrooms. As Lindsay continues to learn new CERs, her teachers and students are the ultimate beneficiaries.
Content Enhancement Routines and RTI | Dr. Michelle Buchanan
Content Enhancement Routines in your classes as an intervention as well as teaching tools and the successes you and your students have experienced.
I have always discussed the “method behind the madness” when introducing teaching strategies to my teacher candidates. However, since the COVID disruption to the classroom, I have emphasized procedural details when explaining the structure of various teaching strategies I model for my teacher candidates.
Future secondary math and science teachers know the value of supporting literacy, but they often struggle with supporting adolescent literacy in their math and science classes. I have introduced research-based and evidence-based strategies when incorporating the Content Enhancement Routines in their education courses. Because each visual device is specifically organized to support student understanding, my teacher candidates have performed better at recalling content discussed in our education courses. For example, when using The Framing Routine when discussing different types of questioning strategies, my teacher candidates identify memory, convergent, divergent, and evaluative as the Main Ideas. Following an investigation, my teacher candidates identify two Essential Details for each of these questioning strategies. My teacher candidates compare notes and decide on four Essential Details to record in The Frame. Finally, in their content areas, they create examples of each questioning strategy for the So What? part of the Frame. Since using The Framing Routine to teach questioning strategies, my teacher candidates more quickly identify appropriate question strategies to use and when to use them in their lesson plans for field experiences.
I use the Question Exploration Guide to support my students in their Advancing Equity Unit, a semester-long project-based instruction unit focused on exploring various equity issues in today’s classroom. Choosing from a list of equity issues, my teacher candidates write an annotated bibliography, create an infographic summarizing the research, and design a game for learning more about the equity issue. During the class presentations, teacher candidates use the infographic after playing the game to explain further how to advance equity in today’s classroom. The class completes a Question Exploration Guide during the presentation and as a reflection tool. During their research, candidates collaborate in small groups to complete the Question Exploration Guide identifying the Critical Question as what teacher candidates will need to know as foundational knowledge for addressing students in their future classrooms for their chosen equity issue. Next, they list facts/phrases essential for teacher candidates to understand and answer the Critical Question. Finally, they create Supporting Questions that need to be answered to respond to the Critical Question using Key Terms and explanations to develop the Supporting Questions. Each group shares the Critical Question, Key Terms, and Supporting Questions during their presentation at the end of the semester. After the presentation, candidates write a direct answer to the Critical Question that represents essential information presented answering the Main Idea. Next, they reflect on how they, as teacher candidates, can use the Main Idea by comparing and contrasting the equity issue to another equity issue in today’s classroom or apply the equity issue to a situation they have experienced in the classroom. Finally, they discuss a current event that relates to the Main Idea by investigating an online resource to determine how the equity issue impacts classrooms (positively or negatively) today.
Using these Routines with my math and science teacher candidates introduces literacy strategies through non-literacy-focused content. They see the effectiveness of the Routines in developing and reinforcing their understanding of content while also emphasizing the importance of critical thinking about content, which is important in all content areas.
(See Content Enhancement Routine graph below)
Level 2. Embedded Strategy Instruction. How can we teach learning strategies that will help all students to independently learn critical content? From a set of evidence-based learning strategies, teachers select strategies that match the specific demands needed to learn the critical content in their core curriculum courses. Teachers use direct explanation, modeling, and group practice to teach the strategy and then prompt student application and practice in content-area assignments throughout the school year. For students receiving more intensive strategy instruction taught by other teachers (Level 3), content-area teachers assist them in generalizing strategy use to core curriculum courses. Instruction in strategies is embedded across a number of instructional settings, including settings in which tutoring is provided.
Below is an example from the field of how an embedded strategy, SLANT, is utilized as a Tier I intervention for engaging students in the learning process.
SLANT: Implementing the Readiness Strategy in the Virtual Classroom | Deanna Kay Rice
The pivot to online instruction due to the pandemic was swift and immediate. Educators and students were simultaneously trying to “figure it out.” By the end of fall 2020, one thing was clear--students were unsure how to be ready to engage in the virtual classroom. The bedroom had become the classroom where students were lying down in pajamas appearing to be ready for sleep instead of learning content critical to their future careers. It was clear that an intervention was needed, but what? How could I, an assistant professor in teacher education, increase my students’ readiness to engage in the virtual classroom?
What is SLANT?
The mnemonic device, SLANT (Sit up, Lean forward, Activate your thinking, Name key information, Track the talker), has been a SIM readiness strategy since 1991. Dr. Edwin Elis introduced the strategy and provided explanation and instruction for implementing SLANT in brick-and-mortar classrooms (Elis, 1989; Elis, 1991). SLANT is now considered a Tier 1 behavior support strategy in the response to intervention model. The SLANT mnemonic is structured so that students receive explicit instruction regarding behavioral expectations and is then universally implemented with the whole class.
New Challenges, Proven Strategies
As I was preparing for the final exam of fall 2020 that included assessment of SLANT knowledge as a whole class behavior support strategy, I began to consider the implementation of SLANT in the virtual classroom in higher education. I posed this question to my undergraduate students: Do you think SLANT could be implemented in the virtual classroom to increase the readiness of college students for learning in online class sessions? The overwhelming response was yes.
I took this information and I decided to implement SLANT with my students attending class online. The first day of class in spring 2021, I introduced the SLANT mnemonic in all three of my undergraduate courses where students were primarily attending online. Clear behavioral expectations were presented including sitting up, taking notes, and asking questions. All students were then required to create their own SLANT visuals to post in their study area where they accessed the virtual classroom. Each student shared their visual in a Flipgrid introduction video (see photos for examples). I encouraged students to SLANT at the beginning of class sessions and gave verbal praise when I saw them SLANTing on screen.
Student Responses to SLANT
Students submitted questionnaires about their experiences using the SLANT mnemonic. Several students discussed the impact of the visual prompt and how it reminded them to stay focused on class participation. Others reported that they generalized the SLANT behavior in other online classes as well as in-person sessions. The positive feedback on implementing the SLANT mnemonic in the virtual classroom was very encouraging. When students were provided clear expectations, visual reminders, and positive reinforcement, appropriate behaviors increased. Students were more positively engaged and they felt better about learning in the virtual classroom.
Solutions to new challenges may not require new solutions. Evidence-based strategies like SLANT can be implemented in the virtual classroom. The SLANT readiness strategy is not only effective in brick-and mortar classrooms with young students, but university students reported how it impacted their classroom engagement. Additionally, the implementation of SLANT with education students allowed them to experience the effect of the strategy. Their experience with SLANT served as a model of how they could implement whole group behavior support in their future classrooms. Innovation is taking what we know and applying it in new ways. The SLANT strategy incorporates explicit instruction of behavioral expectations implemented with all students using a mnemonic device that is reinforced visually and verbally--the innovation was implementing the strategy in the virtual classroom.
If you are teaching in the virtual setting, please contact me if you implement SLANT with your students. I would love to hear about your experiences using the readiness strategy in the online learning environment. I look forward to hearing from you. Deanna Kay Rice, dkrice@uca.edu
To summarize this issue, we have introduced you to how SIM aligns with the Response to Intervention (RTI) process and compares to the SIM Content Literacy Continuum. In our next issue, we will explore Levels 3, 4, and 5 of the CLC and Tiers II and III of the RTI process with more examples from our Arkansas educators. For additional information on the Content Literacy Continuum and SIM Content Enhancement routines, check out these links. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
