Intensive Intervention (Part 1): Using Data-Based Individualization To Intensify Instruction

Transcript: Challenge

Narrator: Century Elementary School has adopted the response-to-intervention approach for both reading and mathematics. Natalia is a fourth grader taking part in the high-quality core reading program used in the general education classrooms. During their school intervention team meeting, the members begin by discussing Natalia’s progress.

Team Leader: Good afternoon, everyone. Let’s begin with Natalia. As you probably remember, Natalia struggles with decoding and fluency and is reading at about the early second-grade level. According to the weekly progress monitoring data collected by her teacher, Mrs. Chen, Natalia was not responding adequately to the core reading instruction. Because of this, we decided she would benefit from targeted intervention. She has been receiving this Tier 2 intervention in a small-group setting with four other students who also struggle with reading. This group meets for twenty minutes, three times a week and is led by Ms. Castillo, our school reading specialist. Ms. Castillo also collects weekly progress monitoring data using the passage reading fluency measure.

Unfortunately, after seven weeks of this targeted intervention, Natalia’s progress monitoring data show that she is not responding adequately. According to our guidelines, it is time to begin data-based individualization. Our first step is to decide how to individualize and intensify Natalia’s instruction.

Here’s your Challenge:

What is data-based individualization?

How can school personnel intensify and individualize instruction?