Daily 5, CAFE, RTI, and ConferringNotebook.com

Many of you may be at a school where Title 1, Special Ed, and ELL teachers provide additional support for students. It is helpful to have the extra instructional support, but finding a way to make curricular coherence seamless can be tricky.

If these additional teachers provide support within the classroom, Daily 5 is an ideal time. With all children engaged in authentic reading and writing, adults can easily slide in and hold one-on-one conferences with them, reinforcing the skills and strategies being taught. Knowing that RTI emphasizes extra support for Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, the trick comes in deciding what to teach to best meet individual needs and how to monitor so that we can be sure the instruction is working.

The CAFE system matches students' instruction to their needs after analyzing authentic and diagnostic assessments. When we provide multiple, short bursts of focused, differentiated, intentional instruction, we see accelerated growth. These short bursts of instruction, whether taught by the classroom teacher or the teacher and extra support staff, must be focused on each students specific needs. It is our job to assess, analyze, and teach. We cannot rely on a program, because there hasn't been a program invented yet that will meet the needs of all students.

Research has been clear since the mid-1980s, having students of any level?but particularly our at-risk students?receive different instruction from different teachers and then expecting them to put it all together to become better at reading just doesn't work. Managing multiple instructional times for our Tier 2 and Tier 3 students to focus on key CAFE strategies is a key component of their success. ConferringNotebook.com (our online conferring notebook) is an easy way to ensure curricular coherence. It allows the classroom teacher to share students with the other adults who support them. By sharing student information electronically, all teachers can see in real time what each student's goals are, what has been taught, how they are progressing, and the instructional strategies being used.

ConferringNotebook automatically keeps track each time a child meets with an adult, whether it's in a small group or a one-on-one conference, making RTI accountability a snap! So, do Daily 5 and CAFE work with RTI? You bet! And our RTI work is only enhanced through the use of ConferringNotebook.