Creating An Effective Title I Program

I participated in a Twitter chat today; been wanting to try that since joining the Twitter world.  The topic of the chat was education.  In the course of answering questions I made mention of some “creative scheduling” that allows our Title I team to provide maximum support to struggling students.  Several requests for an explanation of said schedule followed my statement.  Explaining our Title I structure in 140 Twitter characters seemed impossible – blogging about it seems logical.

At Fairview Elementary in Mora, MN, we use an Integrated Services Delivery Model (ISDM) to support our at-risk K-2 students in reading and math.  ISDM is a concise way of saying our Title I and Special Education teachers and paraprofessionals work alongside classroom teachers in classrooms to provide academic support to students who are at high risk or some risk for academic struggle according to fall, winter, and spring benchmark assessments.  In short (which is kind of a given after the previous unending sentence) we push-in to classrooms to give kids help rather than pull kids out of rooms.  What we do in rooms varies between classrooms and grade levels, but most often the class is divided into Guided Reading groups, Daily 5 stations, math centers, or some other system of arranging the whole into parts.  While the majority of our day is spent with kids in classrooms, we do have a 30 minute block of pull-out time for each grade level (called WIN time) for reading, and a 20 minute block of pull-out for math in grades 1 and 2.  We have used this model for approximately five years in our building.  

In the months leading up to my transition to Title I Lead Teacher two years ago I had some ideas about how to improve efficiency and execution of intervention delivery, but I didn't want to radically change a program that was already working quite well.  Through collaboration with grade level teams, administrators, the existing paraprofessional team, and colleagues whom I trust to give me honest and well-thought input, I was able to get a feel for the Title I likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams that were pulsing through our building.  I didn't want the program to be "my" program; I wanted, and still want, it to be our school's program, our staff's program, and ultimately, our students' program.  Through conversation with stakeholders and analysis of responses a slightly new Title I program was born.

The first change made to our model was scheduling our support staff to grade levels.  Rather than move Title and SPED teachers and paras between grade levels we created a schedule that allows for a teacher/para team to work exclusively within one grade level.  This allows us to become very intimate with the grade level curriculum, cuts down on planning time so our lessons can be planned more carefully, and, most importantly, we have become experts in the developmental abilities of the kids we constantly work with.  This schedule works perfectly for reading and almost perfectly for math – we do end up having to jump between grade levels a little bit to provide math support for all.  This innovation has been popular with classroom teachers who see us as co-teachers rather than helpers.

Our ISDM model provides support to all grade levels but it does not provide equal support to all.  Our staff philosophy encourages proactive thinking vs. reactive thinking; we want to solve problems before they become problems.  While working through the task of scheduling grade level specific interventionists we made sure our youngest students got the most support.  Our K students get far more support, in both minutes and bodies, than do our grade two students.  This is only year two but we already see signs of success – the current group of high-risk first graders is fewer and less at-risk than last year’s first graders.  We are hopeful and confident we will see a strong group of second graders next fall...because if we don’t the second grade teachers are going to be slightly miffed after listening to two years of promises that less help for them now would lead to less needs later.  Our second grade teachers deserve much respect for sacrificing support minutes in the name of vision and teamwork.

So how do we provide all of this grade level specific, front loaded support?  First, we have a superb network of classroom teachers, department teachers, and paraprofessionals who work their tails off every single day to support students at all levels.  Next, we put the right people in the right places as efficiently as possible.  Last year we used two Title teachers, one SPED teacher, and three Title paras to provide ISDM support.  This year we turned a Title teacher into two paras (yes, we do know magic...and we're pretty darn good at it), so we have one Title teacher, two SPED teachers, and five Title paras delivering ISDM interventions.  We also have an hour of support from our specialist teachers (art, library, etc.) every day; these folks all work with K students as a part of our early intervention focus.  We squeeze every last minute out of our day by scheduling classroom sequence by locale so transitions between rooms are minimized.  By not pulling kids out of rooms we save dozens of minutes of travel time every day.  Our Title preps are at the very beginning and end of each day when classroom instruction in reading or math is minimal.  We are in classrooms up until the first minute of our lunch break or prep and we return immediately after the final minute of each.

As mentioned earlier, we do have some 20 or 30 minute pull-out sessions during the day called What I Need (WIN) Time.  Kindergarten WIN time occurs in the classroom; one support teacher or para goes into every room while one of our specialists takes a small group of students (on a rotating basis) out of every room for some extra time at their specialist classroom.  Kids in the room are working in a small group with a teacher or para on reading or math skills or enjoying some developmentally appropriate free-choice time.  Reading WIN Time for grades one and two is a bit different.  For each, the Tier 3 (high-risk) kids and the top achievers leave the classroom for instruction at their level while the bulk of the class stays with the classroom teacher for leveled instruction.  Math WIN time for these grades sees only the high-risk kids leaving the room; as much as we’d like to we just haven’t been able to swing extra math instruction for our highest mathematicians.

So, that’s the structure of our support model….but structures don’t get kids reading or counting.  It’s what goes on within this structure that is a marvel to behold.  It can't be said enough - the success we've seen from our ISDM model is the result of teamwork by the people invested in the success of our students.  Luckily for our students the people on our building's team are talented, dedicated, and effective.  Come read again and find out how we help students WIN their battle against reading, how much growth our students have shown with a little help from their PALS, and what really does go on in the room known as Mudville.  Thanks for reading.