You have a student in RTI and 8 weeks of interventions is up. What’s next? The dreaded parent conference meeting to decide the next step. Do you know what to bring to an RTI meeting?
I know! It can be scary to look a parent in the face and say “The interventions didn’t work and your students is still getting further and further behind.” Take a deep breath, I’m here for you and I am going to share with you a few steps to make the best of an uncomfortable RTI conference.
A Positive Attitude – Always stay up beat and positive about the student and what you expect the outcomes of the intervention to be. Why would a parent have confidence in you if you have the attitude of “Well, it isn’t going to help, but we can try…” Say what? If you don’t believe in the student then the parent and the student won’t believe in you!
Current Classroom Data – So many times, teachers forget to bring in regular classroom data such as assessments, benchmark results, or other assessments that all students take. Why is this important? You need to be able to verbalize how this RTI student is performing vs the entire grade level or grade level norms. PLEASE don’t compare the student to your class, but to the entire grade level.
RTI Progress Monitoring – How are the current interventions working? Your progress monitoring results will show this. I always prefer to see a graph in a meeting with a parent so that they can “see” the results and understand them. It is also helpful to make on the graph where an average student is performing on the same probe as well.
Work Samples – Writing samples can sometimes be the best work samples you have because it shows the student’s application of phonics, sight words, blending, segmentation, etc. Always bring 3 work samples. Show work from whole group, small group and independent. Don’t bring over 5 or else you are going to overwhelm the parent.
Report Card – Remind the parent of what they recently saw on the last report card. How have the grades changed? What should the parent expect at the next grading period?
RTI Folder – Pull out those RTI forms and show the parent what the original plan was for their student. Now what? Talk about the progress monitoring reports, work samples, etc and now make important decisions about what to do next. Once you have laid in front of the parent a full picture of the academic progress of their student, there really isn’t much argument. Can you give the student a little more time in the current tier or is it time to step it up a notch?
Whatever the outcome of the meeting, knowing that you were prepared and organized will make it go so much smoother! If you found this blog post helpful, make sure to follow my Pinterest board for all things RTI!