Golden View Elementary

Teaching children the foundational building blocks of reading and math opens the door to their success and we believe we should give children the keys to open this door. At Golden View, our successful Response to Intervention (RtI) program, specifically in the areas of reading and math, are those keys. Knowing that early reading and math achievement is a predictor of later school success, we decided to implement early intervention to increase school-wide achievement. Our goal was to focus on early literacy skills and basic math foundational skills by providing primary students with differentiated, small-group reading instruction, strategic math intervention, and daily opportunities to practice strategies in reading and math. Our desired outcome was to have every student at Golden View reading at grade level and successfully applying grade-level math skills and concepts.

 

We used data from a variety of assessment tools to identify students that would benefit from early intervention. Through weekly leadership and grade-level collaboration meetings, we identified programs, materials and staff to implement this intervention. Through conversations with our Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and Gator Education Fund, we secured the financial resources to purchase new materials, provide staff training, and hire the necessary staff to support the programs necessary to meet our goal. Our unique RtI model is distinguished from our district’s model, specifically, through this financial support and commitment of our parent groups, as well as our ongoing site-based documentation of student data.

 

We designed a variety of reading and math interventions to meet the diverse needs of students at-risk, and more specifically, our English Language Learner population. These interventions included differentiation strategies used in the classroom, push-in and pull-out programs with trained paraprofessionals, before and after school programs, and even one-on-one interventions. As we monitored students’ progress and identified students with different needs, we looked for the best programs to help them build their skills. By targeting students’ specific needs and keeping groups flexible through progress monitoring, we knew our model would address both the social-emotional and academic achievement needs of our students. To quote a fourth grade student, “getting help in reading makes me happy, because I can read harder books.”