Austin Buffum

Is RTI (response to intervention) being discussed in your school? This is a federal law passed a couple of years ago in the waning days of the Bush administration. It requires all schools to have an active plan for bringing every learner up to expectations. This trio of authors propose an add-on to the basic questions of intervening with learners in what they call a POI or Pyramid of Intervention. Instead of waiting until learners are in big trouble, they propose monitoring all learners for minimal, intermediate, or major intervention. Thus, you target all learners for help rather than just those in major trouble. Seems sensible. If this is being discussed, then teacher librarians who understand the targets can help create the plan of intervention with what we do best in reading, technology, information literacy, and collaboration. But to do so, we have to understand the background of what is being discussed and the proposals for improvement and targets. Perhaps another perspective for us is to worry about learners who have already achieved the minimums and are now coasting and bored. Will we ever get over the striving for minimums? This book will give you the background you need for an intelligent intervention of your own. Bottom line: read it if its on your school’s plate and then pass it along to the policy folks in the building.… (altro)