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View a special documentary highlighting how Iron Springs Elementary has implemented Discover Intensive Phonics in all three tiers of the RTI model. This informative and entertaining video gives you a visual representation of how to best reach students at all reading levels.
Response to Intervention is designed as an early intervention to prevent long-term academic failure. Instruction and interventions are matched to meet students’ needs. It is generally depicted as a three-tiered model. Progress monitoring is frequent enough to fine-tune the instruction to students’ needs. Based on student response, interventions can match the specific-skill deficit. Discover Intensive Phonics can play a major role in each of the three Response to Intervention tiers, and, if used for all three tiers, can reinforce and strengthen students’ skills since students in Tiers II and III will receive the same method and use the same materials as students receiving universal instruction – just in a more closely monitored, more-intense instructional setting.
Tier I includes universal instruction and assessment for all students – in other words, the general-education curriculum. Eighty-to-90 percent of students will respond and achieve established benchmarks by demonstrating at least the levels of knowledge and skill expected for his or her age and grade.
Tier I requires that instruction and assessments be research based and effective in helping students gain academic proficiency. Discover Intensive Phonics is a research-based program, teaching explicit, systematic phonics. It can be taught to a full class as well as to small groups. Multi-sensory student involvement throughout the program addresses and appeals to varied learning styles. Frequent, direct assessments are used to identify levels of proficiency, and progress monitoring is continuous. Discover Intensive Phonics supplements the core reading program and has been correlated to most major core publications. The program is taught in the K-3 classroom on a daily basis for 30 to 90 minutes. Discover Intensive Phonics offers a computer courseware supplement that is correlated exactly with direct-instruction lessons. The software helps students internalize skills and addresses yet again another learning style.
Tier II includes selected instructional activities and assessments for students who have not achieved at the expected level while participating in Tier I. Ideally, only five-to-10 percent of students fall into this category. Tier II intervention provides 30 minutes per day of additional reading instruction. Students are monitored at least weekly to ensure that their skills are improving.
Discover Intensive Phonics lends itself perfectly to small-group instruction. Smaller groups can focus more on acceleration, not just remediation. In smaller groups, students can receive better, more-guided practice. By using the same materials and same methods taught in Tier I, the 30 minutes per session spent in Tier II can help enhance skills and often pre-teach classroom lessons. Tier II students frequently return to the classroom well ahead of their peers. The Discover Intensive Phonics Teacher’s Kit provides a multitude of resource materials for reinforcing and internalizing word attack skills. Reverse Listening Cards ensure a student’s ability to both encode and decode; Practice and Activity pages provide additional skill reinforcement and parent involvement; a multitude of Games and Activities pages internalize skills in a fun way; reading and writing activities provide transfer; and Little Books afford stories in decodable text that do not supersede a student’s skill level. Students continue to participate in multi-sensory direct instruction at the board, and assessments are given on a weekly basis. One of the beautiful benefits of Discover Intensive Phonics is the ability the teacher has to constantly observe student performance. Errors receive immediate, corrective feedback, thus preventing students from making the same mistake again and again.
Students in Tier III perform significantly lower than other students of their age/grade. Only at Tier III does the school take steps to determine whether a student has a disability that requires special education. Tier III would ideally include only one-to-five percent of students.
Discover Intensive Phonics has long been used with students in special education and those displaying dyslexia, ADD, and other learning problems. Instruction to these students is usually delivered by specialists in very small groups or in a one-on-one format.
There are a multitude of reasons why Discover Intensive Phonics meets this greater need. First of all, it can address any age group. The instructional techniques and content of the course are not condescending to older students. Computer software and active, multi-sensory involvement have been proven to be essential elements in working with special-needs students. Additionally, using computer software allows for collaboration between all teachers: regular classroom teachers, specialists, and special-education teachers. Instruction and interventions can easily be matched to students’ needs. Progress monitoring is continuous, and interventions address specific skill deficits. Discover Intensive Phonics provides computer assessments, workbook page assessments, one-on-one mastery checks, and daily work assessments as teachers observe student performance as students participate in multi-sensory dictation at the board.
Research has shown that the greater the disability, the greater the need for explicit, systematic phonics instruction to lay the foundation of phonemic awareness, letter-sound association, and recognition and understanding of word patterns and formations. The brain is very reliant on patterns, and the unique marking process used throughout the Discover Intensive Phonics program provides students with a tool they can continue using until that pattern has been established firmly in their minds. The marking system extends to multi-syllabic words, allowing students to progress rapidly into more-mature reading passages. Self-esteem and the realization that they can read motivates them on to even greater success.