One Step to Better Reading Outcomes
The road towards every child reading at grade level can be complicated. However, that doesn’t mean we have to make it that way for everyone, especially teachers. Current approaches to improving literacy instruction are highly fragmented. To truly effect change, a wider understanding of literacy instruction coupled with a unified instructional approach is necessary.
In this context, MTSS has recently been getting a lot of attention, and it's a concept many of us are just beginning to become more familiar with. For those new to the conversation, MTSS stands for multi-tiered system of support, and refers to an education strategy that defines and sets different levels of student progress as well as guides the strategies and support students receive within each tier. With this, the goal is to approach student learning from an individualized perspective by targeting instruction to focus on what each student needs.
Unfortunately, MTSS is often also associated with fragmented planning sessions and time consuming data-based ‘detective work’ to properly implement. Previous attempts have shown that succeeding with strategies such as MTSS requires systems-level thinking. Also, because of its complicated nature, it is crucial that districts align with practices that make using MTSS simple for teachers. Still, many districts have already begun including the MTSS framework in their literacy plans while failing to take into account the help teachers will need with navigating these practices.
This won’t work, it’s the same strategy that has been failing for decades. Teachers are already working more than they can manage and simply can’t be expected to act as reading science specialists at the same time, which is why we need to implement effective solutions that already do this for them. Fortunately, there's a better way that, in just one step, can align districts with MTSS and make teaching it simple.
Learning Ovations knows the road to reading like the back of our hand, in fact we paved it! Since our only goal has and will always be teaching every child to read, we’d like to share our path with you, no extra steps needed.