There are a few similarities between the Vancouver School Board(VSB)’s implementation of RTI in reading which may be better explained by the CELI (Collaborative Early Literacy Intervention) model which is an RTI approach that is centered around reading. RTI is defined by the VSB as a “multi-tiered, collaborative approach to provide students with the instruction they need to experience success in the areas of academic and social-emotional learning with the goal of ensuring that struggling learners are identified early and supported effectively.”(VSB, 2018, p. 2) The CELI RTI model is a combination of this with specific reading interventions and a special program at Tier 1 with the same goal Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba’s mentions in her podcast, “to have strong enough instruction to reduce the number of children who have reading difficulties and subsequent reading disabilities.” (2014) The CELI RTI model starts with classroom differentiation which serves most students in Tier 1, Tier 2 is the small group targeted intervention four times per week, and Tier 3 is one-to-one support.
The CELI RTI Model below gives examples of what instruction looks like in each Tier.
The goal of the program is to identify struggling readers and support their needs to catch up to their peers through varying intensities of instruction. Al Otaiba’s statement of the importance of reading and writing nowadays is repeated in the statement made by the Keough, Wong, and Harrison (in VSB, 2018b, p. 18) which say, “At all stages of our lives, literacy is essentially about decoding information, events, and situations so we can succeed and prosper.”
Additional strategies for each Tier:
Tier 1: choice in literacy centres, flexible seating, headphones, visuals, movement breaks, change the learning environment, provide positive reinforcement and praise, dialogic reading as mentioned by Al Otaiba, and other UDL strategies.
Tier 2: Small group instruction targeting specific skills with explicit instruction and lots of opportunities to practice. For instance, this could look like a lesson on consonant clusters in the initial and final position and practice identifying them.
Tier 3: Individualized intervention based on student's needs. In the CELI model, we use Reading Recovery materials for this.
Just for reference, the "regular" RTI model (and protocol) for the VSB looks more like this:
Al Otaiba, S. (2014, August). Special Series: Reading Part One of Two. SAGE Journals Learning Disability Quarterly. https://journals.sagepub.com/page/ldq/podcasts/index.
Vancouver School board (2018b, December 5). Notice of meeting: student learning and wellbeing. https://www.vsb.bc.ca/District/Board-of-Education/Meeting_Minutes/Documents/agendas-files/18_12Dec05_Open_Student%20Learning%20and%20Well-Being%20agenda.pdf
Vancouver School Board. (2018a, September). Levels of intervention: tiers of support.
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