MTSS & Formative Assessment

EDUC 350
In class on Monday we learned the differences between an IEP and a 504. An IEP is for our students who have disabilities and a 504 is for medical accommodations and requires a doctors note. Wednesday was a very interesting day. We had a special guest speaker, Dr. Mitcham who I really liked. She talked to us about MTSS which stands for Multi-tiered Support System. We learned about RTI which stands for Response to Instruction which falls under the umbrella of MTSS. There are three tiers all together. The first tier which makes up about 80-85% of students is just core instruction and general education, every student receives this and never leaves this tier. The second tier is some intervention for those who just tier one is not enough, this makes up roughly 10-15%. The third tier  is intensive intervention, this is where you may get students having to be pulled out of class. The third tier makes up 5-1% of students. You constantly have to be progress monitoring to make sure you know where each student falls. This related to NCTCS 5a which states, " Teachers analyze student learning." As we use this system we have to keep track of where each student lies so that they can receive the appropriate amount of intervention. For my outside research I read an article about RTI just to clarify any misconceptions I had. It was a very interesting article that also talked about ways parents could get involved. 
https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/special-services/rti/understanding-response-to-intervention

EDUC 410
In this class we discussed formative assessment. Megan White lead our seminar this week about formative assessment. One of the articles she chose for us talked about how we should listen to our students and I found that to be something very important.  Sometimes our students tell us more than what they show us. In this same article this teacher did not know that one of her students thought that Indians/Native Americans were from India until she told her on the unit test. If the teacher had been doing formative assessment throughout her lessons maybe she would have caught it in time to correct it. Our entire class pretty much agreed on the importance of formative assessment. While we cannot do this every second of every day we can do it every 5 minutes. We could also use "exit slips" to find out what was a the takeaway from the lesson. This relates back to NCTCS 4h which states that "Teachers use a variety of methods to assess what each student has learned." Formative assessment is one of those methods.

I will take everything I learned this week and apply it to my future classroom. I will have to know what IEP and 504 are and how they will affect my overall classroom. I need to make sure that accommodations are being made for any of those students who may have either of these plans. I will make sure that I use formative assessment effectively so that I can catch those misconceptions my students may have.