As I gear up for my 14th year teaching (Yikes - I'm getting old), I am thinking of all the changes that have happened with education even in my short career so far. I won't go into it all, but one obvious change has been increased high-stakes testing. I'm sure we all have our opinions and ideas about this one, but I'll save that for another post at another time. I don't have the energy to get into it right now with my summer brain still in charge. Ahhhhh summer!!! I just love it!!! Oh, sorry - back to why I'm here today. Along with the changes in testing and teacher evaluation, there has also been a huge push for more specific interventions in the classroom in order to target individual skills as best we can. Response to Intervention (RTI) is something that my district has been doing since it was introduced; however, this upcoming year will be our first year that we will have an actual RTI time in our schedules everyday and group our students across the grade level based on needs. I know other states have been doing this for some time now, so we might be a little behind. Either way, it will be an adjustment for all of our teachers. As with anything new, we teachers are immediately on the hunt for materials to use. I knew I would be searching like crazy come the fall and decided to start making my own packs to help with this RTI time. I decided to start with Math because I think we will need more than what we currently have. I started with where my lowest students might be since I knew they would need the most support and I will work my way on from there. So my thought process as I started creating consisted of 4 main aspects of what I wanted in an RTI pack. Here is what I came up with: #1 Of course it is important to assess students to find out where they need help and what skills they have and don't have. #2 Once you have assessed all of your students, you can group them by need and focus in on those specific skills within your groups. #3 I don't know about you, but I get bored doing the same thing over and over. And I think my students do too. I wanted more than just worksheets or printables to use within my groups. I did include those things in my packs as well, because of course there is a time and place for this stuff; however, I knew I needed to create more fun and interactive ways to target the skills I was looking for. You gotta keep it interesting and motivating in order for learning to happen. #4 Finally, I knew that with any intervention, you need to be able to monitor progress along the way and adjust as needed. Therefore, although I'm not a huge fan of over-assessing - again, there is a time and place for it. In my mind, in order for RTI to work we need to collect as much data as we can in order to help our students grow. So with those 4 things in mind, my first Math RTI pack was born: This baby took me FOR-EV-ER!!! It is 238 pages and focuses on 6 main skills for early number sense. I knew I needed to have some form of pre-assessment to help group students, but that I would also need to progress monitor along the way with further assessments as mentioned earlier. And of course we needed lots of ways to practice, practice, practice!!! I've included easy prep directions and ideas for each skill, task cards, practice printables, and interactive games or centers. Everything that is shown in color is also available in black and white. I am so relieved to have something to start my year off with when we begin our RTI groups. I can't wait to finish the next packs that will continue to work through the Common Core standards in both Kindergarten and 1st Grade: Math RTI #2 - Operations and Algebraic Thinking Math RTI #3 - Number and Operations in Base Ten If you'd like to check out the pack in my store, click HERE or on the above picture. And if you are back to school already - I hope it's going great so far!!! Thanks for stopping by!