Why do we only focus on fluency in the upper grades for interventions?

This is a common question, lots of misunderstandings about the PM default and lack of use of diagnostics to get students into the appropriate interventions.

If classwide interventions are supposed to be so effective, why are they not part of the core? At what point would you add those strategies/methods into the core?

How long should you run a class-wide intervention? One ten day cycle? Two or more?

What about using interventions with multi-syllabic words or words with affixes?

A common question we had to work through after looking at our benchmark data was, "If a whole class intervention is needed, is it ok to have the 3-4 at the top that do not need it doing something else at that time?"

I'm interested to hear how others would answer that before I share how I answered. :) 

Michele

We also have questions about classwide interventions in phonics, fluency, and comprehension.  Teachers are digging in with these interventions and want a few more specific directions and ideas.  It would be helpful if these interventions could be discussed at one of our meetings. 

I'd like to respond to Michelle's question about classwide fluency .  I think it is important to have all of them do it.  Those top 3 or 4 can still use practice in paragraph shrinking I would think. And they get to be models for those that are struggling.  Being able to teach others is a god thing for them to learn. 

Conducting class wide interventions would be a good thing to talk about in k-4 grades.  Thanks!

Another concern/question I am having is trying to service all students not just the lowest 30%tile. Some students are just a bit below the benchmark and in the 40th+%tile. The classrooms teachers are insisting we service them in interventions no matter what. We don't have enough resources to do this but they feel I should just make the groups bigger. I don't want to do this because the fidelity and the effectiveness of the intervention decreases. We are struggling in our district to really get everyone to relook at Tier 1 when we don't have ~80% of our students successful. We are high poverty, high needs, etc. 

Any advice or suggestions would be wonderful. 

We are also a PBIS school and have PD for TIPS (https://www.pbis.org/training/tips), how do PRESS and TIPS play together? 

NOTE: I see PBIS and PRESS as siblings, PBIS is essentially a collection of evidence-based practices to support behavior embedded within an MTSS framework, just as PRESS is a collection of evidence-based practices to support literacy embedded within an MTSS framework. Folks who see them as mutually exclusive seem to have an oversimplified understanding of one or both. Is this how others in the group see it?

The profile of Michele Chapin's school sounds like mine - high poverty and academic needs. The emotional needs in our school are high as well. Although we have two teachers to serve the bottom 10-15% of the population and two SPED teachers for the other 5% we have others that don't get our help because there are many. My concern is for the students who do get specialized help and needy students who don't get Tier 2 or 3 help be best served in the classroom?  It is disheartening to see children who are expected to connect and perform with grade level materials when they are not there yet.