I began my position in RTI at Johnson City Schools on August 14, 2017.  For the first two days, I participated in training for the school year on Easy-CBM, learning how to plug in scores as well as start and do a running record for individuals.  Over my time as an RTI Tutor, my reading skills as a teacher and learner grew immensely.  I feel much more confident in my reading skills now, to the point I read more often for enjoyment as well as feel I can lead a classroom and small groups with much more ease and success.  Throughout the course of the year, my small groups participated in reading novels with intense questioning for comprehension as well as different word studies to work on their fluency and their word recognition.

 

In January, we began a dyslexic intervention program called Seeing Stars.  At first, it was really difficult for me and my coworkers to understand, but after countless hours of researching, I felt I was ready to begin teaching using it.  The growth I saw in my students since January was absolutely amazing, and it was well worth the hours of studying the program.  My students confidence levels were raised, and they began reading more fluently with more ease.  For one particular student, he began not stuttering every time he read, and he actually chose to read aloud when given the chance.  This program was very rewarding for me and for them because there was so much growth in such little time.  In this program, we did intense word studies, for particular skills, such as r-controlled vowels and complex consonants.