Resource Specialist ProgramOverview:
In addition to providing diagnostic and instructional services, a primary responsibility of the Resource Specialist is to provide regular consultation services to general education teachers. General education teachers collaborate with Resource teachers to ensure consistent and appropriate implementation of each student's IEP. The 6th grade Resource program, more commonly known at Mill Valley Middle School as Academic Support, follows a three-tiered model, which you can learn more about below. |
Tier 1 |
Tier 1 is primarily characterized by the resource teacher's support of each student's learning progress in general education. Tier 1 support includes regular consultation with each student's teachers, as well as resource support with completing assignments (projects and homework), as needed. Tier 1 also emphasizes the Resource teacher's responsibility to ensure that students receive their IEP accommodations* and/or modifications across classroom settings. While the general education teachers implement students' IEPs and accommodations in their classes every day, some accommodations are better implemented within the resource classroom. Therefore, ensuring the provision of IEP accommodations is an important facet of Tier 1. Common examples of accommodations provided in the resource classroom include (but are not limited to): providing a quiet environment for testing, providing additional time for test or assignment completion, reading questions aloud for a student, providing a student the opportunity to type or dictate their responses rather than handwrite. (*It is important to emphasize that accommodations are specific to individual students and are carefully outlined in each student's IEP. )
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Tier 2
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Organization and study skills development comprise the central emphasis of Tier 2. A number of students enrolled in the Resource program experience challenges with their executive functioning ability. As a result, Tier 2 services provide not only explicit teaching of organization habits and study skills, but also a system of accountability to help students develop and gradually internalize those skills. There are several concrete examples of the services provided within Tier 2. Each day, students are expected to fill out their planner completely (for each subject in their Panther Planner, they need to write the complete assignment for the day). The next morning, Resource program staff checks to determine the number of points they will receive. Students receive 10/10 for a completely filled out planner, 5/10 for a partially filled out planner, and 0/10 for a blank planner. Only students who earn 10/10 are eligible for preferred activity time (P.A.T.) at the very end of the period for that day. Not only do students lose this individual reinforcer (which students really enjoy), they are motivated to score a 10 in order to bolster their academic support group (class), who will be competing with all other academic support classes to earn a "planner points reward" (sometimes a movie party, sometimes free time, it varies). In addition, all students enrolled in the academic support class are required to do the Wednesday audit. Please refer to my page on the Wednesday audit to learn more. Students must complete 16 "perfect audits" before they receive permission to "go off the audit". If students return to school Thursday with an incomplete audit, they will be ineligible for preferred activity time on both Thursday and Friday, their parent(s) or guardian will receive a call or email home, and the student will be responsible to make up the audit in a way that is most convenient for his or her teachers. In this respect I aim to teach and instill a greater level of responsibility in my students as they progress through the year.
Tier 3 targets IEP "goal work", which is most accurately characterized by one-to-one or small group instruction on the specific area an IEP goal targets. For instance, a student with an IEP goal in the area of writing may spend a portion of his academic support working with teachers or staff on brainstorming, outlining, learning to do research on a writing project, or simply practicing basic principles of punctuation and grammar. The intention of explicit goal work time is always to provide the remedial instructional support needed for the student to learn in the general education environment. One important shift that occurs from elementary school to middle school resource is a decrease in the amount of time spent targeting remedial skills in isolation. Instead, best practice at the middle school level is to continue to provide remedial support but focus more extensively on addressing areas of need through the general education curriculum. Therefore much of the "goal work" is actually achieved through the Resource support given to deliver the general education curriculum. This is why, at IEP meetings in middle school, you are more likely to hear from your child's generalist teachers regarding their progress in writing, math, reading, and even social and behavioral skills. Your child's general education teachers not only teach their individual subjects, they also monitor your child's progress toward IEP goals throughout the year. At MVMS, a highly observant and remarkable team of teachers makes this level of collaboration possible. |