Teaching Struggling Learners/RTI: Overview

IRA believes that all learners have a right to instruction that builds on their strengths and addresses their needs. Children and adolescents who struggle with literacy require particular types of support. In the United States, Response to Intervention (RTI) increasingly provides a framework for working with struggling readers, but many approaches can be used both within and outside of RTI.

Follow the links below to find downloadable resources related to struggling learners and to RTI; information about publications and networks can be found under the tabs above. Find even more by clicking "Struggling Learners" under the Topic heading in advanced search.

• Making a Difference Means Making It Different: Honoring Children's Rights to Excellent Reading Instruction
• The Role of Reading Instruction in Addressing the Overrepresentation of Minority Children in Special Education in the United States
• On Assessment for Children in Special Education Experiencing Reading Difficulties (resolution)

Materials from the February 2010 RTI Webinar

• Response to Intervention: Promises, Possibilities and Potential Problems
  Note: this is a large file and may take a moment to download
• RTI Research Reference List 

• Response to Intervention: Guiding Principles for Educators
  Download now or Purchase a single copy or in bulk from Marketplace
• Response to Instruction/Response to Intervention: New Opportunities for Students and Reading Professionals (PowerPoint presentation)
• Implications for Reading Teachers in Response to Intervention (RTI)
• Response to Intervention in the Individuals With Disabilities Act: A Summary

ReadWriteThink.org features numerous lessons suitable for struggling readers. See, for example

• Seuss and Silverstein: Posing Questions, Presenting Points
• Word Sorts for Beginning and Struggling Readers
• Q Is for Duck: Using Alphabet Books With Struggling Writers

More resources can be found by browsing ReadWriteThink.org or using the site's search tools.

• Richard Allington on RTI
• Supporting Struggling Adolescent Readers

• February 24th webinar on Response to Intervention: Guiding Principles for Educators 
• Connecticut's Response to Intervention (RtI) Model: A Status Report (PowerPoint presentation from IRA's 2008 Legislative Workshop)
• Putting Reading in RtI in NY (PowerPoint presentation from IRA's 2008 Legislative Workshop)
• Meetings: IRA's large international conferences, smaller regional meetings, and special one-day events offer the best kind of professional development—the chance to learn and share with colleagues in a professional community.

• Albert J. Harris Award
• Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship