Curriculum 101: How to implement MTSS in your classroom

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In 2012, I was a junior in high school and not coping super well with the stress of a packed schedule of AP courses and a turbulent home situation. I asked to stay home from school, genuinely not feeling well but not “sick,” per se. I didn’t stay home often, so my parents offered up no complaints.

That day, around mid-afternoon, I left the house in my new-to-me car for one of my favorite get-well treats: an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. On the way there, shoes off, cell phone at home, I was ushered by well-meaning on-lookers into oncoming traffic from a badly designed side road where visibility was poor. I totaled my car, had to call my dad from a stranger’s phone, and was standing on the street next to my steaming vehicle with bare feet.

The next day, I had to take a make-up test. 

I remember sitting at a desk in an adjacent room to my classmates, tears streaming down my face as I tried to explain to my teacher that I wasn’t ready. That I’d just been in an accident.

The thing was, this teacher was already being kind by letting me take the test at all. This was a tough class with very little wiggle room. 

She’d been offering me some wiggle room. 

Looking back at it, though, I never quite got over the feeling of crying over my test in a room by myself, burns on my hands from the airbag, thinking in the back of my mind how I’d explain to my friends that I’d just totaled my new car.

Teachers are so much more than people who instruct on important subject matter. They are behavioral coaches. They are emotional supporters. They are very much like social workers, except they often aren’t provided the training they need to support the whole child.

Most teachers want to support the whole child. They want to be what their students need in more than just subject matter expertise. Implementing MTSS (or the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) can help you support children behaviorally, emotionally, and academically. 

I don’t hold it against that teacher for not being the emotional support that I needed that day. Things were different then. Today, teachers can prepare themselves to be the support that each student needs, and I’m excited to get into how in this blog.

A Quick Overview of MTSS

We wrote a blog on the basics of MTSS that you might want to check out if you’re looking for a refresher, or if you need some background information before you get into the heavy-duty stuff.

However, we’ll do a quick overview of the most important pieces before diving into the deep end.

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) is a framework intended to provide educators with guidance on how to support children academically, behaviorally, and emotionally.

There are three tiers of support:

• Tier 1 - All students receive a high-quality education.
• Tier 2 - Students in need of additional support receive small group interventions, tutoring, and activities.
• Tier 3 - Students with more intensive needs receive one-on-one support.

Many times, students in Tier 2 receive “standardized” group support, meaning their school or district has purchased resources that every student in Tier 2 receives. Many educators will be familiar with Response to Intervention (RTI) which has pre-packaged resources for this purpose.

Some schools don't have access to pre-packaged lesson plans and interventions, so for the purpose of this article, we will focus on group support methods that don't include pre-packaged or standardized interventions.

Students can flow back and forth between each tier depending on their level of need. This can be as often as several times in a single class period! MTSS is different from similar frameworks in this way, as it’s meant to adapt to students and anticipate their needs rather than react to them.

MTSS is fueled by data

One of the central ideals of MTSS involves data-informed decision-making. Students who are receiving proper support have had their needs anticipated by data and have had individualized support that was created and informed by data.

This means regular screening, using the multi-level prevention system (the three tiers described above), progress monitoring, and data-based decision-making.

We’ll discuss each of these pieces and how you, as a classroom teacher or curriculum administrator, can implement these practices in everyday planning to improve student growth.

Table of Contents

How do you screen students who need extra support?

Making your Tiers of Support fluid and adaptable

What data-based decision-making looks like in a busy classroom

MTSS can change your relationships with your students

Connect with us

The Center on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (CMTSS) has a great deal of resources on everything we’ll discuss today and would be good to bookmark for future reference. However, we hope to break everything down into its most basic form, so it’s easy for you to take something with you into your everyday practice.

In MTSS, screening is recommended at least three times a year to identify students who are at risk of falling behind or who may need additional support.

Screening methods are flexible in that schools and teachers can customize their screening processes to fit their culture and needs; however, there are a few necessary components. 

Screening must:

• Be systematic
• Assess emotional and behavioral needs as well as academic needs
• Use reliable and valid measures
• Include follow-up progress monitoring
• Refer to data to identify at-risk students
• Reflect cultural and linguistic responsiveness

Each of these components is a blog post in itself, but more than likely, you are reading this as someone who isn’t designing screening methods for themselves. While CMTSS has resources on how to do this, we will be discussing some tried and true ways that classroom teachers can reliably measure student progress that they’re (probably) already familiar with.

Easy progress monitoring methods

You’re probably not going to be purchasing pre-packaged progress monitoring methods like Computer Adaptive Testing software, so we’re going to round up some resources that you can use in your classroom without any purchases.

MTSS requires that your screening process be systematic. Essentially that means planned, structured, and methodical. For that reason, we suggest using your screening method at regular intervals, being sure to always administer your assessments in as close to the same way as possible. Use the same criteria to define success, and don’t massively change up your assessments from check-in to check-in.

Some people refer to assessments which occur at regular intervals and measure the same essential standards as benchmark exams. Schools around the country use different assessment methods, such as through-year testing, but regardless of the kinds of assessments you use, they should be administered regularly to properly screen students for learning gaps, strengths, and support needs.

Assessment scores should be used as an anchor for progress monitoring. Once a student’s unique needs have been identified, the educator can use follow-up exams to measure progress.

We understand that one of the many constraints of being an educator is that creating assessments is a complicated and time-consuming process. We offer item banks and pre-made assessments through our partners; however, as not everyone has access to these resources, we also created a thorough resource on how to create accessible assessments which may help with your screening and progress monitoring initiatives.

For now, let’s get into how assessment scores can bolster progress monitoring initiatives through several easy-to-implement methods.

Student Data Binders

We recently sat down with Klein ISD to talk about student data binders. This is not only an excellent way to monitor progress, but it establishes a rapport between student and teacher where they can discuss progress at regular intervals. This includes opportunities for teachers to emotionally support students while checking in with behavioral goals and progress.

Here’s an example of what a student data binder page might look like for the teacher and the student, as the teacher should be monitoring each student’s progress alongside them.

You get to decide what you’d like to measure, but it may be a good idea to check on the essential learning standards for that year and make sure that your methods align with department and school-level goals.

You can also include pages for emotional and behavioral monitoring.

Making resources like this takes time, but there are a ton of pre-made student data binder resources out there, including this free version from the Curriculum Corner.

Entrance and exit tickets

Some people call these “bell ringers.” Entrance and exit tickets can be an extremely versatile way to gather information about your students. In order to see and prevent problems, teachers must make use of these as soon as they come into their possession.

Here are some examples of entrance and exit ticket prompts that could help monitor student progress and well-being:

• How are you feeling about what you learned today?
• Is there anything you don’t understand about last night’s homework?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident do you feel about this unit?
• Where could you use some extra help and support today?
• Where are you in your current project, and what’s your next step?
• Is there anything that’s preventing you from doing your best work today?
• What was something you learned during the lesson and what’s something you’re still a little unsure about?
• How would you rate today’s lesson? What did you like or not like about it?

It can be difficult to keep up with this much data, so it may be a good idea to build time into your classroom schedule to review and act on tickets. For example, if you start every class with entrance tickets, followed by reading or a journal entry, you can use your quiet time to identify students who need additional support.

Pro Tip: You can use electronic forms such as Google forms to gather this information. These tools often display charts and graphs that can help you make at-a-glance conclusions about the state of the class.

Student confidence scores

We offer tools to support teachers in being able to collect this kind of data; however, you can do this without Aware.

If you don’t have access to our student confidence tool, it may be a good idea to have students number a piece of paper while they’re taking their online assessments. They can use a number ranking system, checks and x marks, or even smiley and frowny faces to indicate how confident they feel about each question.

Paper assessments are easy for students to annotate, and they can use this same method. Student confidence scores are a great source of data that can help teachers improve curriculum, assessments, and intervention practices.

For example, let’s say you notice that 70 percent of students mark a question with a smiley face, but only 15 percent answered correctly. This is a pretty clear win in terms of data because, if the question is strong, this indicates a classroom-wide misconception about the subject matter. If the question is not as strong as it could be, then you’ve identified an area for improvement in your assessment.

We have a chart that coincides with our own confidence tool that may help you make data-informed decisions with this information.

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Assessment reflection questions

For the same reasons that the student confidence tool is helpful for curriculum and assessments, reflection questions are also a great source of data. We also have built in reflection capabilities for our assessment software, but reflections are easy to implement without software.

We think that reflection questions are underutilized in terms of the kinds of information they gather. For example, a common reflection question might be, “What formula did you use to solve this problem?”

However, if you’re implementing MTSS, a reflection question could assess wellness and behavior as well as academic needs.

Here are some example reflection questions that could gather this information:

• How are you feeling about your goals and progress after this assessment?
• Given your data on this assessment, what steps can you take to reach your goals?
• What circumstances, if any, affected your performance on this assessment?
• How could I improve the testing experience for you?
• What would be nice to have on future assessments?
• What are some of your thoughts and emotions after getting your results on this assessment?

With such specific wellness and behavioral data, teachers can get incredible insight into a student’s learning practices and support needs.

MTSS is preventative, not reactive. Many systems that use MTSS as a backbone still rely on diagnostics that place a student in a certain tier of support, which is “reactive” in that a student can only receive that tier of support after they’ve been placed there.

There are benefits to both kinds of systems, but in theory, preventative support for students that allows them to dictate their own support needs through data and collaboration will prevent them from falling so far behind that intensive interventions are their only option.

For example, MTSS is meant to be preventative for behavioral problems as well. Imagine a student whose behavior gets worse and worse over a period of weeks until they stop showing up for class, aren’t turning in work, or are becoming openly defiant. In reactive systems, this student may not get the support they need until office reports have been filed, behavioral interventions have been created, etc.

While understanding that no system is perfect and teachers can’t be responsible for every student’s behavioral decisions, we can use MTSS to try and prevent this kind of progression.

This can be difficult to implement on your own. If you’re a classroom teacher trying to wrap your head around implementation, see if you can request training from your school or district! It may be a good stepping stone to get leaders onboard for MTSS across your community.

However, we will try to include four tips that we hope will help you create sustainable practices in the classroom, with or without the support of administrators in your district.

Four tips for classroom teachers

#1 Create an environment where students feel comfortable asking peers for help.

Teachers can establish this kind of environment by being explicit. Establish systems and procedures up front by, for example, designating peer groups and student leaders who are experts in particular subject areas. Students who are strong in one area can have foldout badges on their desk that indicate they are a good source of information. Students can also be grouped according to need, so you can teach to their needs as a group.

When peer support or group instruction isn’t enough, students can turn to you.

Tiers 2 and 3 have just been established and are fluid! Students can move comfortably between them depending on their level of need at the moment.

#2 Use student data to give each student additional support every class period.

The screening methods we talked about earlier in the article will now come into play.

Let’s say you took an entrance ticket at the beginning of the class period to check in on student progress for a project they’re working on.

While you review the entrance tickets, it may be a good idea to congratulate students who are on track and check in with students who have said they’re unsure about their next steps or are stuck somewhere in the process.

The magic of one-on-one support is that many students who said that they didn’t need extra help will now become quite vocal about their hidden needs.

Conversely, you may find that students who said they needed support only needed a listening ear before they had a lightbulb moment and were ready to move forward on their own.

You can also use assessment data to follow up with students whose scores indicate a learning need or misconception. Build time into each class period to bring students together as a group or up to your desk for short reteaching opportunities. This could be a good time for your students who are ahead to explore the next unit on their own.

‍#3 Build each tier of support naturally into your lessons.

If you’re a high school teacher, you may feel averse to stations, but truthfully, station work is a great way to get students to move fluidly between each stage of support.

Here’s an example of how a lesson that uses stations might fit into the MTSS framework:

• 15 minute lesson for the whole class
• Progress ticket - What questions do you have? What are you confused about? Are you ready to get started on your assignment?
• Review tickets during a 5 minute period where students watch a video.
• Let students start at their stations (15 minutes)
  
  • Station 1 - Solitary work on their assignment
  • Station 2 - group work of no more than 3 students each on the assignment
  • Station 3 - one-on-work work with the teacher on the assignment
• Every student starts out in station one, then can move to the station that makes sense for them at any time. You can even pre-place more confident students at group work stations to make individual students more comfortable with moving from solo work to group work.
• Make yourself available for students who might need you, but also call students to your station whose entrance tickets indicated low confidence or motivation.
• Exit ticket and answer (10 minutes)
  
  • Have students write down their questions and concerns and see which problems you can solve for them right away and which may need to be moved to tomorrow’s lesson.

Whether you use stations or not, try to build opportunities for students to work on their own, with others, or with you into each day. This will help you stay on top of students who may be hesitant to vocalize points of confusion.

#4 Make behavioral and emotional support a regular feature in each lesson

Supporting students behaviorally and emotionally doesn’t have to be an intervention. It should be a regular practice for each lesson.

There are a number of reasons why students misbehave, but studies show that students are more likely to misbehave in any of these circumstances:

• Poorly regulated classroom environment (too noisy, hot or cold, poorly lit, etc.)
• When they’re not properly matched to the difficulty level of the subject matter or assignment resulting in confusion and frustration
• When their home environment and friend group dynamic isn’t ideal

Students should not only be able to receive support when they’re struggling but also when they’re happy and doing well. Give them behavioral and emotional tools in your lessons, including reminders about classroom rules and procedures. Assume forgetfulness rather than defiance. And keep in mind what your students might be going through. 

Here are some examples of how these kinds of supports can be built into everyday lessons and interactions:

• Mini-lessons to help students cope with “real life” challenges, such as social media intake, self-image, and loss
• Personal check-ins where you ask each student how they are
• Genuine sympathy and understanding when students are experiencing difficulties
• Neutral behavioral reminders before escalating to punishment
• Positive reinforcement and authentic praise for all forms of progress
• Opportunities for connection, not just with you, but with classmates and the community

Classroom environments that are safe are more successful classrooms. A sense of safety can be established through emotional safety and strong procedures that maintain an ideal learning environment.

One of the pain points we hear a lot is that educators simply don’t have time for the amount of data analysis that is required for robust progress monitoring. Plus, they don’t have the tools or training to quickly and effectively gather insights about their instruction, assessments, or students.

While unfortunate, it’s absolutely true that teachers have more responsibility (and less time) than ever.

The good news is that you’re probably already progress monitoring and using data (while informal) in your day-to-day. Ideally, we can give you a handful of techniques that will supplement your existing routines. We think we could even save you time and anguish!

We also recommend taking a look at our progress monitoring YouTube playlist. Data is our bread and butter, so it’s something we talk about often.

Transform informal data into formal data

You gather heaps of data every class period.

For example, “Timmy looks tired today, I’ll probably need to pair him with a friend to keep him engaged.”

Or, “Everyone’s a bit excited for the pep-rally today. I should keep my own energy up to make sure I don’t lose them.”

Your insights lead to informed decisions everyday. The trick is to use your instinct for data collection to formalize the process, track your initiatives, and follow up.

The “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” system

Many teachers take informal surveys like this: “Give me a thumbs up if you understand and a thumbs down if you need more information.”

There are ways to make this data actionable with free, accessible tools. While you could print out a sheet and take down everyone’s names, marking whether their thumbs were up or down, you could also take advantage of technology to store this information.

For example, Google Forms are free and fairly easy to use for data collection and organization. Here’s an example of how you could formalize a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system:

One of the great things about Forms is that you can require each student to put their name or email. When you export the data, their responses are attached to their names, so you can easily follow up with students to clarify misconceptions or talk about how to better engage them during lessons.

Write down your observations

Time is a big concern, obviously. Many of the observations you make are quick, and you don’t often have time to run to your computer for a quick note about a student.

However, there are a couple of ways you could make it easier to write and track observations.

This suggestion is a take on the data binders recommendation from earlier in the article. If you’re spending a lot of time walking your room, listening to conversations, and assisting with assignments, it might be a good idea to print out your essential standards for the unit, create a chart with student names, and write quick observations on your clipboard after conversations and interventions are implemented. 

One quick note, though–while this may be easy to implement, it may be difficult to track. Paper data isn’t super easy to manipulate.

Another suggestion is to create digital trackers for small groups of students. You may not have time to write detailed observations on each student, each class period, but you may have time to write summary notes of conversations and help provided for students who need closer monitoring.

For example, your frequent tier 2 and 3 students may need closer monitoring than students who live pretty comfortably in tier 1 and don’t often require much additional support.

Put these students on a spreadsheet and create space to track their assessment scores, write observations, and create opportunities for follow-up.

If you have data in a spreadsheet, you can also create your own data visualizations!

‍Create charts and tables so data-based decision-making is faster and easier

Ideally, your school is using a software that makes it easy to export data (even better if they’re using Aware which has native data visualization tools). 

If you can export your data to a spreadsheet, then you can create charts and data visualizations.

This is a process that will take some time and patience, so rather than dictate a step-by-step process for you, we’ll link how you can replicate this process with Excel and Sheets.

Once you’ve made your graphs or charts, it’s time to analyze.

Data analysis is a big topic. We wrote a comprehensive resource about it for administrators, but there’s some great information for teachers on identifying trends and outliers starting on page 4.

For now, here are some quick tips:

• Look for outliers, including high and low performing students
• Identify trends, such as increases or decreases in scores
• Make connections, such as increases or decreases after a lesson or intervention
• Single out demographic data to see which groups of students are experiencing trends that are different from the norm

Following up on data observations

Again, you’re naturally making these decisions. When you make your data formal, you can start to see how successful your changes, interventions, and supports really are. Following up after your decisions is simply tracking, progress monitoring, and making changes that are supported by the data. This is a big topic, but here are some examples of how you might follow up on the data you collect to make data-informed decisions:

1. Document test and retest scores to see which interventions are most effective for which students.
2. Modify assignment expectations and parameters based on observations of how students learn.
3. Clarify lessons, add resources, and include interesting anecdotes based on how students respond to lessons.
4. Edit tests for future students so frequently missed questions are eliminated, confusing questions are clarified, and more varied opportunities are included for students to demonstrate learning.
5. Group students according to learning needs, so they can work together and you can teach, re-teach, and enrich them more easily.
6. Give students accommodations based on areas where they struggle to boost their confidence and performance.
7. Advocate for students to receive documented accommodations and supports according to their improved assessment scores when using accommodations.

You’re an excellent teacher, and we know that. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re seeking out ways to better serve students in your spare time.

However, we know that even accomplished teachers can’t juggle everything on their own. Instinct, intuition, and kindness go a long way. Data is the final piece–the final, necessary piece.

Students fall through the cracks without data and monitoring. We can develop our own misconceptions about students that lead to improper conclusions. We miss things, especially around our own lessons and teaching abilities.

Data makes it objective. Data makes it so that every student is seen and feels seen by their teachers.

Imagine if every student had a teacher ask them how they were every day.

Imagine if every student received praise for the hard work they put in to improve their assessment score.

Imagine if every student received patience and accommodations tailored to their needs, learning gaps, and unique learning styles.

Students who feel seen and taken care of like this aren’t going to be perfect students. That’s a given. Kids will be kids. However, research shows that this kind of responsive teaching improves behavior and performance. We know that it would improve your job satisfaction and quality of life, as well, to have quality relationships with students where respect and safety is at the forefront of your interactions.

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