Timely System to Enrich, Intervene, & Remediate
By: Emily Therrien
In addition to ensuring that all students receive high quality instruction in every classroom, MHS is also working to ensure that all students have access to additional support and enrichment. Our Four Pillars refer to this as a “Timely System to Enrich, Intervene, and Remediate.” At MHS, we have a guaranteed 35 minute block in our schedule four days a week - known as Solon Block - that serves as the backbone of our enrichment, intervention, and remediation system. Defining a specified time in the schedule is often perceived as the main logistical hurdle that high schools face in establishing such a system, but Mike Mattos (2015) argues that “the real obstacles begin when a school considers the logistics of having potentially hundreds of students transitioning to specific interventions,” (7). This certainly holds true for us at MHS - we have dedicated time and space in our schedule through Solon Block (huge win!), and now we’re engaging in action research to continue to tune and revise our practices for scheduling, identifying student needs, and offering rigorous enrichment opportunities.
Our interventionists, Ally Middleton (math) and Diane Baker (ELA), have jumped into this work with both feet this year, and are sharing their learning with us to better inform our usage of Solon Block and other intervention opportunities in the future. The frequency and duration of Solon Block has been a positive for students needing just a bit more time and direct instruction to master a skill they are stuck on. Diane has shared that Solon Block guarantees intervention opportunities for all students without taking any time away from their core instruction, which can be a challenge in high school intervention systems. Although there are still some scheduling conflicts to work around, Ally has also noted that Solon Block is when she is able to work with the most students consistently over time, seeing progress in their skill goals through the intervention cycles.
Teachers are also using Solon Block to reteach and provide additional direct instruction, using data from formative and summative assessments to identify which students need to be scheduled for Solon Block. If a teacher notices that a student is struggling to grasp a new concept, or is missing a foundational skill, they can schedule that student for one or more Solon Blocks to ensure that the new or missing learning is solidified before moving on. Students can also request to be scheduled for a specific teacher or course, based on their own perceptions of their needs, and we’re exploring how students can take more ownership over their Solon Block schedules.
An area for growth within our Timely System to Enrich, Intervene, and Remediate is our enrichment offerings. This is where we see the biggest tension in scheduling - what if a teacher has planned an enrichment lesson for their physics class, but the students scheduled for this enrichment now need additional instruction in French before the summative? We are looking forward to tackling these questions as a Guiding Coalition (teacher leadership team) and exploring enrichment models that have been successful in other schools. Some consistent enrichment offerings are well underway during Solon Block, such as the Restorative Practices group, which meets every Thursday to continue to support the implementation of restorative practices at MHS.
A few weeks ago members of the MRPS Administration team went to the Response to Intervention Conference to learn more about how we can improve our intervention practices and work collaboratively. Part of what we learned is that the more targeted our intervention system is, the more likely it will work. As we continue to work to identify exactly what we want students to know and learn, we will continue to adjust our system to meet the needs of the learner.
While the logistics and nuts and bolts of enrichment, remediation, and intervention are an essential piece of the puzzle, we also know that those elements alone do not lead to an effective system - we also need to foster a culture of continuous learning and collaboration that is focused on student learning. Our collaborative department teams, or PLCs, are engaged in this work weekly, and are practicing the habits of effective PLCs by focusing on the four big questions: What do we expect students to learn, how do we know they are learning it, how do we respond when they do not learn, and how do we respond when they have already learned? As these questions and the PLC structures become more and more a part of our daily habits as educators, we will continue to shape a culture in which time is the variable, not the learning.
Mattos, M., & Buffum, A. (2015). It's About Time: Planning interventions and extensions in secondary school. Solution Tree Press.
