RTI from All Sides: What Every Teacher Needs to Know

To listen to Mary Howard's podcast "Principles for Success with RTI" click here.

This book is desperately needed in districts and state departments everywhere. It is loaded with interventions that are right for kids and right for the educators who serve them. It profiles RTI as a framework for increasing intentional instruction…keeping the emphasis on knowledgeable educators rather than “programs.” If this book could become a prerequisite to implementation, I fully believe that the goals of RTI may well be realized. Linda Hoyt
Author of Revisit, Reflect, Retell, Updated Edition

Response to Intervention (RTI) is here, but what do teachers need to know about it? As Mary Howard investigated that question, she was surprised: the more she knew about it, the more this “teacher’s teacher” was excited by it. That’s because RTI promises to use the great teaching you know to catch readers before they falter. With RTI from All Sides, she shows how to make RTI live up to its promise.

In RTI from All Sides, Howard points the way toward thoughtful and effective RTI—and away from potentially dangerous, rigid implementations. She offers suggestions for instructional design, collaboration, and troubleshooting—even for avoiding mediocre RTI products. Most important, she demonstrates how to apply the principles you trust to RTI:

• teaching reading and writing in authentic ways to help students choose just-right books that set them up to read in and out of school
• using simple, ongoing assessments to know when to intensify instruction inside and outside the regular classroom
• differentiating reading instruction to maintain the flow between whole-class, small-group, and one-on-one instruction while meeting specific students’ needs
• designing interventions to amplify instruction instead of sidelining students to skill-and-drill that takes them further from engaged, proficient reading
• coordinating efforts within and between instructional supports to emphasize acceleration through the targeted instruction students need to succeed.

In addition, Howard includes helpful questions that lead book study groups to a better understanding of RTI, its structure, its implementation, and its daily application.

RTI has the potential to return instructional decision-making to teachers and to galvanize schools to design effective practices for helping all readers achieve—especially those who struggle. Read RTI from All Sides and get the information you need to create a safety net that can save struggling readers before the learning gap widens forever.

When Linda Hoyt is asked what people should know about her professional career, she is often heard to say, "I'm a teacher. That will always be the heart of my professional work." Though she spent many years as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, curriculum developer, staff developer, and Title I District Coordinator, Linda's passion will always center around vigorous and engaging classrooms where teachers and children learn together.

This passion for vigorous and engaged learning has led Linda to create twenty-four professional books and video programs, plus numerous instructional resources for children. A few titles from her multidimensional list of Heinemann publications include Revisit, Reflect, Retell; Make It Real; Interactive Read-Alouds; Solutions for Reading Comprehension; and her newest resources, Explorations in Nonfiction Writing and Crafting Nonfiction. Three of her popular Heinemann video programs include Nonfiction Writing (one for primary and one for intermediate) and Navigating Informational Texts. Linda is a full-time author, consultant, and highly requested speaker at conferences throughout the United States, in Canada, and in Australia.

Linda and her husband, Steve, live in the mountains of central Oregon where they enjoy outdoor activities and the high-desert climate.

Read more from Linda's most recent blogs here:

• Just Do It! Informational Writing in the Primary Grades
• Guided Writing, Part 1
• Guided Writing, Part 2
• Reading For Life by Laura Robb
• Strategies for Teaching Nonfiction Writing (Grades K-2 3-5)

Listen to an interview with Linda Hoyt on Education Talk Radio--11/09/2011 (35:58)

Writing

• Explorations in Nonfiction Writing
• Crafting Nonfiction - Primary and Intermediate
• Nonfiction writing DVDs, K-2, 3-5
• "plus pack" at each grade level

Reading

• Interactive Read Alouds - K-1, 2-3, 4-5

Professional Books:

• Make it Real
• Revisit, Reflect, Retell

Mary Howard is the author of the Heinemann titles Good to Great Teaching, RTI from All Sides and Moving Forward with RTI. A "teacher's teacher," she's been an educator for almost four decades. Mary combines extensive experiences as a special education, Title I, and Reading Recovery teacher with continued in-school support as a reading consultant and literacy coach. She understands the realities of today's classroom and supports teachers across the country in creating high-quality literacy experiences for every child.