Response to Intervention in Virtual Classrooms with Beginning Writers

Abstract

During the COVID pandemic, two virtual classes of Grade 1 students learned to write personal narratives in a Response to Intervention framework. Classroom teachers delivered Tier 1 Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) in personal narrative writing to 67% of students. A research associate provided Tier 2 SRSD instruction in personal narrative writing, with reteaching, support and feedback, and ad hoc remediation of handwriting and spelling, to eight students. Then, because three of the Tier 2 students were frequently absent or disengaged, the research associate delivered Tier 3 individual instruction to them. Students in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction made large, statistically significant gains in text quality. Tier 3 students did not make significant gains. Partial correlations, observations during teaching, and teacher interviews suggest that attendance, spelling level, and discourse knowledge affected learning. Teachers identified strengths and limitations of SRSD, Response to Intervention and the specific materials used. The results indicate that in an online setting, SRSD, delivered in a brief RTI format, is effective for improving written expression for typically developing beginning writers and some struggling writers, but that some struggling writers require additional intervention.