Question: What is the relationship between foundational skills and the core curriculum within intensive or Tier III interventions?

Answer: This one we began discussing when I was actually with Lynn Fuchs on a panel talking about access to the general curriculum (this was probably about a dozen years ago), and the importance of foundational skills was something we in particular noted, and it’s critical for intensive interventions. What I would not like to see is intensive interventions that are standalone, so the school says for Tier III we put our students in “Read for X” or “Reading Made Easy” or something like that, and it’s a program that’s totally isolated from what’s going on in the core. What I’d like to see is something that systematically builds skills in these foundational areas, which would include, certainly for reading: language comprehension, listening comprehension, vocabulary, as well as how to read, decoding and fluent decoding. I’d like to see that, and then what is ideal, what is critical for Tier II but ideal for intensive interventions, is that there are linkages. For example, with students in a middle school you’d be really working intensively on concepts and ideas related to fractions, adding fractions, multiplying fractions, and there was some clear linkage to what’s happening in pre-Algebra for these kids.