An Introduction to MTSS
Written by: Sandy Goehring
If you attend any educational conference or open a teaching publication, you will mostly see and hear conversations about MTSS. The acronym is everywhere, but how far along is your school or district in creating a strong Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework? Do all staff members understand it? Do parents and guardians know what it means when they get a Tier 2 letter in the mail?
“MTSS is more than just putting students into three different tiers of interventions”
The Multi-tiered System of Supports is a very important part of creating a successful school environment that helps all students show success. It is a detailed and complex framework which incorporates initial screening, data review, a multi-level support system, and on-going process reflection.
MTSS is more than just putting students into three different tiers of interventions. To many educators, Tier 1 is the bottom and most critical part of the pyramid. This is the most important, strong core instruction. As you move up the pyramid, two key words change the level of interventions being provided: intensity and frequency. When a student moves to Tier 2, the evidence-based intervention is provided with more intensity and more frequently than in Tier 1. Tier 3 gives the student more intense and frequent instruction than at Tier 2.
“MTSS is a very important part of creating a successful school environment that helps all students show success.”
In my five part Multi-Tiered System of Supports series, I share a brief overview of MTSS, look more closely at the three tiers of the framework, and share some final tips and ideas for using technology in your process. Included in the videos are infographics for each part of the series which can be used as quick resources for the foundational understanding of MTSS.
Infographics created by author.
Resources
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