Happy New Year Everyone!
The ORTIi Project has moved to the Northwest Regional Education Support District. As we get to know our new colleagues in the building in Hillsboro, we are excited to explore many new opportunities for collaboration.
With this move, there have been a few changes:
- Christie Rivas, our administrative assistant, stayed at Tigard Tualatin School District in the Office of Student Services. We are hoping to hire a new person very soon!
- Brad Thorud is now working at Northwest PBIS, supporting school districts throughout the west as they build trauma-informed, inclusive classrooms in which all students can thrive.
- Ryan Blasquez, the director of Instructional Services at NWRESD, is the new director of ORTIi. See below for more about Ryan.
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Our website has not changed, nor has our ORTIi email: [email protected]
We will continue to support districts throughout the state of Oregon and our friends beyond! As part of that support, here is this year's first newsletter.
The ORTIi team,
Jon, Beth, Nicole, Lisa and Ryan
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Meet ORTIi's New Director
Ryan Blasquez
Before becoming a teacher, Ryan spent five years as a case manager and treatment facility administrator at Oregon Department of Human Services. He then began his education career as a special educator and behavior support teacher on special assignment in the Tigard-Tualatin School District (TTSD). He later took on leadership roles, including associate director of student services, director of student services and district equity coordinator.
During his time as a central office administrator Ryan supported K-12 special education programs, implementation of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in elementary schools, the ORTIi grant and several other programs. His most recent position was as principal of Charles F. Tigard Elementary School in TTSD. He now serves as the Director of Instructional Services at the Northwest Regional Education Services District.
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This year we have two great opportunities for you to connect with your fellow educators and amazing voices from the world of reading instruction and MTSS. We will share more specific details next month, but here are the basics:
The 2nd Annual ORTIi Reading Symposium is a free, virtual half day event on December 8th, 2022. We hope you will be able to attend live, but if that does not work for your situation, all sessions will be recorded and available on our website within days of the conference.
The In-Person Annual Conference is BACK! We are excited to announce that we are partnering with NWPBIS for a joint conference to meet all your MTSS needs. The conference will be held at the Hilton Portland Downtown, April 26-28, 2023. We will let you know more details next month.
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Small Steps Towards Better Reading Outcomes
(Audience: Elementary Staff, Secondary Reading Teachers)
Are you wondering what are some small shifts you could make to your instructional practices to improve reading outcomes for your students this year? Dr. Stephanie Stollar has created 4 short videos about things you can do today, regardless of your core program. The topics are: read alouds, high frequency words, decodable text and prompting. Most of these are things you have likely been doing for a long time, but she shares tweaks to these practices make them better align with reading science.
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Structured Literacy Interventions
Book Club
(Audience: Anyone who teaches reading)
PaTTAN (Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network) held a book club in the spring with a series of webinars and additional materials based on each chapter of the excellent book Structured Literacy Interventions: Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties K-6 (edited by Louise Spear Swerling). All the sessions and resources are available on a Padlet. Staff could use this padlet to form their own book club or simply to watch the weekly webinars on their own. This is good content for anyone who teaches reading - whether or not they are the ones providing supplemental reading support in their setting. Being able to identify what students need is also valuable for differentiating small group instruction during core as well.
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UPDATE!
The Phonics Brain
Skill Tracking Pages
(Audience: Elementary teachers, Secondary reading teachers, students and families)
We shared this in June, but you may have missed it. It is so amazing, we wanted to share it again as you launch into a new year. Plus, Bri Luna, the creator, has written a new blog post about how she shares progress with her students to increase motivation!
Here is what we shared about these pages in the spring: In many of our trainings we have emphasized the importance of sharing with students and their families the skills students have mastered and the ones that they are still working on. We have been on the lookout for a student friendly way to explain this and just found a great example that is appropriate for all ages. This phonics brain graphic is 3 pages. The first page is more basic phonics skills: "Sounds and Letters I know". The phonics skills on the next 2 pages are more advanced. Once a student is automatic at a phonics rule (both reading and spelling it), they can color in that part of the brain. This can be used to share information with families and also when reviewing progress in interventions.
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The Brain Builder Video Series from Amplify
(Audience: Elementary Students, families, and teachers)
These entertaining, student-facing videos were created in a collaboration between the Right To Read Project and Amplify. They explain to students (and everyone else!) how the brain learns to read. These videos would be great to show to students to give them some of the "Why" behind some of the evidence-based practices we use when we teach them to read. Each video is just a few minutes long. What grade level are they for? It might depend on your students and the episode. For sure, 2nd and 3rd grade - some may be good for lower grades and some for students in upper grades who may need a bit of support for the "why" they are working on the skills they are working on. They are engaging enough for adults who are interested in how we teach reading, too! They could also be used on a district webpage about reading or just to send out to families in weekly updates.
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Leading System Improvement
(Audience: District & School Leaders)
Here are a podcast episode and a webinar that can help district and school leaders maintain the focus on implementing evidence based reading instruction in a Multi-Tiered System of Support this year. They are both great reminders that there are many people doing this hard work AND that it is worth it!
In this episode of the "Teaching, Reading, and Learning: The Reading League Podcast" a principal and the superintendent in a rural school district in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country talk about their journey to improved reading outcomes, lower discipline rates and higher attendance as they implemented evidence based reading instruction in an MTSS. This episode is very inspiring.
This webinar, "Breaking Barriers: How School Leaders Can Prioritize Practices That Maximize Accelerated Literacy Learning" was from the PaTTAN Literacy Symposium in the spring. Jess Surles shares ways to leverage MTSS to recover from the lost opportunities to learn in the past two years. She also shares resources from the Lead for Literacy website. If you are an ORTIi district, a lot of this will sound familiar, but sometimes it is nice to hear the same thing in a slightly different way as a reminder that this is the right work!
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ORTIi Resources For Your Professional Learning Needs |
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Conference Videos
Need some high quality professional learning? You still have access to the 2022 Annual Conference session videos and materials. Click here to check out what sessions are available.
We also have an archive of previous training events. The Fall 2021 Reading Symposium and the Winter/Spring 2020 Annual Conference Series are all at our Video Recordings and Modules page on our website. These videos give you access to an array amazing experts in the fields of reading and MTSS.
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ORTIi's
MTSS Component Modules
Does your PD plan for the year include staff training on the components of MTSS? We've got you! Most modules are 20 minutes or less and have discussion questions at the end.
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