About This Page
This page reflects the actual work AMS departments completed during our 10/3 session on Building an Intervention Menu. Each team inventoried their current practices, selected must-have interventions for each tier, and flagged the support they still need. What's here is what AMS teachers said, not a generic list.
English / Language Arts
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Diagnostic data, progress monitoring, formative & summative assessment
- Whole-class communications
- Collaboration with other teachers
- SIOP and research-based strategies for reading comprehension
Support Needed
"We don't need support, just time to collaborate."
Modeling: Yes — peers on campus can model best practices.
Logistics: More collaboration time on Fridays or Wednesdays with other teachers.
Ideas to Explore
- Common grading and planning
- Consistency across classrooms for writing and reading
- Common expectations and routines
- Common academic vocabulary and language skills
Distinctive ELA practices
- Reading Intervention Class; ML classes (levels 1–3)
- Before / During / After Reading strategies
- BookShare, Immersive Reader on Canvas
- Writing Diagnostic & iReady Diagnostic
- Short Answer Responses (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning)
- Information literacy; narrative, informational, and argumentative writing
Mathematics
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Modeling (I Do, We Do, You Do)
- Notes / foldables
- Office hours
- Slides posted on Canvas
Tier 2 Must-Haves
- Frequent check-ins
- Collaboration with other teachers
- Skeletal notes
Tier 3 Must-Haves
- Modified assessment, curriculum, and grading
- Collaboration with other teachers
- Accommodations & modifications (multiplication chart, extended time, open notes/binder, calculator, small groups, 1:1 para support)
Support Needed
- Support: None identified.
- Modeling: Unclear — team noted uncertainty about who can model these practices.
- Logistics: No specific logistical actions identified.
Science
Position on Must-Haves
"We use all of the above interventions. Paring it down diminishes the effectiveness of meeting all students' needs."
Science chose not to narrow their list — all inventoried practices remain in active use.
Support Needed
Training: Teachers not yet trained on Magic School AI Text Leveler need training on the resource room (text leveler, translation, summarizer).
Modeling: Sid Carden has completed training.
Logistics: Training for teachers and students on how to use the resource room; students need a few class periods of practice time to become familiar with the tools.
Ideas to Explore
Check-In / Check-Out (CICO) — Tier 2, K–12. Provides students with routine feedback on behavior and increased positive adult attention daily.
Reading Levels — Tier 1. Teach students to adjust text complexity themselves using Magic School AI's text leveler.
Distinctive Science practices
- Amplify read-aloud options & Amplify Spanish version
- Multiple reading levels for same content
- Translated documents & 1:1 para support (Tier 3)
- Differentiated worksheets (fill-in-the-blanks, reduced work)
- Posting objectives and concepts; building background knowledge
Social Studies
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Organizational strategies (binders, folders, notebooks — whole class)
- Retakes and corrections for all assignments, projects, tests
- Explicitly create, teach, and reteach whole-class norms with student input
- Sentence frames
Tier 2 Must-Haves
- Student progress check-ins
- Preferential seating
- Different reading / Lexile levels for some assignments
Tier 3 Must-Haves
- Modified rubrics and grading
- IEP and 504 accommodations
- Collaboration about specific students
Support Needed
"We won't need much outside support to do this. We all feel comfortable in our abilities to use these interventions in our classrooms. However, having more time to collaborate as a department would help us meet these goals."
Ideas to Explore
- 2×10 Relationship Building
- Nudge Letter (attendance)
- Graphic Organizers (deeper use)
- WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)
Distinctive Social Studies practices
- Close Reading Strategies (annotation, highlighting, notetaking)
- Information literacy (SIFT)
- Restorative practices (1:1 conversations)
- Team meetings & parent/guardian meetings for Tier 3 students
- Specific behavior contracts
Health & Physical Education
Beiermann, Nakamura, Quinn, Gradwohl, Hollister
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Providing multiple options to participate
- Non-verbal redirection; short verbal redirection
- Translated documents in home languages
Tier 2 Must-Haves
- Modifying equipment or lesson/activity expectations for students of different ability
- Checking in frequently
Tier 3 Must-Haves
- Looping in the entire team (all teachers, counselors, admin)
- ABC data tracking
Distinctive Health/PE practices
- Contact with physical, occupational, or speech therapist (Karleen) for Tier 3
- Safety plans; quiet place to finish classwork
- Embedding life skills in curriculum and assessment
- Accepting late work until end of quarter
- 1:1 check-ins daily during attendance
Electives
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Graphic organizers
- Daily check-ins
- Greeting at the door; conferencing when possible
Tier 2 Must-Haves
- One-on-one example work
- Contacting family at home for additional support/guidance
- Offering retakes / re-attempts on assignments when possible
Tier 3 Must-Haves
- Involve counselors, administrators, special ed, or ML teachers for help
Support Needed
Modeling: Not available within Electives — "we all teach at the same time, and are departments of 1."
Logistics: Visual reminders at meetings for how to implement the different Tier 3 supports.
Ideas to Explore
- Self-monitoring strategies
- Peer tutoring for specific skills
School Counseling
Tier 1 Must-Haves
- Classroom lessons
- 1:1 meetings with counselor
Tier 2 Must-Haves
- Consultation (teachers, admin, support staff, school-based therapist)
- Small counseling groups
Tier 3 Must-Haves
- Support MTSS referral process
- Referrals to outside agencies
Support Needed
"We're cool with our current menu of interventions. We need support on interventions that we'll suggest/coordinate with classroom teachers (e.g., executive functioning classroom interventions)."
Open question raised: "Where are the district-level leaders in terms of providing a clearinghouse of interventions, providing PD and other resources? Why are we reinventing the wheel school-by-school rather than some leadership from the top?"
Logistics: In the absence of district-level support, counselors need to research and collect interventions to suggest at MTSS referral meetings.
Ideas to Explore
- MTSS Intervention Strategies — menu to offer teachers during MTSS referral meetings
Distinctive Counseling practices
- Tier 3: PREPaRE team collaboration; threat assessments (w/ admin & psych); suicide assessments & safety plans; crisis response & intervention; calm space for re-regulation
- Tier 2: Small counseling groups — stress management, social skills, Girls in Real Life Situations, Building Champions
- Tier 1: Signs of Suicide (collab. with Health Dept.); Naviance (career cluster finder, SMART goal setting, High School & Beyond Plan); Career Day; middle school & high school registration; Planning for Your Future Night; Back-to-School Party; Incoming 7th Grader Night
Common Themes Across Departments
Patterns that appeared in nearly every team's inventory:
- Organizational strategies (binders, notebooks)
- Similar extensive Tier 1 / 2 / 3 "tool kit"
- Speech-to-text and text-to-speech
- Focus on building positive relationships
- Graphic organizers
- Different forms of checking in
- Skeletal notes; exit tickets; sentence stems
- Small-group discussions and share-outs
- Modeling a new skill or learning target
- Office hours; chunking work; student choice
- Tier 3: modified curriculum and grading
- Tier 1: clear routines
- Tier 2: targeted small groups
Identified Gaps
Some teams are doing these; others aren't. These are opportunities to consider for school-wide adoption.
Common Writing Grading
Common grading across departments for writing — consistent expectations so students see the same standards in every class.
Student Self-Adjustment Tools
Tools that let students adjust materials on their own (e.g., text levelers, translation tools) rather than requiring teacher intervention every time.
Structured Collaboration Roles
When students collaborate or work as partners, give them defined roles, responsibilities, and modeled target behavior so they can practice working together in a structured way.
What Every Team Asked For
Time to collaborate. Across ELA, Social Studies, and Math, the same answer came up in Step 4: teams don't need outside training — they need dedicated time (Fridays or Wednesdays) to work together, align on common practices, and share what's working.