In any given school day, students must manage a multitude of specific tasks: unlocking and locking lockers, sitting and paying attention to instructions, holding a pencil correctly to write on a worksheet, as examples.
As a school-based Occupational Therapist (OT) you help students perform all these daily “occupations” and more. But you can’t exclusively work one-on-one with every student who needs services. The need is too great and your time is too short.
In special education programs using Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Tier 1 Interventions can both ease your load and maximize your interventions’ effectiveness.
At Pediatric Therapeutic Services (PTS), we are big believers in MTSS’ power to do more good for more students without stretching clinicians to the breaking point. This model reserves intensive, one-on-one interventions for students who need them most, while extending related services’ benefits to those who aren’t on a caseload.
The language of MTSS is relatively new. Only in the last few years have more states started talking about MTSS than RtI (Response to Intervention) on their education websites. But the concept of using tiered systems to support student outcomes isn’t new. MTSS is “what we should have called it from the start,” Dr. Adena Miller writes online.
At PTS we use the terms synonymously, but we always have this three-level framework in mind:
School-based OTs play a critical role in making MTSS work, as the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) explains:
Although you’ll be most directly involved with students in Tiers 2 and 3, your work implementing Tier 1 Interventions with general education teachers and staff is the basis on which the MTSS model’s success rests.
Case in point: Problems with handwriting commonly drive OT referrals. But OTs can train teachers to address these frequent concerns. Among other strategies, teachers can help students:
Using these and similar activities, teachers can eliminate unnecessary OT referrals for handwriting issues, instead, only referring students who don’t satisfactorily respond to these interventions.
Teachers also frequently ask school-based OTs to help students who have trouble regulating their emotions and behaviors. Here also, OTs can equip teachers with Tier 1 Interventions designed to promote students’ self-regulation—and, by extension, a calm and quiet environment conducive to learning. Such interventions include:
When you consult and collaborate with teachers and get them using Tier 1 Interventions in their classrooms, you’ll not only be indirectly helping more students, but also ensuring you have time and energy to deliver more intensive interventions to the students who really need them.
For more examples of OT Tier 1 Interventions for handwriting and self-regulation you can introduce to teachers right away, click here to download detailed and illustrated Consult Cards from PTS.