Engaging Minds

Developing Tier 1 Learning Experiences for All Students

Students come to school with different backgrounds, life experiences, and foundational skills.  The challenge for Manteca Unified – and all school districts – is to find ways to know and understand where students are when they enter our classrooms at the beginning of each year to design learning opportunities for them to grow and learn. To accomplish this, we utilize a Multi-Tiered System of Support, or MTSS. 

A MTSS first focuses on providing a rich learning experience in “Tier 1” or initial learning designed by teachers at common grade levels.  Tier 1 learning takes into consideration the needs of all students, providing resources and supports so each learner has access to grade level standards.  Teachers plan for this by asking 4 questions: 

1. What do students need to know and be able to do? 
2. How will I know if they know it? 
3. What do I do if they do not know it? 
4. What do I do when they do know it? 

Once initial Tier 1 instruction is completed, teachers look at the lesson’s outcomes through an assessment, either informal (observed learning) or formal (written test).  At this point, the teacher team decides what to do next. They may reteach lessons if many students need additional instruction or experiences to deepen their learning, or plan for intervention when smaller numbers of students need a little bit more support.    
“Tier 2” and “Tier 3” involve additional support, customizing learning experiences for small groups of students who still need to build foundational skills beyond Tier 1.  All these levels (Tiers 1, 2, and 3) form our Multi-Tiered System of Support.  

This year, we have spent time supporting Highly Collaborative Teacher teams at school sites to focus on putting systems into place to support learning. This includes using our base curriculum in English Language Arts and Math aligned to grade level standards, implementing Thinking Strategies and Mathematical Practices, and understanding lesson design and the “Teaching-Assessing-Intervening” cycle.

For years, we have been equipping teachers with the skills to strengthen instruction through targeted professional development. However, this year we took a particular interest in mathematics and what we could do to better support teachers and students. 

During the 2023-24 school year, every math teacher received specialized training on critical thinking strategies and collaborative learning to develop students as critical thinkers and active problem solvers.

Thinking Strategies

Math is more than just numbers and formulas; it’s a way of thinking, making sense of the world, and solving problems. Thinking strategies are tools that help students engage with math in more meaningful ways. While these strategies can be applied to any subject, they are particularly effective in math since it requires plenty of reasoning, critical thinking, and problem-solving. 

These strategies (see chart below) serve as a guide for teachers and students across disciplines, giving them different methods they can use to understand and approach problem-solving with intention.

For example, one thinking strategy is “Visualize and Represent.” Students who are hands-on, visual learners might use this method to show their teacher that they understand adding and subtracting fractions with a physical model – a pie perhaps!

Overall, the various thinking strategies give teachers insight into how students think and approach problems. This helps them gauge if students are understanding what they are learning, or if they need additional support to achieve a lesson or reach a standard.

Thinking Strategy Examples

Draw on Background Knowledge “This is just like …” “This reminds me of …” “I know that …” Ask Questions “How …?” “What …?” “Why …?” Infer Logical guesses & predictions based on the information given and background knowledge. “I’m thinking that …” “I predict …” “I am guessing that …” Visualize and Represent Creating mental images to help understand and organize one’s thinking. “In my mind, I can see …”  “I would show this by …” “Another way to show this is …”

Determine Importance Identifying the main idea and the key details and filtering out the irrelevant or distracting information. “I think this is really important.” “This is essential … This is extra …” “The big ideas are …” Monitor for Meaning Checking the solution for accuracy and reasonableness by using estimation, calculation, and logic. “I’m confused here …” “I understand this …” “This doesn’t make sense …” Synthesize Combining the information given and background knowledge to create a greater sense of understanding. “At first I thought … But now I think ...” “Now I understand that …” “My thoughts have really changed by …”

Collaborative Classrooms

Across all grade levels and content areas, teachers are using collaborative strategies to facilitate engaging classroom conversations and activities. 

In a math class, a lesson on parallel lines might begin with an activity where students vote on a set of lines to determine which one doesn’t belong. Activities like this encourage students to think critically and discuss their reasoning. It also gets students out of their seats and moving. Then, after their lesson, students might pair up to coach each other on homework problems, further reinforcing their understanding through collaborative learning.

In this kind of setting, a teacher might also be mindful of who they pair together for certain lessons and/or activities. Depending on the lesson’s difficulty or learning objective, a teacher might combine students by proficiency level, outspokenness, or language abilities, based on their goal. “Do I want my students to connect and learn from each other? Do I want to bring some students out of their shell? Do I want some students to feel uplifted by others?”

This shift fosters a friendly environment where students can feel comfortable practicing concepts until they succeed. With this philosophy, more teachers are using whiteboards and other non-permanent surfaces during class. After all, making and correcting mistakes is a crucial part of learning! 

The Bottom line

We have been focused on strengthening our Tier 1 inclusive instruction for several years, and our teachers’ dedication to our mission and ultimately, their students, is setting children on a path to deeper understanding and long-term success.  

As such, we are seeing more positive outcomes, with a positive trend in math scores District-wide over the last two school years and maintained scores in English Language Arts. There is still work to be done, but we are confident in our staff and students’ ability to grow.

Since the 2021-22 school year, the number of students in kindergarten through grade 12 who have met their growth projections in math and reading has increased each year!