Response to Intervention Leaders Headline Conference

By Robert Schroeder

Response to intervention is one of the hottest topics on the education landscape.  With class sizes increasing and along with demands for teacher accountability, teachers' need to perform response to intervention and their capacity to perform it are not always in correlation.

National Louis University is hosting "The Essential Response to Intervention Conference" June 23-24 as a teacher renewal seminar.  The conference brings together the nation's top thinkers on response to intervention with educators from across the state of Illinois.

"Teachers [are expected] to teach and assess continually throughout the day, and that's a hard thing to do," said Claudia Katz, Ed.D., conference organizer and an  instructor in the National College of Education. "This year we have thinkers who are more intellectual, more about research."

Those thinkers include Richard Allington, Ph.D. and Peter Johnston, Ph.D., the conference's two keynote speakers.  Allington, the author of "What Really Matters in Response to Intervention:  Research-based Designs" will open the conference and also lead sessions on how summer reading—and lack thereof—builds achievement gaps.

Peter Johnston is the author of "Choice Words" and will present his latest research on how teachers can couch their directions and verbiage to induce student achievement. Johnston will also take part in a panel discussion of response to intervention experts that includes National Louis University professor Donna Ogle, Ed.D.

A number of National Louis faculty from the National College of Education will be leading breakout sessions.   Professor Ann Bates will review and demonstrate early intervention techniques, assistant professor Sophie Degener will discuss her latest research into responsive guided reading, while assistant professor Debra Gurvitz will break down how leadership teams can complement response to intervention.  Toby Rajput, assistant professor in the University Library, will present on tricks to engage early readers, and Katz will lead a workshop on successful approaches to independent reading.

For Katz, the conference is all about providing teachers with the latest trends in a trending field.

"If you looked at the International Reading Association newsletter, response to intervention is the hottest topic," Katz said. "It is about at its apex, in that it will become less important to people, but right now many are really concerned about it."

The conference will take place at the Holiday Inn Chicago North Shore, 5300 W. Touhy Ave. in Skokie, Ill.  For more information, please contact Claudia Katz.