How to Create and Use easyCBM Interventions
Our interventions are just a log for you to record an intervention plan for your students. It is not a program or separate set of measures developed for you to assign and give your students. You can create your own interventions by using the interactive guide under the Interventions tab.
Because available interventions vary so much from one context to another, and in recognition of the need for educators to be able to personalize the interventions they are providing to their students, the easyCBM system does not tell teachers what interventions to use with their students. It is not designed to provide instruction, but rather as a way for you as a teacher to identify students who might need additional instructional supports, log the interventions that you as the teacher provides to students (these would be things outside the easyCBM system that you are logging on easyCBM in order to track their impact, and to monitor the progress your students are making as a result of the interventions that you provide to them).
A school district/student study team would be able to better determine what makes the most sense/be a reasonable goal for a given student, given his/her starting point as well as prior history of learning growth/amount of intervention being provided, etc. Instead, the system provides users with a list of evidence-based interventions (including both curriculum and strategies) from which to choose, as well as the opportunity to add customized interventions, through an Intervention Template. This Intervention Template makes it easy for teachers to log the different interventions they are implementing in their classrooms, providing a detailed historical log of the approaches they have tried in order to meet their students’ instructional needs.
You, as the teacher, still have to provide instruction to your students outside the easyCBM system. You then use easyCBM to monitor the effectiveness of your instruction by assigning the appropriate measures to the students to assess how they are doing. Where this information shows up will be on the graphs under the Reports tab in the Individuals Tab. Once you complete a template and administer an assessment, information from your intervention notes as well as the students' scores on the assessments show up on the individual's graphs.
Creating an Intervention
Use the Interventions tab (Deluxe only) to log what specific instructional interventions are being provided to students. The Interventions interface is based on templates and then applied to groups of students or individual students.
Click on the Intervention tab. In the Instructional Interventions box, click on the green Create Template button.
This opens the intervention wizard, where you are directed to provide information about the Intervention. On the first screen, enter a short but descriptive label (this will be plotted on the Individual Student time series graphs), select the subject area (reading, math, or Spanish), and add a brief description of the intervention in the Description section. Then, click “Next” to advance to the next screen.
On the next screen, enter which tier of instruction is being provided, select the student-teacher ratio, and indicate the duration and frequency with which the intervention is being provided
On the following screen, select the curriculum being provided. The list of curriculum is subject- specific (in other words, if “Reading” was selected on the prior screen, then the list will only include published Reading Curricula. If “Math” was selected, then math curricula are displayed instead). Hovering over the icon (or tapping, on mobile devices) displays information about each of the listed curriculum, including publisher and grade range recommended by the publisher. If the curriculum being used is not on the list, enter the curriculum name into the ‘Add new curriculum’ text box and then click on the green “+” button (or press the Enter key) to add a custom curriculum to the list of options
On the next screen, select the instructional strategies being provided. The list of strategies comes from the What Works Clearinghouse’s analysis of instructional strategies with some scientific evidence of effectiveness. Unlike the curricula, strategies are intended to be equally applicable across subject areas.
Hovering over the icon (or tapping, on mobile devices) displays information about each of the listed strategies, including a brief description of what the strategy involves as well as information about the level of evidence of effectiveness as reported by the What Works Clearinghouse.
If the strategy being used is not on the list, enter the strategy name into the ‘Add new curriculum’ text box and then click on the green “+”button (or press the Enter key) to add a custom strategy to the list of options
Once the green ‘Create’ button is clicked, the template will be created and you will be presented with the final screet. Here you can either “Close” the wizard or “Apply” the template to groups or individual students.
Now apply a template to groups or individual students, and indicate the date (lower left hand corner of the screen) on which the intervention has or will begin (defaulting to the current day).
Once a template has been applied, a log of the interventions is displayed under the templates themselves. Selecting a student name from the list on the left opens all interventions in that student’s records. All currently active interventions are shown first, with the most recently- added at the top of the page. Any de-activated interventions (those that a student is no longer receiving but did receive at some point in the past) appear at the bottom of the list, with a line through the name of the intervention.
To edit or deactivate an intervention, click the gear button in the upper right corner to open the drop-down menu, and select the desired action to perform. This is the same process one uses to apply an intervention again, after it has previously been deactivated. Simply click the gear button, and select “Apply Intervention” from the drop-down menu.
Once the intervention has been applied, it then becomes editable and enables the logging of notes to track intervention progress. The Notes section can be found at the bottom of each intervention To add a note to an intervention, simply enter the note into the “Add a note” text box, and click the green ‘”+” button (or press the Enter key), and the note (with timestamp) will be logged. Clicking the red “+” to the right of a note will prompt the user to confirm deletion of the note
Changing Interventions
An important part of RTI is ensuring accurate records of interventions being provided. When one or more parts of an intervention are changed (for instance, moving the student to a smaller group for instruction, increasing the duration or frequency of the intervention, or changing curricula or instructional strategies), this change should be noted in the records. To make this happen, first deactivate the original intervention (logging the date on which it was changed) and then apply the intervention to the student again, with the new date, then edit the newly-applied intervention to alter the name and the specific details that were changed.
If there are so many changes that it would be easier to simply enter a new intervention, that is also an option, of course. Either way, the new or edited intervention will be plotted on the Individual student progress monitoring graphs once it has been applied.
Exiting Interventions
To end an intervention, simply select “Deactivate” from the intervention dropdown menu. The date on which the intervention was deactivated is automatically logged into the system as an “end date” on the intervention log.
Deleting an Intervention
Note : The intervention information appears on the students' individual reports once there is data there to create a report (but not until then). So. in order for the you to see the intervention lines you first have to administer some tests. (and for the lines to show up on the graph, the first assessment has to take place within two weeks of the intervention being applied, otherwise, the intervention line will be "off the chart" to the left of the graph being displayed in the report. If more than 2 weeks has elapsed, you can go in and adjust the date for when the intervention was applied so it doesn't "fall off" the side of the graph.