Before I go over RTI probing, I wanted to show something the Discovery Education website offers: great instructional integration links; the site can help you teach your content. And since it's sitting there waiting for you to use, why let such a good resource go to waste? Personally, I hate re-inventing the wheel.

Putnam County's Intervention & RTI Guide states (on p.2), under the heading "TIER 1",

Students receive effective instruction in the general education setting using validated practices. Student progress is monitored and tested for mastery on a periodic basis. This tier includes ALL students. Tier 1 is the core, research-based, instruction program.

So while you may think to yourself, "But this isn't RTI", the truth is, this is the first step (instruction).

I placed a link on the Cornerstone Middle School website to the Discovery Education website (of course, you can click that Discovery Education website link and go there directly).

1. Once you're there, at the section entitled Subscriber Login, enter your username and password. Note if you need teaching resources (from a puzzle-maker to lesson plans already made for your standards, visit http://school.discoveryeducation.com/
   
2. Once you are logged in, the upper left of the screen has a button highlighted ("My DE"); you'll need to click on the gray-colored "Assessment" button:
   
   Disclaimer: this website is in no way related to the Discovery Education website and the use of its web elements are for demonstration purposes only to help teachers new to the website gain access.
3. Once you click the Assessment link, the icon bar turns a vivid red
   
4. Click on the link marked "Resources". That will bring up a page that lets you view Categories (Reading/Language Arts, Math and Science are on the TN State Reporting Categories 2009 button; Social Studies is on the CRT Reporting Categoriesbutton.)
   
Once here, you'll see content areas labelled in red (as shown in the picture), and grade levels are grouped by column. Each skill set in your discipline has a "Show" link that will take you to a new webpage of resources for that skill.
5. As an example, I've highlighted the 6th grade mathematics skill set for Algebra:
   
   If you click that link (labelled "Show"), you'll go to a page of resources for 6th grade algebra.
6. You'll find a navigation matrix at the top right to view other areas, if need be. The "plus boxes" will expand when you click them, giving you links to websites, videos and more.
   
7. Once you click a "plus box", its offerings show up beneath that SPI. Video links have a filmstrip icon, while webpages appear as blue webpages:
   
   Video Note: When you click a video link, it will bring up a video player. Most of the videos have a download link. It may be a good idea to download the video to your computer and play it from the computer. Playing it across the Internet may cause the video to stop and stutter (this is called buffering) and not give your students as smooth a presentation as if you had played it from your computer.
   

   When you click a plus box and expand its contents, note that it becomes a "minus box" (if you look next to SPI 0606.3.4, you'll notice it has a minus in the box, not a plus); if you click the "minus box" it will close up its content and become a plus box again.

   Please note: sometimes a website is down or a link is broken. If a link doesn't work, try another link; usually they have 2-3 links beneath each SPI. Occassionally, there is no content for a given SPI:
   
   At the time I took this screen capture, there were no links for SPI 0606.3.8 Qualitative Graphs; therefore, there's no "plus box" yet.

Using this in your classroom

If you have a Promethean board, of course you can display the content on your board. And if you have a projector, you can project it on the wall. Some teachers had the Focus units for their iMacs to show their iMac desktop on the TV. In this video, I mispoke myself and called it "infocus"; let me clarify, the unit in question is by Focus Enhancements and it is called an i-TView DV; there are many in my school and you may have some in yours, if so you can use this. You can use that adapter (the i-TVIEW) with a laptop dongle. Here's a video how-to: