Action Plan Designs for Three-Tier Intensive RTI Support
When moving a teacher trainee into Tier 3 support, the focus shifts entirely from generalized instruction to highly individualized, frequent, and intensive coaching. For adult learners tackling complex cognitive tasks—like narrowing down a thesis statement or designing qualitative research methodology—the action plan needs to break massive hurdles into immediate, manageable steps.
Here are three distinct ways to design a Tier 3 individual action plan, depending on where the trainee is getting stuck. You can build any of these directly into your PKM setup as a template.
Design 1: The Micro-Milestone Tracker
Best for: Trainees suffering from “blank page syndrome” or those overwhelmed by the scope of academic writing.
Instead of setting a goal like “Draft the literature review,” this design forces you and the trainee to break the intervention down into hyper-specific, weekly deliverables.
| Date | The Micro-Goal | The Intervention (1-on-1 Focus) | Evidence of Completion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Formulate a single, testable research question. | 30-min coaching on narrowing scope. | Trainee submits 3 variations of the question. |
| Week 2 | Identify 5 peer-reviewed sources directly related to the question. | Joint database search session demonstrating boolean logic. | An annotated bibliography of just those 5 sources. |
| Week 3 | Draft the methodology rationale (1 paragraph). | Reviewing strong vs. weak rationale examples together. | A 150-word draft submitted for feedback. |
Design 2: The UDL Co-Creation Contract
Best for: Practicing transparent teaching and giving adult learners agency over their own intervention.
If a trainee is struggling to synthesize qualitative data, standard written essays might be the barrier, not their actual comprehension of the data. This plan is built with the trainee during the initial Tier 3 meeting, actively applying Universal Design for Learning principles.
| Plan Component | Details (Co-authored with Trainee) |
|---|---|
| The Core Bottleneck | Where exactly is the breakdown happening? (e.g., “I understand the interviews, but I can’t code the themes.”) |
| Means of Representation | How will I (the trainer) present this concept differently? (e.g., visual mind maps of data instead of text lists). |
| Means of Action & Expression | How will the trainee demonstrate they get it? (e.g., recording a 5-minute audio walkthrough of their data themes instead of writing a draft). |
| Check-in Frequency | E.g., 15 minutes every Tuesday morning. |
Design 3: The Iterative Feedback Loop
Best for: Deep-dive academic writing interventions where the trainee needs to learn how to implement structural feedback, rather than just fixing grammar.
This design functions as a running log of revisions. It tracks not just what you taught them, but whether they actually applied the specific coaching in their next draft.
| Coaching Session Date | Focused Skill | Trainer Feedback Provided | Trainee Action Required | Review Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 12 | Aligning thesis with methodology. | ”Your qualitative methods don’t match the quantitative claim in the thesis.” | Rewrite thesis statement to reflect qualitative discovery. | Oct 15 | 🟡 Pending |
| Oct 15 | Paraphrasing vs. Quoting. | ”Too many block quotes. You are losing your academic voice.” | Convert paragraphs 3 and 4 from direct quotes into synthesized summaries. | Oct 19 | 🟢 Mastered |
Key insight: The most common failure point in Tier 3 for higher education is a lack of strict exit criteria. Ensure whichever design you use includes a definitive metric for when the trainee no longer needs 1-on-1 intensive support and can return to Tier 1 or Tier 2.