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26 Speech Pathology Australia: Speech Pathology in Schools Project
RTI tier Speech pathology roles
Tier 3
Individual intervention
and support
A small proportion of students will inevitably have more severe difficulties
learning to read and spell. These students require Tier 3 intervention
which is more individualised and typically lasts for extended periods of
time. These students should receive evidence-based Tier 3 intervention
in order for optimal language and literacy gains to be realised. Tier 3
intervention is more individualised to the student’s needs and is delivered
one-to-one or perhaps in a smaller group with other students who have
similar intervention goals and importantly, should be provided with greater
intensity. For many students, the activities and strategies are similar to Tier
2 however there is:
• increased frequency of sessions per week,
• increased length of sessions,
• increased duration of the intervention from start to finish, and
• increased instructor expertise.
Response-to-Intervention and literacy difficulties
Useful references
Hempenstall, K. (2011). Sounding off about teaching children to read. Retrieved October 2017, from
Konza, D. (2014). Responding to the Evidence: Synthetic Phonics in Action. Retrieved October
2017, from
Moats[CT9], L. C. (1999). Teaching reading is rocket science: What expert teachers of reading
should know and be able to do.
Nation, K. (2017) Nurturing a lexical legacy: reading experience is critical for the development of
word reading skill. npj Science of Learning 2(3), 3.
Snow, P. C. (2016) Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture: Language is literacy is language – Positioning
speech-language pathology in education policy, practice, paradigms and polemics. International
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 18(3), 216–228.
Torgesen, J. K. (1998). Catch them before they fall. American Educator, 22, 32–41.