Three Ways Multi-Tiered System of Supports Can Encourage Student Belonging

Student belonging refers to students feeling valued, accepted, and welcomed at school. Students who feel connected to school experience increased academic achievement, higher motivation, and a reduced risk of dropping out. To create a sense of student belonging, educators can use the 10 dimensions of belonging. Those dimensions are: loved, present, invited, welcomed, known, accepted, supported, heard, befriended, and needed. 

In this article, we highlight three dimensions of belonging. We also provide tips on how schools can include them within their multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) framework. MTSS contributes to student belonging by ensuring students feel supported and safe both socially and emotionally.

Helping Students Feel Heard

Being heard involves having your perspective sought out, listened to, and respected. A way to create an accepting and welcoming community at school is to involve the students in determining what the quality and character of the school looks like, also referred to as school climate[1]. Schools can include students’ voices and perspectives in the Tier 1 schoolwide expectations, which ensures the school climate represents students’ values and needs. Schools can build student voice into their expectations by:

• Having a student leadership team support designing the expectations, particularly at the high school level
• Distributing surveys to gather input from a variety of key personnel, including students
• Creating action guides to involve everyone from district leaders to students

Helping Students Feel Known

Being known means that students are noticed, recognized, and understood. When schools know their students better, they can determine which students may be at-risk for poor learning outcomes and take steps to provide appropriate support. The data schools collect is one way to know students and understand what students may need support in. Screening is a key way to identify students who may be at-risk for poor learning outcomes and in need of intervention. However, screening casts a wide net, resulting in overidentifying students who may need additional support. In turn, schools use additional data to make decisions about whether a student is truly at-risk or not, a process known as risk verification. Schools can often confirm if a student is at risk and needs intervention by using data that’s already collected. This includes using at least two other pieces of data, such as classroom assessments, absences, or office referrals. Further, schools can gather more data to pinpoint where a student is struggling and better match them to an intervention. Examples of this data include benchmark assessments, curriculum-based measures, and other diagnostic data.

Strong student-teacher relationships are another valuable way to know students. Having a meaningful relationship with an adult at school helps students feel like they belong. It reduces their dropout risk too. It also could give the teacher more insight to the needs and story of the student that may not be told only from data. Schools can foster relationships between students and with students through a variety of ways. Creating times where students meet with faculty to discuss concerns, build support, and address needs is one example. Schools can also connect students with extracurricular activities and groups or provide mentoring-based interventions.

Helping Students Feel Supported

School staff can better support students when they understand their needs. To better support students, schools first identify which students need intervention. Then, schools can provide the students with interventions matched to their instructional needs. Sometimes schools decide all students who need support in a particular area will all receive the same intervention, even if that intervention doesn’t exactly address one student’s particular need. For example, a school may use a reading fluency intervention at Tier 2 with every student who needs reading support. But a student who has phonemic awareness needs may not make much progress in an intervention that addresses reading fluency. Schools need to have more tools in their toolbox to help address other areas of need. Find examples of evidence-based interventions at these websites:

• The National Center on Intensive Intervention, which has academic and behavior intervention tools charts
• The Center on Instruction
• The Early Identification System Intervention Hub

After identifying a student’s needs, schools can consider where the student is within the instructional hierarchy for a skill. This instructional hierarchy is a framework for providing a student instruction and feedback based on the mastery of a skill. As students’ skills change, educators change the instruction provided to match the growth in the students’ skills. Schools can use the instructional hierarchy to match the intervention to the student’s mastery of skill, resulting in a targeted level of support.

These are a few examples of how your school can think about ways to improve MTSS practices and student belonging to improve your students’ academic achievement. Learn more about student belonging from the PROGRESS Center.