Current Initiatives Understanding Learning Profiles:
A Tool for Effective Response to Intervention

The goal of CDL’s Understanding Learning Profiles:  A Tool for Effective Response to Intervention (Learning Profiles) is to increase the achievement of all students. Teachers and principals gain in-depth, research-based instruction on the technical and practical aspects of the learning process and instructional strategies and tactics for teaching diverse learners. These strategies and tactics can be directly applied to the Response to Intervention model.

Key outcomes are:

• increased teacher response to each student’s cognitive and emotional profile
• students more completely engaged in learning
• increased student achievement
• reduced number of students referred to special education

Target Group
Learning Profiles delivers current, research-based instruction to teachers, principals, paraprofessionals, social workers, and members of the school assessment team.

Learning Objectives
Learning Profiles increases student achievement by building the capacity of educators to provide effective, targeted instruction and helping educators to:

• account for the needs of all students
• analyze classroom task demands and individual student learning profiles
• develop an array of skills, strategies, and tactics to diagnose and respond to multiple learning profiles, factors and situations
• build learner-centered classrooms

Content & Activities
Educators in participating schools receive instruction on the components of the learning process - attention, memory, language, higher order thinking, graphomotor (handwriting) and organization. Additionally, participants receive hundreds of strategies and tactics that can be used in the classroom to meet the needs of individual learners of all ages. Woven through the instruction is the use of informal assessment and analysis to identify individual students’ learning needs.

Initiative Specifics
Ideally, Learning Profiles is a 12-month program. Educators participate in a 4-day summer institute that is highly interactive, combining lectures, demonstrations, case studies and collaborative learning. The Institute is followed by monthly study groups and onsite assistance. Depending on the specific needs of the school, the onsite assistance may take the form of:

• coaching, mentoring, modeling, and/or classroom observations with feedback
• participation in school assistance team meetings
• facilitation of professional development sessions on a Learning Profiles topic at the school site
• consultations with individual teachers to identify key strengths and challenges for a specific student, and to match that student’s profile to specific strategies and tactics
• facilitation of conversations with parents on Learning Profiles topics

Initiative Staff
Learning Profiles is implemented by a cadre of specialists including highly-qualified learning specialists, intervention specialists, psychologists, and national experts.

Customize for Your School
CDL will customize this initiative to fit the unique needs of your school.  For example, the 4-day institute may be reduced to 2 days, with the remaining portion of the institute content delivered in 4 quarterly 3-hour sessions.  Additionally, university graduate credit can be arranged through a local university.

For Pricing and More Information
Please contact the Center for Development and Learning:

One Galleria Blvd., Suite 903
Metairie, LA  70001

Phone:  (504) 840-9786
Email:  learn@cdl.org