History of Connections Screener in RI

2.1. Connections Screener implementation and follow up processes

Below are important considerations for planning screening. 

 

1. Before administering the screener (on a different day), identify how staff will lead discussions with students about "What is a Connection." This pre-activity prompts students to start thinking about adults in the building they have a connection with. This is a critical step that is essential to the process. During the first synchronous meeting on November 5th, we will provide a video example of a teacher leading this discussion with his advisory group.
   
   
2. Make sure you have the student screener established in Google Forms. We will talk about this in more detail later in the course.
   
   
3. Students should take the Connections Screener while at school and during a supervised time to ensure each student participates. In the past this most frequently occurred during an advisory period. Proactively brainstorm any administration barriers that may occur and develop a plan to include: ensuring all students have access to an electronic device and access to the survey link, whether all grade levels will complete it on the same day, what do we do if there are wifi/connectivity issues, etc.  
   
   
4. Plan for follow up administration for all students who were absent of the day the screener was administered or who did not complete the screener. Hint - this will take longer than you anticipate!  This means you need a plan to account for who has and has not taken the screener.
   
   
5. After you have allowed for enough time for administration of the survey and follow-up for absentees, establish a staff member to initially review the screener results to ensure they are in a format for your school team (this may be your building based MTSS or data team, problem solving team, etc.) to easily analyze. You will also need to "clean and code the data." This will be discussed in more detail in a future section. Later in this book, we will show what the data spreadsheet looks like after this process has occurred. 
    
6. Schedule your school team to review and analyze the data. 
   
   
7. Follow up contact and interventions with students that data shows are lacking connections.

Below is a flowchart that describes a typical administration of the Connections Screener process; however, in this course, you will be learning the basics of how to establish a screening process by either piloting a small-scale version of the screener with fewer students and educators OR planning for a pilot in the following school year. This flowchart is to demonstrate typical administration once the process is scaled up in your school.

Select the typical overall connections screening process for a screen reader version of this image. 

 *Schools who participated in past Connections Screener Project cohorts were provided with a copy of a master form which they saved, renamed and edited for their own schools.