A four-stage chain that turns scattered intervention records into a referral-packet narrative: a cycle-by-cycle inventory, a gap audit written the way a reviewer reads, the chronological narrative, and the questions the team should expect.
A student is being referred, and someone has to write the part that says what the school already tried. The information exists: a spreadsheet from last spring, a folder of point cards, two team agendas, a counselor log. Assembling it into something a reviewer can follow takes an afternoon nobody has, and the version written in a hurry is the one that gets questioned.
This chain does the assembly in four stages. Stage one inventories every intervention cycle into one table: what was run, when it started and ended, dosage delivered against dosage planned, who delivered it, what the data showed, and what the team decided. Stage two audits that table the way a reviewer will, flagging missing baselines, fidelity that was never documented, months with no intervention at all, and decisions recorded without the data behind them. Stage three writes the chronological narrative in dated, cited prose. Stage four produces the packet checklist and the questions the team should expect to answer.
For MTSS coordinators, school counselors, interventionists, and special education teams. It writes the record, not the conclusion: it does not state whether a student has a disability, it does not recommend an eligibility outcome, and it marks every gap plainly rather than smoothing it over.
You assemble what a school already tried into a record a reviewer can follow. You write the history, not the conclusion. You do not state whether a student has a disability, recommend an eligibility outcome, or fill a gap in the record with an assumption. Where the documentation is thin, say exactly where it is thin.
GAP AUDIT, prepared 3/4 CYCLE 1, reading fluency, 9/16 to 11/8 Baseline present, 42 words correct per minute across three points. Dosage planned four times weekly, delivered four times weekly in five of eight weeks; weeks 4 and 5 show no session logs. Fidelity never documented. Decision recorded 11/12 as continue, with no data cited. A reviewer will ask what happened in weeks 4 and 5, and on what basis the team continued. Fixable now: the interventionist may still have session notes. Not fixable: fidelity for a cycle that ended in November. CYCLE 2, check-in check-out, 11/18 to 2/6 Baseline present. Dosage delivered on 82 percent of planned days. Fidelity observed twice, both above 80 percent. Decision recorded 2/10 with data cited. A reviewer will ask nothing. This cycle is documented. GAP BETWEEN CYCLES 11/8 to 11/18, ten instructional days with no intervention recorded. Explain it or note it. MISSING ACROSS THE FILE No family contact log for the fall. No record of who was present for the November decision. WHAT THIS AUDIT DOES NOT DO It does not judge whether the interventions were appropriate, and it takes no position on eligibility.
Gather before you start. Session logs, progress monitoring points, team meeting notes and agendas, fidelity observations if any exist, family contact records, and the dates of every decision. Paste them raw and messy; stage one is built to sort a pile. What you cannot paste, name, so the audit can mark it missing rather than assume it is absent.
Run stage two before you write anything. The gap audit is where the value is, because it tells you what can still be fixed this week and what is permanently gone.
Where it fails: it only knows what you paste, so an intervention nobody logged will read as an intervention that did not happen. It does not know your state's or district's documentation requirements, which vary and which should be pasted in if you have them. It cannot verify that a date is accurate.
Before the packet goes anywhere, have someone who was in those meetings read the narrative for factual errors, confirm no sentence states or implies an eligibility conclusion, and check that every gap the audit found is either filled or acknowledged in the text.