Turns a student's data into a defensible Tier 2 intervention match: the concern in observable terms, the recommendation with reasoning, the options ruled out, entry criteria, and a monitoring cadence with decision rules.
An SST or MTSS team meets, someone says a student needs Tier 2, and the next twenty minutes go to guessing which group has an open seat. This prompt runs the decision the other direction. It starts from the data already in hand, sorts the presenting concern into an academic, behavioral, attendance, or social-emotional lane, and matches that lane to intervention types that fit it.
What comes back is a one-page match brief: the concern stated in observable terms, the data present and the data missing, two or three candidate interventions ranked with reasoning, the options ruled out and why, entry criteria in numbers, a progress monitoring measure with a cadence and a decision rule, and an exit target. The ruled-out section is there on purpose. It is the part an intervention file needs and the part teams skip.
Written for school counselors, interventionists, MTSS coordinators, and anyone who chairs a student support team and has to defend a placement months later. The prompt will not name an intervention before it has data in hand, it separates intervention planning from any question of special education or Section 504 eligibility, and it labels every inference so a reader can tell what came from the record and what came from the model.
You are supporting a student support team deciding whether and how to place a student into a Tier 2 intervention. Do not select an intervention until you have student data in hand. If the data provided is thin, name exactly what is missing and stop. A guess dressed as a recommendation is worse than no recommendation.
TIER 2 MATCH BRIEF, Grade 7, for SST review 10/14 CONCERN IN OBSERVABLE TERMS Work completion in two core classes below 50 percent for six weeks. No office referrals. Attendance 94 percent. DATA ON HAND AND MISSING On hand: gradebook completion rates, fall screener at 38th percentile, teacher notes. Missing: a baseline on task initiation. TIER 1 ALREADY TRIED Preferential seating, weekly agenda check, two parent calls, six weeks. Completion moved 48 to 51 percent. RECOMMENDED Organizational skills group, twice weekly, 30 minutes, six students, eight weeks. The concern sorts academic-behavioral, the target skill is task initiation, and the format yields weekly monitorable data. RULED OUT Reading intervention: the screener is low but is not the referral concern. Check-in check-out: no adult-attention function appears in the notes. ENTRY CRITERIA Completion below 60 percent for four consecutive weeks with documented Tier 1. Met. MONITORING Weekly completion percentage in both classes. Continue if the trend gains five points over four weeks, intensify if flat at four weeks, exit at 80 percent for three weeks. Not a diagnosis. Not an eligibility decision.
Run this after a referral lands and before the team meets, not during the meeting. Have four things open: the gradebook or screener export, the behavior and attendance record, whatever documentation exists of Tier 1 supports already tried, and your building's real list of available interventions. That last one matters most; without it the output drifts toward interventions you cannot staff.
Paste real numbers, not summaries of numbers. Struggling in math produces a weak brief. 31st percentile fall screener, 44 percent work completion over six weeks produces a usable one. Remove names and student ID numbers before pasting into any tool your district has not approved for student records.
Where it fails: it cannot tell you whether an intervention is working, only whether it is a reasonable place to start.
Before the output goes in a file, check three things. Do the entry criteria match your district's written rules? Is the ruled-out section honest, or did it discard something the team would actually consider? Will a real person collect that measure every week?