WIN Time

What is WIN Time? (K-5th Grades)

 WIN Time stands for What I Need, also known as a learner-centered approach. Students will benefit from differentiated instruction that occurs during a 30-minute daily WIN time (“what I need”) that includes reteaching, remediation, or extension activities for Math, Literacy, and Social-Emotional Learning.  This is time for intensive assistance in which the teacher provides a lesson targeting individuals or groups of students that helps students continue to progress. During this WIN time, classroom teachers will meet with small groups of students for ten or fifteen minutes while some students work on differentiated work, and others leave the room for tier 2 or tier 3 support for math intervention, reading intervention, special education, speech, enrichment, social work, occupational therapy or physical therapy.  

Teachers have the ability to use classroom performance on daily work and assessments, universal screeners, and progress monitoring data tools to determine the best interventions and enrichment services to provide. Data decisions are essential for an effective WIN Time system. 

Created for Libertyville District 70 students and staff based on guidelines from the book, WIN Time by Stephanie McConnell and Morris Lyon as well as conversations with administrators from other school districts that schedule differentiation via a similar model.

Why do we need WIN?

We are building an even stronger Multi-Tiered Support System (MTSS) system that improves student learning and tier 1, 2, and 3 supports.  WIN time is for intensive assistance in which the teacher provides a lesson targeting individuals or groups of students that helps students continue to progress. WIN time is a priority, and instructional time is protected.  This is a school-wide system, so every student goes to WIN groups either as an intervention or remediation student or as an enrichment student.

During WIN time, we can create a curriculum specific to the student’s needs by designing targeted instruction correlated with data checkpoints. Students then work on the content and reflect on their learning by creating goals; in the end, they take ownership of their learning. Another avenue is to select best practices and curriculum resources that help students master the state standards.