November 7, 2023 • 18 mins
Struggling with students falling behind in the school year? In this episode, I share my proven method for addressing this common challenge. Whether it's a handful or an entire class, falling behind is a tough spot. Do I slow down for all or forge ahead and risk losing some? I delve into finding the balance and solutions in catching up. Join me as I tackle complexities like IEPs, English Learners, and diverse learning needs. I'll discuss viable strategies to propel students ahead, ensuring they don't feel left behind. Tune in for practical insights on moving students forward and making a significant impact on their progress without expecting everyone to be at the same level.
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Still figuring out lesson planning? Grab my free Lesson Planning Guide here 👉🏼https://teachersneedteachers.com/lessonplan
I have a new YouTube channel! Join me over there and subscribe!
Got questions, feedback, or want to be on the show? You can email me at kim@teachersneedteachers.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive teaching, but actuallydrive. I am really excited about today's
episode because it's something that I've seendiscussed in different Facebook groups and has actually
been on my mind because I'm alwayshaving to deal with this, and it
has to do with catching students upwhen they're behind. You're two months into
(00:23):
the school year and you've come toa stark realization your students are behind.
It may just be a handful ofstudents or maybe even an entire class,
but either way, you've realized thatthey are behind, and you don't know
what to do. You're struggling withthe decision to either slow down and catch
everyone up or just kind of forgeahead and hope that those that are behind
(00:44):
will eventually figure it out. Sowhich is the lesser of two evils?
Is there a middle ground? Andlet's not forget the added complexity of students
with IEPs, English learners, thosewith learning disabilities or behavior issues that are
just kind of adding to this wholepicture. So how do we get this
done? Is it even possible?In this episode, I'm going to go
(01:07):
over my method for catching up students, whether it's five or fifty. And
while you won't be able to catcheveryone up realistically, you can at least
get them further ahead so that theydon't feel like they just want to completely
give up. Because let's be real, trying to catch up all students that
are at varying levels is trying torun with a handful of sand and not
drop even one grain. We canonly do our best, but with some
(01:30):
reinforcements, we can do better.So the first step in this method is
obviously identifying the problem. That's notto say that just being behind isn't a
problem in and up itself, butwe need to figure out what is going
on and get a bigger picture.How can you tell if your students are
behind? Well, for one,you can look at assessments, the baseline
(01:51):
data that you have, so youcan look at where they started on a
particular scale and what their grades arenow. I would also look at grades
not only in your class that ifyou have access to it, grades in
other classes or other subjects. Andthen also you can look at their behavior,
because sometimes students check out, notbecause they necessarily don't want to learn
or do something. It's because they'rebehind and they don't really know what to
(02:14):
do. I mean, I,for one can tell you that I don't
like to feel stupid. I don'tthink anyone likes to feel stupid. But
a lot of students definitely don't wantto speak up for themselves because they feel
stupid and they don't want to admitit. So rather than trying and failing
and feeling even more stupid, theywould just rather not do any work at
(02:34):
all and just come off as justbeing too cool for it or just thinking
it's a waste of time. So, now that you've assessed whether or not
they're behind, and you realize yes, they are behind, there's missing assignments,
or their grades are really low inyour class or other classes, or
they're just not getting it. Nowyou need to figure out why. And
this one can be a little bittricky. So are they behind because they're
(02:57):
below level? That's definitely a possiblebility. They could have missed a bunch of
time from absences, or they mighthave come from another district, so that
other district maybe moves at a slowerpace than yours. Maybe you have to
look at language proficiency. If youhave English learners, they definitely have a
possibility of being behind your other studentsbecause not only are they trying to learn
(03:20):
the content, they're trying to understandthe language. So, as I mentioned
previously, there could be absences.So these are absences that are obviously out
of your control. But if they'regone because they were sick, or they're
gone because they just don't show itfor school and nobody notices, or their
parents decide that they need to goto Cabo in the middle of the school
year, that could definitely be areason why those students are behind. So
(03:42):
life circumstances, if the students' parentsare going through a divorce or there was
a death in the family or anillness, that definitely will be distracting for
the student and definitely put them ina mindset where they don't necessarily want to
do any work, whether it's inschool or outside of school. Also,
sometimes a whole class can be behindbecause of mandatory events like state testing,
(04:02):
or maybe there's like an assembly atyour school or some kind of activity that
you cannot get out of and yourstudents have to do, and so it
could mess up your pacing. Weactually had this happen recently because we had
a very last minute fire slash earthquakedrill and it was just for one class
period, so that one class wasdefinitely behind all my other classes because they
(04:25):
lost about forty five minutes worth ofinstruction. So there could just be circumstances
beyond your control in the school daythat put a whole class behind. And
then of course we have just plainold apathy, and that's why a student
doesn't want to do their work.They just don't feel like it. Now,
I'm going to be honest with youguys. When I come across these
types of issues where students just don'tdo anything, part of me gets kind
(04:47):
of upset, kind of triggered inside. It's like, why won't you do
this? And I think this happensto a lot of us. But we
also have to be empathetic and honestlynot be hypocrites about it. I mean,
we all fall into one or twocategories and maybe somewhere in the gray
area where when you were a studentyou either got your work done and follow
(05:08):
the rules, or you saw nopoint in what you were doing and just
didn't really do much, and maybebarely past something like that or somewhere in
between. But my point is,you have students that just don't want to
work. They just don't want todo anything, and it's not necessarily a
reflection of their parents or of yourteaching. They just don't want to work.
(05:28):
And if you were that kind ofstudent, kind of hard to justify
being really mad at them, becauseyou get it. You were there for
me, someone who did get mywork done. It is really frustrating for
me to see students who just sitthere and don't even try because I don't
understand their mindset. It's not thatI never found anything pointless when I was
in school, but I still didmy work because that's what you were supposed
(05:51):
to do. So we have tohave empathy for these students. We can't
get overly indignant or take it personallybecause they don't want to do the work
that we assign them. Not sayingthat we're going to blame anybody or make
excuses for these students. I mean, they're behind, and sometimes it is
their fault and sometimes it's not,but either way, we just have to
try to figure out why because thatdoes influence moving forward to how we're going
(06:14):
to catch them up. The secondstep is to develop a plan. This
is going to depend on how manystudents are behind, and again if it's
just a few students or if it'sa whole class. So you need to
ask yourself these questions. Is itenough for students to just demonstrate proficiency and
mastery or is it about them gettingthe work done and getting the grade for
(06:34):
it. And you may be askingwhy can't I have both? Well,
the answer is because your students arebehind, so you have to prioritize.
So either you want the kids toget the work done and complete it and
turn it in and give them agrade no matter how they do on it,
or you are going to have studentsdemonstrate proficiency and maybe not get all
of the work done, but atleast they demonstrate it that they know what
(06:57):
they're doing. If they're behind,they don't have time to do both and
still catch up to the rest ofthe class. So you need to have
that tough conversation with yourself. Thisalso begs the question what is the bare
minimum that your students need to doto catch up and be on pace.
So, for example, let's saythat you have a math assignment with twenty
problems, can they do five andprove whether or not they understand the material.
(07:20):
Do they need to do all twentyfor compliance or can they just show
you the bare minimum and still getfull credit. Now you may be thinking,
well, if I do this allthe time, then students aren't going
to finish my assignments. But weneed to try to give the students the
benefit of the doubt and just tryto get them caught up, because sometimes
(07:41):
what you're battling is the negative mindset. Sometimes you're just battling them telling themselves
that they can't do it, andthey get overwhelmed. They feel like they're
drowning in these late assignments and theywon't even try. If you can give
them a lifeline and tell them thatyou know what, show me that you
can do this, and maybe theyget it done in five or ten problems
(08:01):
instead of twenty, then they're morelikely to have more of a positive mindset
moving forward and are more likely todo your work in the future. Maybe
you only have like a handful ofstudents that are behind, you're definitely going
to have to have a plan andstrategize how you're going to go about this
so that you're not necessarily creating morework and creating more frustration. Because I
(08:22):
get it. There are times whenI'm just really over it and I don't
want to catch them up because inmy mind, I'm thinking, why do
I care more about your education thanyou do? And then I get upset
and I don't want to do anythingabout it, and I kind of throw
a mini tantrum, and then Iget over myself because at the end of
the day, I do care ifthey learn. The thing is, the
(08:43):
further they fall behind, the morefrustrated I become. And maybe you're like,
fine, just let them fail,and maybe their parents are like,
fine, you can just fail.But at some point I feel like someone
in their lives, whether it's usor their family or another teacher, someone
has to believe in them and believethat they can do this, and I
(09:05):
honestly prefer that emi at the endof the day. So here are the
things that I actually do. NumberOne, I do offer one on one
assistance. And I'm able to dothis now more so than ever because I
am using the modern classroom project modelwhere evidents are more self paced and they're
working more independently, and so itgives me more one on one time.
(09:26):
If you're not doing that model,you can still build in time where you
can work with students one on onewhile other students are doing group work or
individual work. So it's really keythat you build this relationship with that students
so that you can catch them up. And I do my best and not
get mad at them or take itpersonally. I know it sounds weird,
but sometimes we do take it personalwhen a student isn't doing our work.
(09:48):
We get upset because they're not complying, so it almost feels like an affront
to us. But we just haveto be objective about it and just see
that, hey, the student isbehind, the student is not doing the
work. The student may be belowgrade level. How can you get mad
at someone for being below level?It's not their fault. And even if
(10:09):
it is getting mad about it isn'tgoing to solve the problem. I also
would have a new set of materials. So some teachers say, well,
I already gave you that assignment.I already made that copy for you.
If I give them the assignment,they're going to lose it anyway. Give
them another packet, give them anotherworksheet. Seriously, you just want to
make it so that they can dothe work right then and there. If
they have to look through their binderor dig through their backpack through crumpled papers
(10:33):
to look for that assignment. Todo it, they're slowing things down.
They're less likely to get that workdone. Give them a fresh, new
packet and just move on. Haveadditional resources prepared if the student is behind
because they're just at a lower level. So this could mean maybe showing them
videos, or if you have pastworksheets or assignments that they did before but
(10:54):
they didn't really get it, havethem do that again. I would also
have maybe some sites or additional resourcesfor them to refer to, so that
it's not just you trying to catchthem up. There's also putting some responsibility
on them to learn the material inaddition to what you've already taught them.
It could be frustrating. You're like, I already gave a lecture on that.
(11:15):
I already taught them how to dothat, and they weren't there for
that or they didn't pay attention.So how am I going to do this
again for one student? If Igave a twenty minute lecture, Am I
really going to give a twenty minutelecture for this one student? No,
you're not. You're going to findother lectures online or just other resources so
that you can stick them aside andthey can learn that material while you're working
(11:35):
with the rest of your class.Communicate with the parents that they understand that
you're trying to catch up a student. There needs to be buy in on
the parent side too, And well, I know that's not always going to
happen because there just isn't always parentinvolvement. Let them know so that if
they are likely to help out theirstudent or be involved or at least hold
them accountable, you have someone elseon your side who's working with you.
(12:00):
Sure that you check in with them. This is something that I've been bad
about in the past, where I'mtrying to catch students up, then I
forget to check see if they actuallydid it. So maybe two three days
past and it never got done.Because if you forget about them, they're
just going to, you know,slump down on their chair and just try
to be under the radar again becausethey don't want to have to do the
work. You have to remember thatyou're definitely in this self defeating mindset,
(12:24):
and so just these little wins whenthey're getting something accomplished, even if they
got five problems done and you gavethem ten. That is something. I'll
even walk around and see student ifthey get one problem done, I give
them a lot of praise. Ifit's someone who really doesn't get anything done,
and I'll say, awesome, you'vegot that one question done and it
was correct. Let's try to getto five. Okay. After you get
(12:46):
to five, you can take alittle mental break. And this just gives
them a goal and they can lookforward to just having a break like I
promised, And it also encourages thembecause they feel like they're actually accomplishing something.
The third steps to adjust instruction,and this applies to when you have
a class or maybe all of yourstudents that are behind. It's the same
(13:07):
mindset as with an individual student,where you have to ask yourself the tough
questions. Can they just demonstrate proficiencyor mastery? Do you really need them
to get all of the assignments done? For example, we have grammar worksheets
that we give out and for eachparticular part of speech or something like that,
there's like twenty questions, So Ireally need to do all twenty with
(13:31):
the students kind of get away withjust doing five and it seems like they
have it, then we move on. If they don't, let's go to
ten, and by ten they haveit, let's move on. Do we
really care more about making sure thatthey get it all done and they get
the grade for that particular assignment,or do we care more about them just
knowing the content. There's definitely adifference when you're trying to catch students up.
(13:54):
If you are on pace, youhave the luxury of doing both.
But when you're behind, like Iwas with that one class because of the
fire drill, I had to makea decision about what I could keep and
what I had to cut. Thenyou want to look at your pacing guide.
You want to see what are allthe assignments that you're supposed to complete
before a certain amount of time.Maybe it's an upcoming assessment, or maybe
(14:16):
it's like a break or a holiday. Where are your students at and where
do they need to be by acertain cutoff point, maybe the end of
a unit. What is the shortestpath there. Sometimes we're teaching things that
are must have and are nice tonose, so you can distinguish between those
and just kind of cut out thenice to nose. So maybe you're teaching
them a particular concept, but youhad like an extension or if one activity
(14:39):
or a project that you were goingto do with them, Well, we
got to cut out and just dothe basic meat and votes. It is
just not humanly possible to teach everysingle standard that we're being asked to teach.
And after you're teaching all this time, I realized that I care more
about depth rather than rep meaning I'drather teach a few things really well and
(15:01):
go deep with those concepts rather thanjust kind of covering everything. And because
what I've found is that when I'mjust trying to cover a lot of things,
the students don't necessarily know the materialwell. And so when they're assessed,
maybe with like a district assessment orstandardized testing, the students don't do
well because I only covered it,I only touched on it, but they
(15:22):
didn't really learn it. So thefinal step is to seek specialized support.
It's just not possible to get everystudent on the same page and the same
level, and it's often out ofyour control. You're going to get students
that are one to two grade levelsbehind, and you're just going to have
to deal with it. You'll alsohave students with learning disabilities, behavioral or
(15:43):
emotional challenges, speech or language difficulties, and they just need specialized support in
general. And yes, we aretrained to help them out with that and
know how to accommodate for them inthe classroom, but sometimes there are just
things that we need a specialist forto show us how to do it.
For example, there are reading andlanguage specialists, there are speech therapists.
(16:07):
In some schools, there's a specialclass for English language learners that just came
to the country. You also havespecial education specialists. See specialists can help
you know how to accommodate and supportthose students that need extra help beyond what
you know how to do. Evenas a veteran teacher, I can't help
all of them all of the time. I'm not capable of knowing how to
(16:30):
make up a jillion different accommodations forall of my students, So I will
seek help from different specialists. Forexample, if I know that my student
is going to the speech therapist andthey're having a hard time articulating themselves in
class or with their group members,I'll ask the speech therapist what has worked
for that student or in other classes. So I definitely seek out help from
(16:53):
different people because I know I can'tdo it all by myself, and find
out what options are available if youwant a student to be a sessed for
special services. So maybe you suspectthat a student needs some extra help.
Maybe you suspect that they're having difficultyconcentrating and learning. Doesn't necessarily mean that
they have ADHD, but maybe theyare showing some of the patterns of the
(17:15):
student that is ADHD. Or maybeyou learn that a student just recently moved
to this country and does not reallyknow English and they were accidentally placed in
your class. In that case,you want to seek special services for that.
These are all things that can causea student to fall behind, and
so if you can get them theappropriate services, or at least get appropriate
support for yourself, that can reallyhelp you catch them up too. So
(17:37):
these are some of the basic thingsthat you can do to at least try
to catch them up. If thestudent is really digging their heels in and
they don't want to catch up andthey don't want to do the work,
well, then you just got tolet that go. Even if it's just
adjusting your expectations, adjusting your instructionthat alone can really catch up students so
that they feel successful, and thenyou can bread the sigh of relief that
(18:02):
you've kind of done everything that youcould now. This episode is definitely similar
to a previous episode where I discussedwhat to do when students are all at
different levels. So if you didn'tcatch that, be sure to go back
to episode one thirty four so thatyou can hear all about that. Thanks
for hanging out with me today,you guys, I will see you next time.
Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive teaching, but actuallydrive. I am really excited about today's
episode because it's something that I've seendiscussed in different Facebook groups and has actually
been on my mind because I'm alwayshaving to deal with this, and it
has to do with catching students upwhen they're behind. You're two months into
(00:23):
the school year and you've come toa stark realization your students are behind.
It may just be a handful ofstudents or maybe even an entire class,
but either way, you've realized thatthey are behind, and you don't know
what to do. You're struggling withthe decision to either slow down and catch
everyone up or just kind of forgeahead and hope that those that are behind
(00:44):
will eventually figure it out. Sowhich is the lesser of two evils?
Is there a middle ground? Andlet's not forget the added complexity of students
with IEPs, English learners, thosewith learning disabilities or behavior issues that are
just kind of adding to this wholepicture. So how do we get this
done? Is it even possible?In this episode, I'm going to go
(01:07):
over my method for catching up students, whether it's five or fifty. And
while you won't be able to catcheveryone up realistically, you can at least
get them further ahead so that theydon't feel like they just want to completely
give up. Because let's be real, trying to catch up all students that
are at varying levels is trying torun with a handful of sand and not
drop even one grain. We canonly do our best, but with some
(01:30):
reinforcements, we can do better.So the first step in this method is
obviously identifying the problem. That's notto say that just being behind isn't a
problem in and up itself, butwe need to figure out what is going
on and get a bigger picture.How can you tell if your students are
behind? Well, for one,you can look at assessments, the baseline
(01:51):
data that you have, so youcan look at where they started on a
particular scale and what their grades arenow. I would also look at grades
not only in your class that ifyou have access to it, grades in
other classes or other subjects. Andthen also you can look at their behavior,
because sometimes students check out, notbecause they necessarily don't want to learn
or do something. It's because they'rebehind and they don't really know what to
(02:14):
do. I mean, I,for one can tell you that I don't
like to feel stupid. I don'tthink anyone likes to feel stupid. But
a lot of students definitely don't wantto speak up for themselves because they feel
stupid and they don't want to admitit. So rather than trying and failing
and feeling even more stupid, theywould just rather not do any work at
(02:34):
all and just come off as justbeing too cool for it or just thinking
it's a waste of time. So, now that you've assessed whether or not
they're behind, and you realize yes, they are behind, there's missing assignments,
or their grades are really low inyour class or other classes, or
they're just not getting it. Nowyou need to figure out why. And
this one can be a little bittricky. So are they behind because they're
(02:57):
below level? That's definitely a possiblebility. They could have missed a bunch of
time from absences, or they mighthave come from another district, so that
other district maybe moves at a slowerpace than yours. Maybe you have to
look at language proficiency. If youhave English learners, they definitely have a
possibility of being behind your other studentsbecause not only are they trying to learn
(03:20):
the content, they're trying to understandthe language. So, as I mentioned
previously, there could be absences.So these are absences that are obviously out
of your control. But if they'regone because they were sick, or they're
gone because they just don't show itfor school and nobody notices, or their
parents decide that they need to goto Cabo in the middle of the school
year, that could definitely be areason why those students are behind. So
(03:42):
life circumstances, if the students' parentsare going through a divorce or there was
a death in the family or anillness, that definitely will be distracting for
the student and definitely put them ina mindset where they don't necessarily want to
do any work, whether it's inschool or outside of school. Also,
sometimes a whole class can be behindbecause of mandatory events like state testing,
(04:02):
or maybe there's like an assembly atyour school or some kind of activity that
you cannot get out of and yourstudents have to do, and so it
could mess up your pacing. Weactually had this happen recently because we had
a very last minute fire slash earthquakedrill and it was just for one class
period, so that one class wasdefinitely behind all my other classes because they
(04:25):
lost about forty five minutes worth ofinstruction. So there could just be circumstances
beyond your control in the school daythat put a whole class behind. And
then of course we have just plainold apathy, and that's why a student
doesn't want to do their work.They just don't feel like it. Now,
I'm going to be honest with youguys. When I come across these
types of issues where students just don'tdo anything, part of me gets kind
(04:47):
of upset, kind of triggered inside. It's like, why won't you do
this? And I think this happensto a lot of us. But we
also have to be empathetic and honestlynot be hypocrites about it. I mean,
we all fall into one or twocategories and maybe somewhere in the gray
area where when you were a studentyou either got your work done and follow
(05:08):
the rules, or you saw nopoint in what you were doing and just
didn't really do much, and maybebarely past something like that or somewhere in
between. But my point is,you have students that just don't want to
work. They just don't want todo anything, and it's not necessarily a
reflection of their parents or of yourteaching. They just don't want to work.
(05:28):
And if you were that kind ofstudent, kind of hard to justify
being really mad at them, becauseyou get it. You were there for
me, someone who did get mywork done. It is really frustrating for
me to see students who just sitthere and don't even try because I don't
understand their mindset. It's not thatI never found anything pointless when I was
in school, but I still didmy work because that's what you were supposed
(05:51):
to do. So we have tohave empathy for these students. We can't
get overly indignant or take it personallybecause they don't want to do the work
that we assign them. Not sayingthat we're going to blame anybody or make
excuses for these students. I mean, they're behind, and sometimes it is
their fault and sometimes it's not,but either way, we just have to
try to figure out why because thatdoes influence moving forward to how we're going
(06:14):
to catch them up. The secondstep is to develop a plan. This
is going to depend on how manystudents are behind, and again if it's
just a few students or if it'sa whole class. So you need to
ask yourself these questions. Is itenough for students to just demonstrate proficiency and
mastery or is it about them gettingthe work done and getting the grade for
(06:34):
it. And you may be askingwhy can't I have both? Well,
the answer is because your students arebehind, so you have to prioritize.
So either you want the kids toget the work done and complete it and
turn it in and give them agrade no matter how they do on it,
or you are going to have studentsdemonstrate proficiency and maybe not get all
of the work done, but atleast they demonstrate it that they know what
(06:57):
they're doing. If they're behind,they don't have time to do both and
still catch up to the rest ofthe class. So you need to have
that tough conversation with yourself. Thisalso begs the question what is the bare
minimum that your students need to doto catch up and be on pace.
So, for example, let's saythat you have a math assignment with twenty
problems, can they do five andprove whether or not they understand the material.
(07:20):
Do they need to do all twentyfor compliance or can they just show
you the bare minimum and still getfull credit. Now you may be thinking,
well, if I do this allthe time, then students aren't going
to finish my assignments. But weneed to try to give the students the
benefit of the doubt and just tryto get them caught up, because sometimes
(07:41):
what you're battling is the negative mindset. Sometimes you're just battling them telling themselves
that they can't do it, andthey get overwhelmed. They feel like they're
drowning in these late assignments and theywon't even try. If you can give
them a lifeline and tell them thatyou know what, show me that you
can do this, and maybe theyget it done in five or ten problems
(08:01):
instead of twenty, then they're morelikely to have more of a positive mindset
moving forward and are more likely todo your work in the future. Maybe
you only have like a handful ofstudents that are behind, you're definitely going
to have to have a plan andstrategize how you're going to go about this
so that you're not necessarily creating morework and creating more frustration. Because I
(08:22):
get it. There are times whenI'm just really over it and I don't
want to catch them up because inmy mind, I'm thinking, why do
I care more about your education thanyou do? And then I get upset
and I don't want to do anythingabout it, and I kind of throw
a mini tantrum, and then Iget over myself because at the end of
the day, I do care ifthey learn. The thing is, the
(08:43):
further they fall behind, the morefrustrated I become. And maybe you're like,
fine, just let them fail,and maybe their parents are like,
fine, you can just fail.But at some point I feel like someone
in their lives, whether it's usor their family or another teacher, someone
has to believe in them and believethat they can do this, and I
(09:05):
honestly prefer that emi at the endof the day. So here are the
things that I actually do. NumberOne, I do offer one on one
assistance. And I'm able to dothis now more so than ever because I
am using the modern classroom project modelwhere evidents are more self paced and they're
working more independently, and so itgives me more one on one time.
(09:26):
If you're not doing that model,you can still build in time where you
can work with students one on onewhile other students are doing group work or
individual work. So it's really keythat you build this relationship with that students
so that you can catch them up. And I do my best and not
get mad at them or take itpersonally. I know it sounds weird,
but sometimes we do take it personalwhen a student isn't doing our work.
(09:48):
We get upset because they're not complying, so it almost feels like an affront
to us. But we just haveto be objective about it and just see
that, hey, the student isbehind, the student is not doing the
work. The student may be belowgrade level. How can you get mad
at someone for being below level?It's not their fault. And even if
(10:09):
it is getting mad about it isn'tgoing to solve the problem. I also
would have a new set of materials. So some teachers say, well,
I already gave you that assignment.I already made that copy for you.
If I give them the assignment,they're going to lose it anyway. Give
them another packet, give them anotherworksheet. Seriously, you just want to
make it so that they can dothe work right then and there. If
they have to look through their binderor dig through their backpack through crumpled papers
(10:33):
to look for that assignment. Todo it, they're slowing things down.
They're less likely to get that workdone. Give them a fresh, new
packet and just move on. Haveadditional resources prepared if the student is behind
because they're just at a lower level. So this could mean maybe showing them
videos, or if you have pastworksheets or assignments that they did before but
(10:54):
they didn't really get it, havethem do that again. I would also
have maybe some sites or additional resourcesfor them to refer to, so that
it's not just you trying to catchthem up. There's also putting some responsibility
on them to learn the material inaddition to what you've already taught them.
It could be frustrating. You're like, I already gave a lecture on that.
(11:15):
I already taught them how to dothat, and they weren't there for
that or they didn't pay attention.So how am I going to do this
again for one student? If Igave a twenty minute lecture, Am I
really going to give a twenty minutelecture for this one student? No,
you're not. You're going to findother lectures online or just other resources so
that you can stick them aside andthey can learn that material while you're working
(11:35):
with the rest of your class.Communicate with the parents that they understand that
you're trying to catch up a student. There needs to be buy in on
the parent side too, And well, I know that's not always going to
happen because there just isn't always parentinvolvement. Let them know so that if
they are likely to help out theirstudent or be involved or at least hold
them accountable, you have someone elseon your side who's working with you.
(12:00):
Sure that you check in with them. This is something that I've been bad
about in the past, where I'mtrying to catch students up, then I
forget to check see if they actuallydid it. So maybe two three days
past and it never got done.Because if you forget about them, they're
just going to, you know,slump down on their chair and just try
to be under the radar again becausethey don't want to have to do the
work. You have to remember thatyou're definitely in this self defeating mindset,
(12:24):
and so just these little wins whenthey're getting something accomplished, even if they
got five problems done and you gavethem ten. That is something. I'll
even walk around and see student ifthey get one problem done, I give
them a lot of praise. Ifit's someone who really doesn't get anything done,
and I'll say, awesome, you'vegot that one question done and it
was correct. Let's try to getto five. Okay. After you get
(12:46):
to five, you can take alittle mental break. And this just gives
them a goal and they can lookforward to just having a break like I
promised, And it also encourages thembecause they feel like they're actually accomplishing something.
The third steps to adjust instruction,and this applies to when you have
a class or maybe all of yourstudents that are behind. It's the same
(13:07):
mindset as with an individual student,where you have to ask yourself the tough
questions. Can they just demonstrate proficiencyor mastery? Do you really need them
to get all of the assignments done? For example, we have grammar worksheets
that we give out and for eachparticular part of speech or something like that,
there's like twenty questions, So Ireally need to do all twenty with
(13:31):
the students kind of get away withjust doing five and it seems like they
have it, then we move on. If they don't, let's go to
ten, and by ten they haveit, let's move on. Do we
really care more about making sure thatthey get it all done and they get
the grade for that particular assignment,or do we care more about them just
knowing the content. There's definitely adifference when you're trying to catch students up.
(13:54):
If you are on pace, youhave the luxury of doing both.
But when you're behind, like Iwas with that one class because of the
fire drill, I had to makea decision about what I could keep and
what I had to cut. Thenyou want to look at your pacing guide.
You want to see what are allthe assignments that you're supposed to complete
before a certain amount of time.Maybe it's an upcoming assessment, or maybe
(14:16):
it's like a break or a holiday. Where are your students at and where
do they need to be by acertain cutoff point, maybe the end of
a unit. What is the shortestpath there. Sometimes we're teaching things that
are must have and are nice tonose, so you can distinguish between those
and just kind of cut out thenice to nose. So maybe you're teaching
them a particular concept, but youhad like an extension or if one activity
(14:39):
or a project that you were goingto do with them, Well, we
got to cut out and just dothe basic meat and votes. It is
just not humanly possible to teach everysingle standard that we're being asked to teach.
And after you're teaching all this time, I realized that I care more
about depth rather than rep meaning I'drather teach a few things really well and
(15:01):
go deep with those concepts rather thanjust kind of covering everything. And because
what I've found is that when I'mjust trying to cover a lot of things,
the students don't necessarily know the materialwell. And so when they're assessed,
maybe with like a district assessment orstandardized testing, the students don't do
well because I only covered it,I only touched on it, but they
(15:22):
didn't really learn it. So thefinal step is to seek specialized support.
It's just not possible to get everystudent on the same page and the same
level, and it's often out ofyour control. You're going to get students
that are one to two grade levelsbehind, and you're just going to have
to deal with it. You'll alsohave students with learning disabilities, behavioral or
(15:43):
emotional challenges, speech or language difficulties, and they just need specialized support in
general. And yes, we aretrained to help them out with that and
know how to accommodate for them inthe classroom, but sometimes there are just
things that we need a specialist forto show us how to do it.
For example, there are reading andlanguage specialists, there are speech therapists.
(16:07):
In some schools, there's a specialclass for English language learners that just came
to the country. You also havespecial education specialists. See specialists can help
you know how to accommodate and supportthose students that need extra help beyond what
you know how to do. Evenas a veteran teacher, I can't help
all of them all of the time. I'm not capable of knowing how to
(16:30):
make up a jillion different accommodations forall of my students, So I will
seek help from different specialists. Forexample, if I know that my student
is going to the speech therapist andthey're having a hard time articulating themselves in
class or with their group members,I'll ask the speech therapist what has worked
for that student or in other classes. So I definitely seek out help from
(16:53):
different people because I know I can'tdo it all by myself, and find
out what options are available if youwant a student to be a sessed for
special services. So maybe you suspectthat a student needs some extra help.
Maybe you suspect that they're having difficultyconcentrating and learning. Doesn't necessarily mean that
they have ADHD, but maybe theyare showing some of the patterns of the
(17:15):
student that is ADHD. Or maybeyou learn that a student just recently moved
to this country and does not reallyknow English and they were accidentally placed in
your class. In that case,you want to seek special services for that.
These are all things that can causea student to fall behind, and
so if you can get them theappropriate services, or at least get appropriate
support for yourself, that can reallyhelp you catch them up too. So
(17:37):
these are some of the basic thingsthat you can do to at least try
to catch them up. If thestudent is really digging their heels in and
they don't want to catch up andthey don't want to do the work,
well, then you just got tolet that go. Even if it's just
adjusting your expectations, adjusting your instructionthat alone can really catch up students so
that they feel successful, and thenyou can bread the sigh of relief that
(18:02):
you've kind of done everything that youcould now. This episode is definitely similar
to a previous episode where I discussedwhat to do when students are all at
different levels. So if you didn'tcatch that, be sure to go back
to episode one thirty four so thatyou can hear all about that. Thanks
for hanging out with me today,you guys, I will see you next time.
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