Many of us are thinking about our most challenged students during this standardized testing season in public schools all over the country. Mr. Foteah expresses feelings many of us can identify with in his recent post, What Testing Does to This Teacher.
Hence how do we best teach these students? How do we teach them well while retaining their dignity and letting them know that early struggles do not have to mean later struggles. We often find that well supported students who struggle early are very successful later on as they've learned to strategize, persevere and utilize their areas of competence and strength well during the early years which serves them well later in life.
As I think about these students, I am reminded of the following actions that serve these children well.
- Include their areas of competence and strength in the teaching endeavor. Let them shine often! For example allow an artistic child to include art in his/her performance work. Let those children share their competence with others and use their areas of strength as inroads to their areas of challenge.
- Short list their goals and priorities. Don't try to teach it all or make them reach every standard. Choose the most important goals and standards, and work towards mastery. Then add additional goals as time permits.
- Strategize with specialist teachers to build a dynamic, successful learning routine for the child, then stick to that routine for about six weeks. After that reassess and begin again.
- Share responsibility. Work carefully with all involved in this child's education and decide who will teach what--coordinate your efforts so you're targeting the work.
- Think out of the box and work with positivity. Whenever possible choose the route of happiness. For example, I had a energized student who would only attend to a task for about half the expected time. Rather than argue, I gave the child extra recess when he lost attention. As the year moved forward, his stamina grew and he stopped needing the extra recess time. It was a win-win solution.
- Make time to work with families and students with open-ended conversation and coaching. Keep lines of communication open and work as a team.
- Provide learning tools which can be accessed 24-7 as much as possible so that these children can re-watch videos and play games repeatedly to practice.
- Develop passion. Look for these students' areas of passion and talent. Recommend outside activities, clubs and organizations which will help that child to build his/her strengths. Passion is usually what leads us to our friends, activities and future work.
- Nurture healthy living. Help these children engage in healthy activities such as after school sports, teams, exercise programs and more. Many of these children are working twice as hard as their peers each day, hence they need to be as healthy as possible.
- Advocate for realistic testing schedules and goals. I'm a fan of taking the test you're ready for rather than the test for your grade. For example, first you take standardized test one. When you pass that, you take test two. I believe this is a better solution to the one-size-fits-all-at-a-grade-level tests.
What do you do to help challenged students in elementary school? How can we help these students to feel success and grow with confidence? Please feel free to add your positive strategies in the comments section below.
